A Captain and his Men

GH on 1954-55 and now

Which way now for England?

In sport, you’re proverbially only as good as your last performance. This means that if your next performance does not come along smartly, that last performance can linger. Such is the case for England. A hundred and forty overs is not much data, but the Perth Test is leaving a long tail.

For a lot of that abbreviated duration, to be fair, England were extremely competitive - at lunch on the second day, Winviz had them at seventy-five per cent. The difference was two virtuoso individual efforts, from Mitchell Starc and Travis Head, and two friable collective responses, the visitors’ batting losses of five for 12 in the first innings and four for 11 in the second innings. Apart from that, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs Lincoln?

Zero-1, too, is a larger deficit than it sounds, especially when Australia holds the Ashes, and have lost only two home Tests in the last four years. It’s worth mentioning that on only three occasions have England prevailed in a series down under after conceding the First Test - in the original Ashes of 1882-3, and in the rubbers of 1911-12 and 1954-55.