Broad joins Nas and Ath to reflect on an England Test victory in Australia, but one tinged with Ashes regret

0:00OK, before we start today's pod, we want to say thank you to Tourism Western Australia, who are sponsoring this episode.

0:06Nasir Hussain:Western Australia is a place that stays with you, home to Australia's sunniest city, Perth, with its 19 beautiful beaches and relaxed alfresco lifestyle. Beyond the city, you can swim with gentle whale sharks, manta rays and turtles at the World Heritage-listed Ningaloo Reef, or meet adorable quokkas on Rocknest Island. You can also wander through majestic tall timber forests, explore ancient limestone caves and marvel at bubblegum pink lakes and red rock cliffs. Every corner of Western Australia offers something new. Rugged landscapes, dramatic scenery, ancient stories, friendly locals, huge national parks and delicious local food and wine.

0:48Nasir Hussain:Inspired to visit Western Australia but feeling stumped, there are no boundaries to flight centres' travel expertise. You'll have your own dedicated travel expert, real people who know Australia inside out and love creating tailor-made itineraries to suit your style, needs and budget. Visit flightcentre.co.uk to plan your Western Australia adventure today. What a start, that is from Crawley. Chris Wokes nails it for four. The ashes alive and test cricket alive. Ice in his veins. Pat Cummins has led his team to a famous victory. Yeah, go! Down, he gets its very top ending. England's captain, Ben Stokes, well, he is there.

1:33Nasir Hussain:England have hope. Put the beer away, put the champagne on ice. 24 years of pain in Australia. Finally, they're beaten at home by England. Well, the Sky Cricket podcast is at the MCG this morning. It should be day four of the Test match. It's a beautiful day for cricket. We're sat in the Olympic stand, high up, looking down on the pitch, but of course, no cricket, of course, because the test match ended in two days. So we're podcasting this morning. Some sad news, first of all, we must mention Hugh Morris, a giant of English and Welsh cricket who passed away overnight, aged just 62. Somebody that we all knew and did a lot for English and Welsh cricket.

2:21And I think of two things, really, when I think of you. I think of his bravery as a player and his decency as a person. So our condolences to Debbie, his wife and his daughters and all who knew him. Morgan, he was MD when you were coming through. When I first started, yeah, lovely man. One of those guys that you always felt had your back and was supportive. So, yeah, really sad news. and you were part of the Schofield review that he initiated after an ashes whitewash here in 06-07.

2:48Nasir Hussain:Yeah, I knew him a bit better than just on the Schofield review. So there'll be talk now. Do we need another review and all that sort of stuff? But going back to you, absolutely lovely man. Would always have time for you when I was young, growing up on A tours, playing against Glamorgan. He'd always have time, come over for a chat. Fine, brave player, as you say, but everyone will remember him as a thoroughly decent human being. I have just two images in my mind's eye when I think of Hugh because he was at Lake Call up to the Ashes Tour here in 1990-91 and we trained on Christmas morning, as you do, before Boxing Day and he and Robin Smith, who of course passed away recently, they wore their Santa hats for training that day and then the other thing I have in my mind's eye is his WhatsApp profile which is of him evading a Patrick Patterson bouncer on his test debut at the Oval in 1991 a wonderful photo of him arching back with a rapid bouncer going past his nose, very brave and resilient player and man who'd battled cancer for a long time so here we are day two we were chatting the other day after the test match about a slight sense of dissatisfaction really with a two day test match.

4:04This should be the great showpiece occasion of the Australian summer. And over in two days, what are your thoughts? And also the second test match in the series to be over in two days. I was chatting to Justin Langer, Ricky Ponting, guys who played over 100 test matches. You can't play any two-day games. It's remarkable to have two in a series and not good for the game, actually. I think when you're playing, you're just wanting to win, have an impact on the game. You couldn't care less if it was one day, three days, four days. You're just thinking about the results and how you can influence it.

