Looking at the England dismissals
In terms of runs, it was a good day for England batters. But the same problems were there.
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By their standards, England had a good day with the bat, if nothing else. But that was after the start, which was ordinary, and also the quick two wickets in the middle against an Australian attack one man down with a soft ball.
Because of this, there will not be as much scrutiny of the dismissals as this is seemingly above par. But the problems are all still there from a technical point of view.
Check out Haseeb Hameed's wicket.
This is as the ball has bounced, and you can see that Hameed is perhaps a bit late on the ball.
The bigger problem, though, is that he shows Starc all three stumps.
Starc is trying to bring the ball back in with a wobble ball, and Hameed should know that. And yet he's standing very leg side of the ball.
The gap here is extraordinary. Now, this was a great ball, with Starc giving up inswing for wobble ball, he probably becomes a much more dangerous bowler throughout the innings. And once he did this at pace, I am not sure what any player would do. But Hameed looks a bit like a cartoon bullfighter here, allowing the dangerous animal straight through him.
His opening partner Zak Crawley was also bowled through the gap. And again, this was a good ball, this time from Scott Boland, that nipped back. At first, I figured that was the main problem. But there is something else here that is far worse.
Look at Crawley's foot.
It is not planted. This happens against high pace from time to time, players are just a bit late on it, but Boland is not high pace.
Crawley's foot is now down until well after he is bowled.
When he was hit earlier in the innings, and then rocked back onto the front foot, he was given a lot of credit for being tough. When he played some nice shots for boundaries, again, people talked him up. There are nearly times where he looks like a Test batter.
But he made 18, and was caught from a no-ball and dropped on the way there. And was beaten for pace from a medium-fast bowler. Hameed was also dropped.
The other thing about Hameed and Crawley is that England have ended with them as their opening partnership. Both have no history of first class runs, aren't currently in the best two openers in England, and have major technical issues.
The final one to look at is Jos Buttler.
When he came out to bat I messaged a friend that Buttler wouldn't get a better chance to score runs against this attack. Once this ball went soft, it was much easier to bat. Mark Wood would be the perfect example of this. That doesn't mean the old ball didn't occasionally play up; Jonny Bairstow's thumb is a testament to that.
However, that is not what happened with Buttler's dismissal. This was a standard Pat Cummins ball, which by definition is still probably in the 99th percentile of difficult balls to face.
But it does not appear to do anything dramatic, perhaps it straightens a little, and it might have held up as well.
Nothing really explains why Buttler's hands were so far in front of his body.
Something has gone very wrong here. And being that he usually comes in far earlier in the innings, it's a huge missed opportunity.
And while batters often look bad on the balls they are dismissed on; it's worth looking at just how bad his balance became here.
It looks like his right foot has ended up in front of his left.
You could probably look at Root's angled back foot push, which is the shot that could have got Malan in trouble too. If he wasn't set up for a leg-side catch. There's also something to be said of Stokes' constant problem with offspin because of his bat path coming across his body.
Stokes’ innings was bizarre, in part because of the many injuries he seemed to be battling, and it felt like he could have been out several times. Though this was the most fun.
It was really only Bairstow who looked completely set. I thought Australia could have bowled fuller and straighter to him. And he certainly had the best of the softer ball, but he also had to fight to get to it.
It was tough to bat at the start of the day. The hard ball was bouncing inconsistently off this surface. And there is every chance that even if England had overcome their technical shortcomings they still would have been dismissed.
Ofcourse the flipside of that is that if you leave huge gaps between bat and pad, are late on the ball, push at it violently, use a badly angled bat, fall into a legside trap and come across the ball, even without good balls, you are probably going to struggle.
I watched the highlights earlier, and was stunned at how technically bad the shots were that the so-called frontline batsmen got out playing. At what point do the selectors give up on Crawley ? One big knock aside, he averages just over 18 in test cricket, which is less than Stuart Broad. Maybe Crawley should bat at #10 ? Thank heavens Bairstow and Wood were on their game, and Stokes also did well, albeit with a healthy dose of very good luck.