Australia fast-bowling great Jeff Thomson said the expected absence of Ryan Harris from the tourists’ attack for the first Test against England in Cardiff next week will not hamper the team’s Ashes chances.
He also played down suggestions that Australia would have the edge over England following a 5-0 Ashes win on home soil in 2013-2014, adding that if anyone might have “scarring,” it would be Australia, given they had not won a Test series in England since 2001.
Harris was left out of Australia’s ongoing final warm-up match against Essex after suffering a recurrence of the knee trouble that has plagued his career, but with Michael Clarke’s men boasting plenty of fast bowling cover, Thomson said on Thursday: “I wouldn’t have had him in anyway.”
Speaking at a news conference in London organized by series sponsors Investec, Thomson said his preferred pace attack out of Australia’s current squad consisted of Mitchell Starc, fellow left-armer Mitchell Johnson — who took 37 wickets at 14 apiece during the last Ashes — and Josh Hazlewood.
“I know [people talk about] Johnson, but I think Hazlewood might be a leading wicket-taker here. I love Starc, always have for years. He’d be my first pick,” Thompson said.
Thomson made his name during Australia’s 4-1 Ashes series win in 1974-1975, when he formed a celebrated fast-bowling partnership with Dennis Lillee.
In five matches that series — he missed the last through injury — Thomson took 33 wickets at less than 18 apiece bowling at a ferocious pace that has rarely, if ever, been exceeded.
However, just a few months later, Australia faced greater resistance in England before winning a four-match series — shorter than normal because of the inaugural 1975 World Cup — 1-0.
Asked if fast bowlers caused long-term psychological damage to opposition batsmen, Thomson said: “I don’t think it is psychological. We [Australia] haven’t won here for 14 years, so we’ve got a bit of scar tissue if you want to call it that.”
“Playing here is hard work. It was the damndest thing, the team we flogged in Australia, then we came here and it was really uphill trying to win a match,” he said.
There has been plenty of talk in the build-up to the Ashes about the amount of “sledging,” or verbal abuse of opposition players, that is likely to place given the acrimonious exchanges between the two sides in their last series.
Australia have long been considered “past masters” at sledging, starting from Thomson’s heyday in the 1970s, but the 64-year-old was adamant it was a later generation of Aussies who took the practice to its height.
“I think it developed more in the 90s with Warnie [Shane Warne], [Ian] Healy and all those guys,” said Thomson, whose prime years as a Test bowler came during the captaincy reigns of brothers Ian and Greg Chappell. “We didn’t say much. I never said anything to anybody unless somebody said something to me.”
“And nobody’s going to say anything to myself, bowling 100 miles per hour [161kph],” said Thomson, whose 51 Tests yielded exactly 200 wickets at an average of 28.
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