4:36But now I've stepped away from the changing room. You see how the optics of it look and how the game, to not have a 50 in a Test match is unacceptable, really. My overriding feeling was there was going to be day three on a Sunday over here in Melbourne. I'm just thinking there'd be kids who are getting those tickets at Christmas, looking forward to that, and not being able to come. and that's really disappointing. So yeah, I don't like the idea of two-day test matches. I always think four is a really great number because you'll have seen hundreds, you'll have seen bowlers doing enough and you've got day five as the sort of backup safety.

5:16So yeah, really disappointing. The pitch just did far too much. I think with test match bowlers, you don't need to give them that level of assistance. The art of test match bowling is you can get movement out of surfaces that generally lesser bowlers think are flatter. So, yeah, far too much movement in the surface. There's been a bit of focus on the groundsman, Nass, hasn't there, Matt Pejew? I mean, to his credit, fronted up here yesterday and said he got it wrong. I just wondered why. There was a brilliant test match here last year between Australia and India. I mean, it was a fantastic game, a real arm wrestle over five days.

5:53And there were seven mils of grass on that pitch, and there were ten, I think, on this one. And I just wondered why he would have moved away from a template that obviously seemed to work a year ago.

6:03Nasir Hussain:I think the panic probably set in a long time ago when Cookie got that 240 or whatever. And that's where you can't get back to. I think modern cricket can't afford... You might go to Sydney now and they'll panic there and can't have another two-day test. We'll play 600, play 700. I think you've got to move away from that. There's got to be a happy medium where 300 is a pass score on the first innings. And four days is ideal. if it goes into the fifth that's perfect right um maybe it was a little bit because in this series if you looked at it winning when it has done a bit in the first two tests England have looked vulnerable and in the third test when it's looked flatter England came back into it a little bit more so maybe you know Steve Smith and Australia just were burying him just leave a bit of grass on it for we haven't got Nathan Lyon we we just play our seamers Nisa's bowled beautifully Boland on his home ground.

6:54Nasir Hussain:So maybe they sort of erred in that direction. But it was good of him to front up yesterday. Look, groundsmen get it wrong. Pundits get it wrong. It's not an exact science. It's not an exact science. I just hope they don't go too far the other day. I personally would prefer two or three days of exhilarating cricket than five days of a bore draw. So I just want to talk to you. We talk a lot about the pitch. Can I just talk to you about batting standards and where you are? You had a very long career as a high-class fast bowler. From when you started to when you ended to where you are now, do you think batting techniques have diminished?

7:34Nasir Hussain:Do you think the ball's done more? Why do you think we're seeing... I mean, you had that stat the other day about the amount of two-day tests. Why are we seeing more? I think the ball is doing more. I mean, particularly over here. I think, is it three out of five in the world that pitches are doing the most amount of sea movement in Australia at the moment? They were all flat when you bubbled on them, weren't they? All flat when I bubbled on them. I was actually with Cookie on Christmas Day, just winding him up. His 240-year ball is on so much. I was like, right, that's it. We're going to make him nip everywhere.

8:04And they've changed the Cookerborough ball here, haven't they? So it's seeming more. But even throughout the middle of my career, I thought that defensive techniques were changing. And you don't often see just a solid forward defence. I know this sounds a bit old school, but like a Raul Dravid used to come in and just sort of not show you any stumps and get a big stride in. And Justin Lange has been in the commentary, what's talking a lot about the lack of foot movement on both teams, of how they're not giving themselves the best opportunity. I actually, in the middle of my career, started to think and blame it.

8:33You know, we have these sort of, the wanger. Matthew Hayden mentioned that. I just felt like it. J-Mo says that as well. It was Alistair Cook, when I was watching him train, he used to face this wanger at top speed off Graham Gooch and it'd make him a little bit sort of hoppy and jumpy. And so actually, whether you're honing in bad technique by facing the wanger that bounces naturally and it's quick in the net. I mean, the numbers you mentioned there, Nasser, are significant, aren't they? I mean, there was not a two-day test match between 1946 until the game you captained at Headingley. Captained brilliantly.

9:06Nasir Hussain:Brilliantly against West Indies. That was the first two-day test match for, well, more than 50 years. and we've had 11 since then and five since the advent of the World Test Championship. So I think there's a number of factors. I think pitches since the World Test Championship when points are at stake, I think pitches generally have become a bit more home biased, shall we say. Pitches that the home teams want to try and get a win and an advantage at home. And then secondly, obviously, since T20 and the change in nature of the game, the batter's default response is to attack. You know, we'll get a few before that the ball gets us.

