A note to my fellow Australians

This has been a thoroughly entertaining test match so far. England won the toss and sought first use of the pitch, showing a positive mindset and a desire to start a highly anticipated series in a dominant way. And Australia bowled well. The bowlers were not great, but very good, and they briefly had us in a position to set up a victory. But only briefly.

Australia’s weakness for nearly a decade has been batting, surely that’s no secret. If the ball is swinging our batsmen fall doing the same. It seems somewhere in the last ten years we’ve lost the capacity to bat long periods, to win the game session-by-session, to think in terms of five day cricket, to draw a test if it can not be won! This is the difference between the two sides competing in this Ashes series.

In the past ten years England learned how to stop losing games. From there they have learned how to win games, and finally how to win games consistently. In the same time Australia has learned how to lose, cut corners and reward mediocrity.

I could go down Australia’s team list and discuss this in fine detail but that really is not the point of this post. I’m writing this because of the Broad non-dismissal and the nonsense that occurred in its wake. Broad not walking has not cost Australia the game, collapsing to 120-9 after bowling England out for 200-odd on day one has. As has Brad Haddin with his terrible advice regarding when to use DRS referrals, his several dropped catches, and his terrible two ball innings. Not to mention Shane Watson and his 14-ball highlights package of an innings. He fails justify his appointment to a pivotal opening position as his average remains 25 there over the last two years of test cricket. People are awed by his belligerent batting in T20 and ODI cricket yet fail to realise these results have never transferred into the test arena.

Anyway Aussies, calm down about the walking/non-walking nonsense. I really don’t like Broad, but no batsman walks and nor should they; and if Australia hadn’t wasted reviews Broad would have either been out LBW to Agar for one or out with the slip catch everyone is complaining about. This really is a non-issue. England hold the urn and they’re not going to just give it away – and that’s why we love the Ashes. We simply need to get smarter, better, and play harder for longer.