England's bowlers were too timid for too long - they must take risks to salvage some reward

When someone rocks up in a flash car, revving the engine and ostentatiously jangling the keys, the common perception is that they're compensating for something. Overcompensating, even. Which was how it felt England were approaching things for most of the first day’s play at the Sydney Cricket Ground. The visitors, who in many senses have nothing to lose, were too timid for too long to take the risk of pitching the ball fuller, for fear of being driven. When they did, the overcompensation came, too easily and too obviously for much of the rain-interrupted day.

On English pitches, a yard shorter than back of a length is difficult to contend with. There is plenty of time to do all sorts off the seam and the ball is probably still wobbling as it makes its way towards your bat, or the edge of it. These are the natural lengths of your James Andersons, your Stuart Broads. They know, however, just as we do watching on, from hard, bitter experience that these lengths do not work on Australian pitches. Too short, too wide, no scope for LBW when in line and when they’re not they’re easily left. Lesson learned, Broad in particular, with something to prove, probed fuller, more enticing lengths at the SCG.

And they were inviting. Enough to see David Warner crunch all bar six of his 30 runs from fours, most through the covers, a trademark of his on home pitches. The problem for England though, is that while Broad persisted with pitching it up, too often and too soon England’s other quicks overreacted the moment Warner, or Labuschagne or any other Australian batsman, found that drive and that boundary. For much of the day it wasn’t so much a recalibration as an over-calibration.

Every time the ball pierced the cover field, a short one would come. Twice, a Ben Stokes or Mark Wood delivery was dug in so fiercely short that five wides were conceded. For strike bowlers, using every ounce of energy to challenge the batters before them, this goes a fair way to sapping it.

In the second session in particular, albeit only nine-and-a-bit overs of it, both Stokes and Wood would pitch it up, get driven and revert back immediately to something far shorter, which Australia were expecting. In the first session 61 per cent of deliveries by these two bowlers were on a good length; it dropped to about half that come the second session. By the third, England were starting to get it, the final two of the last three wickets to fall coming through outside edges, with that length that invites the drive. The one we’d been talking about all along.

The automatic adjustment, the temerity and risk avoidance was all on full show during a period of play when England could have, should have, grasped the best of conditions. Just as Australia’s premier bowlers did on that scintillating passage of play in the evening session of day two at the MCG, breaking England’s batting with four wickets for 22, England had an opportunity here to make the most of conditions.

On Wednesday, the teams came on and off the pitch six times for various rain delays. Such disruption has more scope to affect a side’s batting, where it’s one mistake and you’re gone, than the frustration it causes bowlers. It was a day offered to England to exploit, therefore, through the experience of Broad and Anderson, the pace of Wood and the doggedness of Stokes.

Yet it took until Australia’s openers had passed the 20-over mark and strung together another 50-run opening partnership for the breakthrough to come. And when it did it was exactly that length, Warner reaching for the drive, that England have been too timid to try and find.

“You need to be prepared to be driven!” roared former Australian captain Mark Taylor on commentary, a man who called this ground home and on which he has a couple of centuries to back up those assertions with. Warner is a frightening cricketer, if not character, and his game plan throughout this Ashes has been a simple one: intimidation.

We saw it as he battered Jack Leach out of the attack, and the next Test, in Brisbane. And now at Sydney, anything over-pitched he makes sure to crunch it through covers, deterring any bowler from venturing too far full. It works, maybe not so much for a canny Broad, who once again had his man, but against anyone else the trap is laid and England fall back into defensive mode just at the time that they have nothing to lose. It is a risk to pitch it up, to get driven, to turn on your heel and try again. But it’s no longer an Ashes-conceding risk. England must take those risks to salvage some reward.