9:49And the consequence of that is that whereas, you know, boring blockers like us would try and tough it out, it might not change the result, but it would have elongated the game and you go into a third or fourth day. now it just travels at warp speed because of the just default response. There was no batter really. I suppose Root in the first innings, Smith a bit. There was hardly anybody whose response to that was to say I'm going to grind through and try and get the ball old and the ball was tight. But also England in the first innings, I looked at those dismissals. Ben Duckett, I said on air, it looked like a shot of a bloke who had been on the front page of the paper for a few days.

10:25But then I look at everyone else or most other players and they got pretty good balls. Jacob Bethel, not sure he could have done much about him around the wicket. Harry Brook, you nip one back from that length, big trouble. Jamie Smith's got a bit of a weakness with that angle, but again, a really good ball. So I looked at them and thought, that's not England just throwing it away and going, oh, well, we're just having a dart. That was being bowled out, and that's due to the surface, really. So I didn't think England threw it away and just went with that mindset of, I'm just going to slog. They got good balls.

10:58but I thought Australia day two were poor actually. I look at Cameron Greenshop particularly, just a bit lunged forward outside of Stump to a short ball. Khawaja sort of threw it away with a short ball that he pulled down deep. So I think England outplayed Australia over the two days to win the test match. But let's be honest on the surface, that's a bit of a shootout, isn't it?

11:21Nasir Hussain:Let's try and talk solutions if we can, because it's very easy for us to say what's happening. and we see, everyone sees what's happening. And it's obviously, these things don't happen overnight. It comes over time. The proliferation of white ball cricket, T20 cricket, T20 leagues, the money, the attraction of going and playing white ball cricket. I think someone like Jacob Bethel is like a litmus test of where the game's at. And this is not a Jacob Bethel point because every country, either now or in the future or in the recent past, would have had a Jacob Bethel. A young lad, I remember Vaughan, Michael Vaughan, My first tour of South Africa, Johannesburg, came in two for four.

11:58Nasir Hussain:You bagged a pair or whatever on a pitch similar to that, doing everything. And Vaughan came out and got a magnificent 30 or 40. And you immediately went, this lad can play. But the difference then was that Michael Vaughan, A, had played some first-class cricket, but B, would then go and play more first-class cricket and improve his red ball. And you could see the player Vaughan became brilliant, one of our all-time greats. Jacob Bethel, we've already criticised him for not coming back from the IPL, for not playing much first-class cricket last summer. What's he going to do this summer? And this is, again, not a Bethel point, but why would he come back from the IPL?

12:34Nasir Hussain:He's on millions there. Why would he upset RCB, the greatest franchise in world cricket at the moment? Why would he risk all that money to come play red ball cricket? He wants the best of everything. So what does Rob Key do about Jacob Bethel or any country do about a player who wants to go off and play white ball cricket? Why would you stop him? A multi-format player. Well, I don't think Rob Key can stop him. So what does Jacob do? One of the changes in the way that central contracts are now organized, you know, when they were first brought in a 12-month central contract, and you were then at the behest of what the MOD, Managing Director of England Cricket, wanted you to do.

13:20My understanding is that that's not the case now for IPL. It has to be the player's call. The player can make that call. Harry Brook made the call. He didn't want to play IPL. Ben Stokes has made the call about 100 next year. These are lads that are making a lot of money. So I agree, it's a problem. Rob Key cannot pull a player out of the 100 next year now that the new owners are in. So essentially a central contract has become not 12 months, but eight months. Two and a half of the IPL where you've lost control of your players and a month of the 100 where you've lost control of your players. That's not answering the question in terms of a solution, but it's recognising the problem.

14:02Nasir Hussain:Sorry, but I think it's the nail on the head. Why would Bethel leave RCB to come and prepare for the New Zealand series early and get some form batting for Warwickshire batting at three or whatever, like Michael Vaughan used to, to improve your Red Bull skills? You just know young player at the moment. I mean, I know you mentioned Harry Brook. There were other reasons for the decisions he's made. But I think that is the problem now, that these multi-format players are wanted so much around the world for such big money. They have to try and find gaps. Now, whether in the IPL he gets, I see, you see the Indian players getting a red ball out and working on it, but that's not match practice.

