Journalism of Courage
A ruthless Australia rattled through Englands final four wickets on Monday to complete an emphatic 218-run victory in the second Ashes Test and push the tourists to the brink of a humiliating series defeat. The crushing win at Adelaide Oval puts Australia 2-0 ahead in the five-Test series,a stunning turnaround from the 3-0 Ashes defeat they suffered in England in August.
The hosts will fancy their chances of securing the famous urn in Perth,where England have not won since 1978 and where man-of-the-match Mitchell Johnson looms as an even greater threat on the WACAs bouncy wicket.
The win proved Australias victory in Brisbane was no flash in the pan,while confirming a seismic shift in the balance of power between the teams. Any hopes England had that rain might save them were quickly dispelled when a shower cleared to allow play to start only 10 minutes late.
Pacemen Peter Siddle 4/57 and Ryan Harris 3/54 combined with aplomb to seal the win in less than an hour on a gloomy morning at the re-developing ground. In reality,however,England lost the Test on Saturday when their batsmen failed to stand up to another withering spell of extreme pace bowling from the resurgent Johnson.
The red-hot Queenslander took 7/40 in Englands first innings of 172 and twice dismissed their talismanic captain Alastair Cook cheaply to win his second successive man-of-the-match award after his nine-wicket performance in Brisbane. Cooks second innings dismissal,hooking Johnson to a man in the deep,was emblematic of his teams poor shot selection throughout.
Few illusions
He has little time to restore his teams battered self-belief before the third Test gets underway on Friday. The only guys who can change it are the guys in the dressing room, said a shell-shocked Cook,who has gone from Australias tormentor in the 2010-11 series to becoming merely tormented.
No one else can change it for us. We cant sit there moping around about it. Its hurting us like hell but were the only guys who can change it.
Having restored some pride on Sunday after managing to bat through a day under extreme duress,England resumed on 247/6,still 284 runs shy of their victory target. Any sense of self-satisfaction would surely have been quashed,though,when Stuart Broad pulled the fifth ball of the day from Siddle straight to Nathan Lyon at deep square leg to be out for 29.
Matt Prior notched his first half-century to end a wretched run of scores,but appeared determined to get himself out by hooking at almost every short ball. In the end he did just that,succumbing to Siddle for 69,with Harris taking a simple catch in the deep.
Inbetween,Clarke threw the ball to Harris who dismissed Graeme Swann for six runs with his third delivery,the spinner driving at a short one moving away that he nicked straight to the Australian skipper in the slips. Harris returned to seal the match by having Monty Panesar caught at short extra cover by Chris Rogers for a duck,and Australia embraced to a noisy ovation from the sparse fifth-day crowd.
Outplayed with bat and ball,England were also largely dismal in the field,with a rash of dropped catches during Australias first innings costing hundreds of runs and allowing the hosts to declare a mammoth first innings total of 570/9.
As holders of the urn,England need only level the series 2-2 to retain it,but Cook was under few illusions about the scale of the task. A lot of people wholl be sitting in this room and outside will probably give us no chance, he said. But if we dont believe that in our dressing room that the urns gone,then it might as well have gone. Reuters
Brief scores: Australia 570/9 decl. amp; 132/3 decl. beat England 172 amp; 312 J Root 87,M Prior 69,K Pietersen 53; Siddle 4/57,Ryan Harris 3/54.
