Cricket: Plan too cunning by half

Stuart Broad. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Cunning last-minute plans can make legends of tacticians when they work but when they fail, they are an unwanted distraction.

It was widely believed Stephen Harmison had performed England a major service during the tourists' final warm-up match before this week's first test when he exposed apparent flaws in the technique of Phillip Hughes, Australia's dynamic young opening batsman.

Harmison dismissed Hughes twice at Worcester with pinpoint 145km/h chin-hunting short balls, deliveries that made Australia's latest wunderkind appear human.

In the twist of a head and an uncontrolled thump at the ball this became the way to dismiss Hughes in the 2009 Ashes, and England's fast bowlers - James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Andrew Flintoff - would have been encouraged to follow Harmison's example.

For Anderson and Broad, the new-ball pairing at Cardiff, it was a mistake. The pair laboured as Australia finished the third day on 479-5, 44 runs ahead of England's first innings total.

Harmison possesses alternative assets to Anderson and Broad and, by attempting to repeat the feats of the Durham speedster, they failed to bowl to their strengths. They wasted the new ball, a commodity that should be cherished on a benign pitch like this.

In the past 18 months, Anderson has become a high quality swing bowler and should have concentrated on pitching the ball up rather than banging it in halfway down the pitch.

Swing bowlers have to bowl a fuller length to perform at their best, as Anderson's dismissal of Simon Katich and Michael Hussey highlighted yesterday. Broad is developing into a fine bowler but his bowling does not possess the spite of Harmison. On a slow pitch he was always going to waste energy and compromise control trying to achieve something not natural for him.

For Flintoff, who dismissed Hughes for 36, the tactic was acceptable. It's part of his armoury and it allowed him to implement the strategy successfully. Perhaps he should have taken the new ball ahead of Broad.

In a match of this profile, it is crucial for a bowler to start well, to find a good rhythm and build a platform from which to bowl for the remainder of the innings. Bowlers, especially those playing in the modern game, need to be flexible but they hate conceding runs, and England leaked 38 in the opening seven overs of Australia's first innings.

Philip Tufnell, the former Middlesex and England spinner, used to say bowling was all about fingertip control, and he is right. Bowling is a sensation, a feeling, and bowlers know whether they are sending down a good or bad ball from the moment the ball leaves their fingertips.

Bowling a bouncer is a completely different sensation to bowling full and, despite what people think, it is not easy to flit between the two.

By changing their game plans and trying to combine full- and short-pitched deliveries, Anderson and Broad failed to gather early rhythm and it resulted in the pair failing to bowl with the consistency England would have wanted.

It is not just with the ball that England have so far been outplayed in the first test. Australia have shown greater determination with the bat, placing a far greater price on their wicket than their opponents. Nowhere was this highlighted better than in the final half an hour on the opening two days of the test.

On the evening of the first day, Flintoff and Matthew Prior appeared in little trouble and were scoring runs at ease. The desire to be positive was admirable but there was a casualness about their batting, an approach that suggested a costly mistake was just around the corner.

And so it transpired, with Flintoff chopping a Peter Siddle delivery on to his stumps and Prior driving recklessly at the same bowler and being bowled through the gate.

In contrast was the attitude of Ricky Ponting and Katich on day two. Each player desperately wanted to reach a hundred before the close but the sight of three figures did not compromise their batting.

There was an "over my dead body" feel to the way in which they approached the landmark, and once there, a desire to produce something significant, a performance that could potentially win the test. England will need to show similar traits over the coming weeks if they are to repeat the feat of 2005 and regain the Ashes.

- INDEPENDENT