14:40Nasir Hussain:So I think that's the problem. That's why techniques, because I do think there's a real talent in that lad there. But he does need to, all this high ceiling, the only way you improve and get to that high ceiling is by playing. And to get, for him to get there, he needs to play. It's like an extreme lab experiment at the moment, isn't it? To find out whether a young player can improve by not playing at 21. Joffr Arch comes into that as well because he wasn't going to go into the IPL last year. And then messages came, well, if you don't go in this year, you will then get banned for a certain period of time.

15:12So then you're talking millions of pounds for him. He goes in the day before the auction, gets picked up for 1.3 million. And then England have no control because he's now playing 14 IPL games or however many. So whatever England have planned to say, you know, and that's not, you know, Joffr Arch should go and do that. Ultimately, if you're a business, you're going to go and do that. But then where you're getting load into his body and three games in, he's not here anymore. So you have no control, really, as an England management, because whatever planning you have, they might have been thinking, let's give Joffre Archer three games for Sussex in May to get the body hardened.

15:50Well, then that disappears. We were chatting. We just talked about the dissatisfaction of a two-day test match. What about our reaction to England's win was partly, you know, it's great. We've won a Test match in Australia for the first time in 15 years. Obviously, every Test win is to be celebrated in its own right. But I think both of us felt a high sense of frustration and disappointment because it was a sense of what might have been had England turned up in Perth ready to perform and play. I mean, do you share that sentiment? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of all, absolutely awesome to see England get a win here.

16:35You don't think it's not going to go down as an all-time great performance necessarily. It's a two-day game where the ball sort of went all over the place and a bit like the Perth experience for the Australian players, they had a couple of players fire up and win them the game. But I looked at Ben Stokes, looked at Joe Rudd, and I was so happy for them to have that feeling of winning a Test match in Australia. earlier, the Barmy Army, 25 ,000, was singing for half an hour after the game. You know, a lot of people who were here would go, I've seen England win away. What a brilliant sort of experience and feeling that was.

17:05But England have got better, played nicely at Adelaide, got better throughout the series. And that's never a great thing because it means you weren't ready to go. And I think the bowlers looked short of a gallop in the first couple of games, I thought. and it might sound old school, but you've got to play and bowl in first-class cricket. Nets are no good really for match preparation because you can bowl a leg stump off Oli, it gets hit for four and you don't even think about it. You pick the ball up and you go again. You need that feeling of what length is going to go to the boundary. And when you reflect on it, I know the preparation words were the most used word in this whole tour, but Lilac Hill that doesn't bounce above shin height to prepare you for the Optus and the Gabba is no good.

17:51and the bowlers have got better as they've gone along, amidst a few injuries. We'll come on to each of the specific bowlers in turn because I want to get your views on each of them. So to answer your question, should England not be 3-1 in this series? Absolutely. I mean, you obviously made a big comment about Australia before the series. Factually correct comment. Absolutely. So that's really where I'm getting to. Is there anything you've seen in this series that would cause you to revise that assessment of Australia that you made? Well, I think ultimately, if you're an England player boarding the plane to Australia, and someone would have said to you, OK, well, Pat Cummings is going to play one test match.

18:32Nathan Lyon is going to play two. Two with one injured. Two and been bowling the first one. Steve Smith will miss Adelaide. Josh Hazel, if you won't see him, all tour. they're going to give two debutants to two 31-year-old players you'd be going oh kawaja would miss miss one come back in and kawaja suddenly back in five they're going to change travis head to the top of the order halfway through this you'd be going quark's in our favor a bit wouldn't you absolutely um i mean they're beatable right yeah absolutely as we saw here that's why

19:04Nasir Hussain:actually preparing this sort of pitch i thought just brought england into it to be able to say they had you know they were all over england england were down and out in the week they'd had in Noosa. They gave those. England's seamers in the end had no option. There is no way you can run up on that pitch and bowl the dross, for want of a better word, that they'd bowled in the first two tests. It almost made them finally say, on air, top of off stump, please. Otherwise, if you're not bowling top of off on there, you never are. And it played into their batting style. You've got to go out and bat like Harry Brook did and be positive and put them back under pressure.

