This team refuse on a point of principle to rein themselves in but latest batting collapse lays bare glaring weaknesses
It is the UK that is living through a cold snap, but in balmy Perth they were playing in a snow globe. The scenery was static, solid, but everything else was constantly getting shaken up, bits flying in unpredictable directions. The crowd roared, commentators gibbered, the glitter never settled.
Unlike the first day England were not batting at the start, though they were not long delayed. At which point a pattern quickly emerged, one that almost perfectly repeated that established on the previous day, while also being completely different. The bowler who was useless was good, the marginal, unconvincing snickometer-based review that was not out was now given. Some things were both precisely the same (Australia’s tactics against England’s tail, how the tail reacted to Australia’s tactics) and also, at the same time, completely the opposite (the outcome).
It is good, in these awkward, perplexing circumstances, to have at least one thing you can rely on, and unfortunately for England that thing has been Zak Crawley. It was Australia who came into the game with questions over their opening partnership, questions they neatly if temporarily sidestepped by playing two different opening partnerships neither of which was their actual opening partnership, and one of which contained the person who would win the match in a couple of hours of wildly incongruous, completely irresistible genius.
