England are heading for a 5-0 Ashes series drubbing in Australia unless they can mentally recover from two crushing defeats, former captain Michael Vaughan said yesterday.
A ruthless Australia rattled through England’s final four wickets yesterday to complete an emphatic 218-run victory, after having opened the series with a 381-run routing in Brisbane, Australia.
The crushing win at Adelaide Oval put Australia 2-0 ahead in the five-Test series, a stunning turnaround from the 3-0 Ashes defeat they suffered to England in August.
Photo: AFP
The hosts will fancy their chances of securing the famous urn on Friday in Perth, where England have not won since 1978 and where man-of-the-match Mitchell Johnson looms as an even greater threat on the WACA Ground’s bouncy wicket.
“The Australians have played a great brand of cricket,” Vaughan, who captained England to a home series victory in 2005, told the BBC.
“If England are getting out playing the pull shot on a slow wicket, what’s it going to be like at the WACA?” he added. “I see a few technical flaws with England, but it’s in their minds; unless they twist the mentality round, it’s going to be 5-0.”
Vaughan also said the senior players in the team needed to start pulling their weight.
“It’s the worst-case scenario, a horrible environment to be in when you start losing, but the senior lads have to step up to the plate — Joe Root as a young player almost pointed the finger at the senior players and said: ‘Lads, this is how you do it,’” Vaughan said.
His gloomy outlook was shared by another former England skipper, Geoffrey Boycott — never one to mince his words when it comes to England’s batting, which has so far proved inadequate in four innings with only one of more than 200 runs.
“I’ve worked out that 50 percent of our wickets have been given away,” Boycott told the BBC. “A lot of them are pulling and hooking and being caught at fine leg. You can’t win a Test match if you can’t bat.”
The Adelaide win proved Australia’s victory in Brisbane was no flash in the pan, while confirming a seismic shift in the balance of power between the teams.
“It’s not a fluke that we have won the first two Test matches,” Australia captain Michael Clarke told reporters after his team tore through England’s tail in less than an hour. “We’re finally getting the results for the hard work and commitment over a long period of time.
Any hopes England had of rain saving them yesterday were crushed when a shower cleared to allow play to start just 10 minutes late.
Pacemen Peter Siddle (4-57) and Ryan Harris (3-54) combined with aplomb to seal the win.
In reality, England lost the Test on Saturday when their batsmen failed to stand up to another withering spell of extreme pace bowling from the resurgent Johnson.
The red-hot Queenslander took 7-40 in England’s first innings of 172 and twice dismissed their talismanic captain Alastair Cook cheaply to win his second successive man-of-the-match award after his nine-wicket performance in Brisbane.
Cook’s second innings dismissal, hooking Johnson to a man in the deep, was emblematic of his team’s poor shot selection throughout.
He has little time to restore his team’s self-belief before Friday.
“The only guys who can change it are the guys in the dressing room,” said a shell-shocked Cook, who has gone from Australia’s tormentor in the 2010-2011 series, to being the tormented.
Having restored some pride on Sunday after managing to bat through a day under extreme duress, England resumed on 247-6, still 284 runs shy of their victory target.
As holders of the urn, England need only level the series 2-2 to retain it, but Cook was under few illusions about the scale of the task.
“A lot of people who’ll be sitting in this room and outside will probably give us no chance,” he told reporters. “But if we believe in our dressing room that the urn’s gone, then it might as well have gone.”
Former world No. 2 Paula Badosa has withdrawn from this week’s Wuhan Open, organizers said on Tuesday, amid a racism row over an online photograph. Tournament organizers said the Spaniard had pulled out of the WTA 1000 tournament, citing a gastrointestinal illness, hours before her first-round match against Australian Ajla Tomljanovic. News outlets including Britain’s the Telegraph earlier reported that Badosa had posted a photo on Instagram in which she appeared to imitate a Chinese face by placing chopsticks on the corners of her eyes. The photo was taken last week in a restaurant in Beijing, where she reached the semi-finals of the
PREDICTION: Last week, when Yu’s father made a wrong turn to the former champions’ parking lot, he said that his son could park there after this year With back-to-back birdies on the 18th hole, Kevin Yu fulfilled his driving range-owning dad’s prediction that he would win the Sanderson Farms Championship and become Taiwan’s third golfer to claim a US PGA Tour title. The Taoyuan-born 26-year-old, who represented Taiwan in the Olympic golf at Paris, saw off Californian Beau Hossler in a playoff at the Country Club of Jackson, Mississippi, on Sunday. Having drained a 15-foot putt to claw his way into the playoff, Yu rolled in from five feet on the first extra hole, ensuring he joined Chen Tze-chung (LA Open in 1987) and Pan Cheng-tsung (RBC
LeBron James and eldest son Bronny James claimed a piece of NBA history on Sunday after making their long-awaited first appearance alongside each other for the Los Angeles Lakers. The duo appeared together at the start of the second quarter in the Lakers’ 118-114 preseason defeat to the Phoenix Suns in Palm Desert, east of Los Angeles. While LeBron James impressed with 19 points in just 16 minutes and 20 seconds on court before sitting out the second half, Bronny found the going harder with zero points in just over 13 minutes on court. The younger James attempted just one
Italian defender Marco Curto has been banned for 10 matches for racially abusing South Korean forward Hwang Hee-chan while playing for Como 1907 against Wolverhampton Wanderers in a pre-season friendly in July. Curto, who is on loan from Como to Serie B club Cesena, would serve half of the punishment immediately with the other half suspended for two years. “The player Marco Curto was found responsible for discriminatory behavior and sanctioned with a 10-match suspension,” a FIFA spokesperson said. “The player is ordered to render community services and undergo training and education with an organization approved by FIFA.” Wolves said the club would
RSS