19:38Nasir Hussain:So I thought it was a big week you touched on it, actually, for Ben Stokes as well, because you've been on tours out here, the Alistair Cook tour, where when you're winning, you look like an absolute unit and all together and all friendly and getting on. And on that tour, it just fell apart, didn't it? It dismantled. And just leading up to this test match with everything that was going on and the Noosa stuff and 3-0 down, ashes gone, I thought Ben, the way he handled the press conference the couple of days leading up to the game was absolutely vital. Now, who knows? They may still be in that dressing room.

20:13Nasir Hussain:And you've got to be very careful on Ashes Tours that people start looking after their own backs a little bit and looking to the future and positioning themselves for next summer. It looked like Stokes had just got them and kept them together long enough as a team. Yeah, he did brilliantly. And that's why it was a big result for Ben Stokes this week. Because if it's 4-0, which it could have been because it was a bit of a lottery, wasn't it, on that surface, then all those questions keep coming about leadership and coaching roles and all that sort of stuff that we'd be talking instead of going, Josh Tongbobwell, didn't he?

20:42You know, so we're living in a results-driven business and us in the media will talk positively and negatively based on the result. Yes, we have a hint of negativity with this England win in the fact that all of us feel like what might have been.

20:57Nasir Hussain:Would you, Stokes is a man for you? 100%. 100%. There's no doubting that. Whatever happens in Sydney, because I think we both think this, Stokes is a man. 100%. I'm concerned of a domino effect. So I think I've mentioned to you before of if Rob Key loses his position, then Baz would say, well, I don't need the job. He gave me the job. I'm going. And then Stokes would go, well, if Baz is my man, I'm then going. So I've been nervous of that. There'll have to be conversations of the preparation and the planning and the selection a bit because, you know, ultimately we've lost the Ashes 3-0 after three games against a team that you feel like were pretty beatable.

21:34But for me, they feel like they should continue. They've given Baz the white ball contract as well to the end of the 27 World Cup. So you should come on to him in a little bit. But can we just go back to the preparation that you were talking about? If you were playing, say you were in your, you know, pump five years ago and you were preparing for an Ashes tour like this. Just put into some detail how far in advance you'd be thinking about your loads and what would be an ideal preparation for you heading into a five Ashes test matchup? Ashes series? I mean, times have changed because my first two or three trips here, we had three warm-up games against first-class opposition to prepare and get overs and load in.

22:18And I was always the same. That's why I like to play three championship games for Nottinghamshire before a Test match summer. It would take me three innings to get a feeling of what length was and get rid of the bad balls and get up to match speed. And before those first-class games, what would you be doing in terms of training, gym work, anything? Yeah, of course. I'd never go into a match without being up on load in nets, bowling into a mitt, running. So I'd never play a game having not bowled for two weeks or something. I'd always be training and building towards that. But it started to change 17-18 when we came.

22:59We came 10-11 and played first-class teams. I'd invoge yourself against Western Australia, proper teams. the time we got here in 7-8-17 the warm-up game at the WACA we played grade not even like sub-district or district cricketers so suddenly we're prepping for Mitchell Johnson facing 75 mile an hour club bowlers and that's when it started to change so I get the fact that Rob Keehan and Baz went do you know what we're going to take preparation out of the Australian hands I remember we turned up in India once expecting spin and they played four seamers on a green seamer And it's like, well, what prep is that?

23:36You're wasting your time. But they should have had the WACA for preparation. So the net's there, the middle. Well, they're playing middle practice, completely wasting your time at Lylah Hill. So they should have had a test match ground to prepare on properly. And that is an error. I don't know why that has become a problem. But you just don't have the time anymore. Playing a white ball series a couple of weeks before the Ashes starts, you fly in from New Zealand. You don't have three weeks to play three separate games. But ultimately... But they're going to have to try and build that in next time, aren't they?