England won’t send any Ashes batsmen to play in pink-ball tour game

3 months ago 17

England’s first choice top six have turned their noses up at the option of pink-ball match practice for the Gabba Ashes Test, not sending a single batsman who played in Perth to Canberra for the Prime Minister’s XI game.

Squad players Jacob Bethell – the only spare batsman in the squad – Matthew Potts and Josh Tongue have chosen to take part in the game.

Zak Crawley made a pair of ducks in Perth.

But Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes and Jamie Smith will all fly from Perth to Brisbane on Wednesday and are not scheduled to train again until Monday next week.

Stokes had hinted strongly that this would be his team’s course of action after they were beaten inside two days in Perth.

However the decision not to seek more match batting for Crawley, Root and Brook in particular will likely bring a fierce response from past England players who had already criticised the tourists for playing only one warm-up game.

“It’s amateurish if they don’t go and play now,” former captain Michael Vaughan had said. “What harm is playing two days of cricket with a pink ball under lights?

“They’ve played two days of cricket. They’ve been out in the field for, what, 70 [67.3] overs? Look, they’re professional cricketers. I can’t be so old-school to suggest that by playing cricket, you might get a little bit better.

“My method would be, you’ve got a pink-ball, two-day game: you go and grab it, go and take it. Play those two days, and make sure that you’re giving yourself the best chance.

“It’s not being old-school to suggest that a pink ball is different to a red ball. Playing under the lights is different.

“Australia have won pretty much every pink-ball game in Australia: they’ve lost once. I’m not too old-school to suggest that they should play in that game… I’d like to know why they wouldn’t.”

Another ex-skipper, Alastair Cook, said extra time in the middle could have real benefits, particularly given the Perth Test was over so quickly.

“In this situation, I would want to go and play in the pink-ball game against the Prime Minister’s XI in Canberra, not just leave it to the Lions players,” Alastair Cook wrote in his Sunday Times column.

“It can be an uncomfortable decision as you are opening yourself up to failing again, but putting yourself under pressure can have long-term benefits. However much you practice in the nets, you cannot replicate the feeling of time in the middle.”

Stokes had referred to the views of “has-beens” in the lead-up to Perth, and he made a similar reference to tour matches between Tests after the game ended.

“That’s how it was done a long time ago,” Stokes said. “We prepare incredibly well. We work incredibly hard every single day that we get the opportunity to work on our game, and that’s what we’ll keep on doing because we believe and we trust in our process.

“If the results don’t go the way in our favour, that’s not going to differ ... because, hand on heart, we know that we put every little bit or ounce of ourselves into our training, and we know and believe that this is the best way for this team to operate.”