Need for speed? Why Smith thinks England’s pace attack could struggle Down Under

3 months ago 17

Steve Smith believes England’s much-vaunted pace attack may have missed its Ashes moment as current Australian pitches make seam and swing a more difficult proposition than a barrage of speed and bounce.

Smith will take charge in next Friday’s first Test at Perth’s Optus Stadium having dodged his own fast-bowling bullet with Josh Hazlewood cleared to take his place after a dramatic day of hamstring tightness and emergency scans on Wednesday.

England’s Ashes hopes could well hinge on the success of 150km/h-plus speed merchants Jofra Archer and Mark Wood – who are being sized up as a first Test new-ball pairing – along with Gus Atkinson and Brydon Carse, who both consistently hit 145km/h.

Smith’s Sheffield Shield knocks of 57 and 56 not out amounted to almost 45 per cent of NSW’s runs in the 300-run loss to Victoria this week on a rapidly deteriorating SCG pitch, with Australian decks undoubtedly favouring bowlers in recent years.

The Optus Stadium deck promises to be the quickest and bounciest of the summer, followed by the Gabba’s day-night Test pitch in the first week of December.

However, the likes of Fergus O’Neill, Nathan McAndrew and Jackson Bird, along with quicker Test squad members Scott Boland and Brendan Doggett, have dominated the Sheffield Shield with less express bowling in recent summers.

English speedster Jofra Archer during the 2019 Ashes.

Smith noted that England’s previous attacks – built around fast-bowling champions James Anderson and Stuart Broad – may have been better suited to the current pitches.

“It’s different on the wickets now, I think,” Smith said of one of the fastest attacks England have sent to these shores.

“I mean, those sort of nibblers can be quite tricky. So they might have got things the wrong way around, if that makes sense, in terms of the pace from previous years I’m talking about.

“But obviously they’ve got those guys at their disposal now. They probably weren’t fit and ready or old enough, maybe, a few years back.

“I think we’ve got plenty of players that play fast bowling well, and it’s going to be a good challenge.

“If you can do both [combine pace and ball movement], I guess that’s a good skill.

“But sometimes the slower guys are almost harder to play on those wickets where you have to make the pace. But yeah, we’ll wait and see, won’t we?”

Smith’s battle with Archer looms as one of the most enticing individual match-ups of the series after their iconic clashes during the 2019 Ashes, when Archer felled the Australian champion at Lord’s and Marnus Labuschagne made his Test debut as Smith’s concussion replacement.

Marnus Labuschagne is struck by Jofra Archer during the Lord’s Test in 2019.

For all those pyrotechnics and body blows – and with Sir Ian Botham encouraging England to adopt Bodyline-style tactics once more – Smith was not dismissed by Archer in that 2019 series, and actually scored 94 runs from the 164 balls Archer bowled to him.

While Smith was the only NSW batsman to look in any way comfortable against Victoria’s attack at the SCG, the stand-in Australia skipper and former Test opener Chris Rogers were impressed with how 23-year-old Campbell Kellaway handled the likes of Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Seam Abbott and Nathan Lyon.

Kellaway’s scores of 51 and 23 followed a second-innings 147 against Shield champions Tasmania last week, with Victoria coach Rogers endorsing the Australia A representative as Usman Khawaja’s eventual successor at the top of the order.

“To come out and get 50 and line the ball up so well against Starc and Hazlewood, I thought that was a real tick,” Rogers said of Kellaway’s SCG showing.

“And for me, it’s proven once again that he could be the successor to Khawaja. I think he’s going to do some fantastic things in his career.

“He’s working a lot around his alignment, how you deal with the moving ball. It’s such a challenge for openers at the moment to be able to deal with that.

“The more times he puts himself out there, the longer he bats, the more he’s going to learn. I think he’s doing some very good things. And even the way you watch him play now, I think it looks like a readymade Test player.”