Warner puzzled by England bowling plans as Thorpe defends the selection
England assistant coach Graham Thorpe has defended his selection and bowling plans after Australia won 221 for 2 on day one of the second Ashes Test in Adelaide after David Warner admitted his surprise at their short ball barrage.
England made two changes to the side battered by nine wickets in the gabba, adding James Anderson and Stuart Broad in place of Mark Wood and Jack Leach; As a result, her attack included five melee right arm combatants at similar pace and Joe Roots part-time outbursts.
Jos Buttler dropped two catches from Marnus Labuschagne - including a particularly straightforward one late in the day - and England's sailors hit the bat multiple times, but ultimately two wickets returned in 89 overs with the pink ball to highlight the attack's lack of variety.
When asked if England should have put in either a frontline spinner or a real fast bowler like Wood with a difference, Thorpe insisted they should have chosen a strong attack. "No, I think we picked the right team for this game," he said. "Actually, I thought that we could have grazed more on another day and it could have been different on the first day."
England reverted to a short ball plan in phases during the day, with Ben Stokes serving as enforcer and bowling on six to three side-leg fields. Stokes was England's most expensive bowler, conceding 50 runs in his 13 overs but taking Warner's wicket and hitting a cut straight for cover.
"It's a tactic they obviously tried to get us through," said Warner. “I don't know why you did that. For us, you have to play every ball according to your preferences. Obviously, here [the boundaries] are short, so you have to support yourself to have a game plan and to stick to it. You also confuse your fields with different field placements and then from your point of view it comes down to how you adapt to this situation.
“You also get into positions in which you are almost in one-day mode. There are gaps in front of the wicket, [you play] a few flat bat shots, you have to change your tactics, but they didn't do that, it fitted a bit into our plan and the ball is softening.
"The length they bowled here today doesn't hit the stumps," he said, comparing the conditions to the 2019 series in England when he fought Broad. "That length meets the stump in England and that is the difference. I was out of shape and Marnus [Labuschagne] did well to leave the ball a good length and we took care of that ourselves that the ball is running. " walking over the tree stumps. We learned that from the gabba. "
"It worries," Thorpe had insisted earlier. "It gives you an option and a way to attack. I don't think you can attack like this all the time because it's physically demanding on your bowlers. They may all be right arm bowlers, but to me they all have too." a slightly different style, we stuck with it well, but today we didn't quite get it.
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"I don't think our plans were that bad. If we had bowled badly we would have gone a lot more all day. It's not a case to feel sorry for ourselves when we come back tomorrow, it's a case of trying, very much to do similar things, and when it is our turn to do things over a long period of time.
"I think you saw in the two players today that they did things well for a long time and you can sometimes take advantage of the last session when you have a slightly more tired attack. It's very important to that "we can make some advances tomorrow."
After losing five World Test Championship points and their collective gaming fees due to a slow overvaluation at the gabba last week, England managed to bowl 89 of the planned 90 overs on day one in Adelaide, despite requiring five overs root bowling negative with the old ball to catch up.
While excess interest rates are likely to remain a problem in a five-man seam attack, Thorpe downplayed the problem. "I think there are bigger things in the world than inflated interest," he said. "You get through as fast as you can, [but] reviews take time to get through, sometimes batsmen aren't ready and minutes are lost during the day's cricket.
"It's just one of those things in Test Cricket. We'd like it to be more perfect, but it's not. We would have liked a couple of overs [under floodlights] with a newer ball, but it's challenging sometimes. Everyone thinks it It's easy to get through 80 overs at the perfect time, but it's not. It's a lot harder [because of] the temperatures, the make-up of your team, and the interruptions that go on all day. "