Weak bowling cost Australia the 2010-11 Ashes – Cricket News
Ashes series is the most important cricket event in England and Australia, with most analysts from both countries rating the little Urn more significant, than a World Cup trophy.
The 2010-11 Ashes started with a lot of expectations and without doubt, the series lived up to its expectations. Australian hopes were shattered during the series and it left them at a brink, where talks of changing captains and bringing young players in the Test squad started to take place.
Australia lost the Ashes in 2009 in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Adam-Gilchrist-c918.
With a total of 1271 Test match wickets between them, Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath are bowlers who had the caliber which few players have in their natural game.
Australian bowling standards have gone down considerably and the current situation is such that the side is facing a real tough time bowling out a strong opposition twice, in a Test match. http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755 side in England, last year.
The only victory that came for the Kangaroos in the 2010-11 Ashes was at Perth and that was because of a stunning bowling effort by http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mitchell-c76390 Johnson who made a comeback to the playing eleven after being dropped since the Brisbane Test. Unfortunately for the Australians, Johnson could not carry on with the same form in the remainder of the Test matches.
Apart from Johnson’s heroics in Perth and Peter Siddle’s performances on a couple of occasions, the Australian bowling looked extremely thin throughout the series and failed to make an impression on the English batsmen.
Alastair Cook, Jonathan Trott, Ian Bell and the rest of English batsmen scored piled up runs at will. Apart from Paul Collingwood, all the top-7 English batsmen had a fantastic tour and were not fazed by the ineffective Aussie bowling attack.
Ricky Ponting and some of the senior players, who were a part of the great Australian team in the past, must have been missing those days when they never had to toil hard on the field. There was hardly any batting line-up during that period, which was able to survive for more than three sessions against Australians. It was not just about Warne or McGrath, as the likes of Jason Gillespie and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Brett-Lee-c48419 were equally destructive also.
There was a time when Australian selectors were spoiled for choices, as a leg-spinner of the quality of Stuart MacGill was the second string spinner after Shane Warne. He could have been a permanent member of most of the top Test teams with his statistics. MacGill’s 208 Test match wickets in only 44 matches, clearly show the quality which the leg-spinner possessed.
Today, the situation is completely different as Australia tried two debutants in the shape of Xavier Doherty and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Michael-Beer-c1949, in the 2010-11 Ashes campaign. The team also played a couple of Test matches without a slow bowler.
The comparison of the two tenures of Australian cricket strengthens the credibility of the phrase, ‘every rise has a fall’. The quality of Australia’s bowling has definitely faced a huge fall and Cricket Australia would have to take necessary steps to start producing high-class bowlers once again. If not, Australia will no longer be rated as a reckoning force in international cricket.
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