series?
The first test, England batted out for a draw, now it wasn’t quite the same as Cardiff, whereas in Wales it was a real rear guard action as the last pair, Anderson and Monty, survived those final 40 minutes to scrape a draw with the help of rain. At Brisbane hey dragged themselves from a losing position by racking up 517 runs for the loss of one wicket.
Onto the second test and on both occasions a huge England win, back then a 115 run win at Lord’s this time round in Adelaide it was an eve more impressive innings and 71 runs.
Now a blip in this occurs as in ’09 the third test was drawn and then Australia went on to completely hammer us in the fourth at Headingly, where this time it was straight away in the third test they handed out the 267 run pasting in Perth.
Once again England just can’t lead from the front, after the first innings of the first test – where it had looked sort of like the same old story with 260 being well under par score – the had completely dominated the Australians, who were in turmoil and were the ones looking like England of old as they chopped and changed the side.
But when the pressure is off England get too cocky and it all goes to pieces. Pietersen starts to play “the way I play” instead of getting his head down and making a double hundred for the team. And Anderson goes back to the wide long hops. How man wickets did he take at Perth with rank bad deliveries? And all the usual batting flaws of the rest come to the surface.
They go from cruising this to “learning the lessons” and “taking the positives”.
Well if it is going like ’09 it’ll have a happy ending at least.