160 years ago Australia hosted its first international cricket tour.
An English team under the captaincy of H.H. Stephenson arrived in Australia thanks to the sponsorship of Melbourne caterers and entrepreneurs Spiers and Pond.
The MCC Library has recently acquired an extremely rare scorecard from the third match of Stephenson’s tour, in which England played a combined New South Wales and Victoria side at the MCG.
The most striking feature of the scorecard is that it really was a combined team; the Australian side consisted of 22 players, making 21 for 153 and 21 for 144, while England were all out for 100 in the first innings and the match was declared a draw with the visitors 0-10 in the second.
Based on yet another dismal day for England’s batting, one might doubt that the current side could outscore Australia if the roles were reversed and England were able to field a 22-man side.
England tried just about everything in the buildup to Boxing Day to try and shore up their disturbingly fragile batting.
Zac Crawley, Rory Burns and Haseeb Hameed all practiced drills where they eliminated all trigger movements and kept their feet still, as if planted in cement.
Then Burns and Hameed batted flamingo-style, with their front leg bent and their foot raised in the air.
Most unusual was the sight of Hameed batting on one foot and with one hand, his bottom hand.
The sight of the England opener hopping and single-handedly swiping of the ball brought to mind The Black Knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail after losing a leg and both arms, head butting King Arthur while insisting, “’Tis but a scratch!”
England have made an art of capitulation on this Ashes tour after only playing ten days of cricket and Boxing Day merely underscored the vast gulf between the batting fortunes of the two sides.
Hameed brought up the least coveted half-century for England; when he feathered an excellent ball from Pat Cummins that angled in and then climbed and seamed away just enough to draw the edge it marked the 50th time an England batter has been out for a duck within a calendar year.
Crawley’s height, which England have hoped might make him suited to Australian conditions, was no match for the bounce of the taller Cameron Green while Dawid Malan was another of Cummins' three victims on another excellent day for the new captain.
But the way in which some of England’s batters gift-wrapped their wickets in yesterday’s leftover Christmas paper made for particularly grim viewing.
Joe Root, who had netted with a fourth stump marker to improve his decision-making, was again dismissed fiddling outside off-stump to Mitchell Starc.
Ben Stokes ground his way through a particularly probing spell from Green only to lean back and slash a short ball from the all-rounder straight to Nathan Lyon at point.
Also vying for the worst dismissal for England was Jos Buttler who, just before tea, came down the wicket to Lyon but didn’t get to the pitch of the ball and holed out to deep midwicket, where Scott Boland took one of two catches on the first day of his Test debut.
Bairstow at least looked to be making a decent fist of his return to England’s middle order but, just as he seemed to be set after making 35 runs, he was surprised by a short ball from Green which he gloved to gully as he tried to duck out of its way.
To sum up the way that England have tried to work on techniques to no avail, Mark Wood had spent his batting sessions in the nets working on facing the short ball.
On Christmas Day he waited for his first throw down from fast bowling coach, Jon Lewis, expecting a bouncer; Lewis instead sent down a yorker, which pinned Wood on the pads.
“What happened to the short ball?” asked Wood.
“They’re not just going to bowl short at you,” replied Lewis.
Promoted to bat at No.8, Wood was indeed on the receiving end of the short stuff but it was a fuller ball that trapped him lbw and set him down as Boland’s maiden Test wicket.
So, for all the various methods and focus on techniques, England are still frustratingly unable to find the right answers.
But a frank Bairstow perhaps hit on the only way for this side to scrape together some semblance of fortitude with the bat; the same sort of dogged determination the Black Knight summoned to keep fighting, no matter the blows suffered, but hopefully without the comical effect.
“It's about finding a way, it's about finding a way to score runs individually,” said Bairstow after play. “You look amongst techniques that have scored runs over here over many years.
“There's not one method that works, is there?
“There's many different methods and it’s about finding a way and there's different techniques throughout both sides.
“People have analysed people's techniques and game plans as to how they see the best way of scoring runs but, at the end of the day, it does come down to scoring runs and spending time out in the middle.”
But time is fast running out for England and, in the absence of rules reverting to that match played 160 years ago, it’s down to these eleven players to find the resilience that has eluded them thus far.
