Ahead of the Ashes, speaking exclusively with BOYLE Sports former English Cricketer Mark Butcher has offered his perspective on what the English team can expect from the Australian crowd and argues the role of "sledging" is overplayed in the Ashes.
Butcher gives his thoughts on "Bazball" and offers his insight into how it could be tapered by the English ahead of the the upcoming Ashes Series.
The Englishman has leaned into his past with the England cricket team and what series preparation will look like, his thoughts on player criticism, his Players To Watch for the Ashes Series and what way he could see it ending!
Australian Crowd
“Hostile” Home Crowd?
I used to hide away at slip, or at least be inside the circle, so I didn't get the worst of it. It's brutal! You’ve got two contrasting sets of supporters - the Barmy Army will be out there and they will drink, sing songs and have a great time, whether they win or lose. That’s the ironic thing, back in the day, when we couldn't win a Test, let alone win a series down there.
It’s based around humour and having the best time, no matter what happens on the field and getting behind the England team. Where the Australian crowds are not - it’s just personal abuse and swearing! The amount of humour involved is very, very much limited, and it's basically calling everybody a c***, every day until the whole thing's over.
It’s part of what makes it great - that’s what makes being involved in these series just unlike anything else, it’s a battle from start to finish. But it’s also the best fun you’ll have as a cricketer, and I’m sure the Australian players feel the same when they come over here.
Sedging
Sedging Is Overplayed!
Sledging is overplayed like you wouldn't believe. There are always flash points - you have Jimmy Anderson and Mitchell Johnson sledging last time, and Michael Clarke wanted to break Jimmy's arm. Those things happen, but unbelievably rarely!
A lot of the time, particularly in the series that I was involved in, it was more mental stuff. Warnie (Shane Warne) would be the master of that, and they would pressurise you not with sledging or personal abuse, but by talking about your technique. I go and see my mates play up the road, and the sledging on a Saturday afternoon in club cricket is 100 times worse than anything you ever get in a professional game.
Sleddging won’t bother either team! Ben Stokes’ charisma and his strength as a leader will see the England team stand up as one against any sort of abuse that comes their way from the Australian side. They will be very, very, very tight - it will be one in, all in, should anything happen or go off out there in the middle.
Bazball
Does ‘Bazball’ Wind-Up The Australians?
Yes, ‘Bazball’ winds them up without a doubt! I kind of understand why, because if you remember back to the 90s and 2000s, ‘Bazball’ was what Australia did. That could very much play in our favour, but my my feeling is, and they did it in the 2023 Ashes, would be that the Australians go: ‘We know that you're more than likely to take an aggressive or even reckless option from time to time, so we’ll just sit back and let you do it.
Australia, in terms of their hard-nosed attitude to winning Ashes series, they're not bothered whether or not it looks pretty, or whether or not the scoring rates are high enough - the results are the only thing that matters.
If England don't temper that and be smart and play situations as opposed to playing ‘Bazball,’ then I think Australia will make life very, very difficult for us just by virtue of the fact that they'll be smart around how they deal with what our tactics might be.
Tempering “Bazball” Approach
I think England will temper their approach. England showed glimpses of doing that in the India series, but I'll go back to the second test at Edgbaston (against India), which we were given a lifeline, really, after India's declaration.
The declaration was so late, then it rained on the fifth morning, and they only had about 70 overs to draw the Test and should have done it, and didn't. The Indian captain realised that England want to score and put bat to ball, which means that they actually don't have to leave themselves plenty of time in order to win the game. They can leave themselves a tiny amount of time and still win it because England will not be able to come out and be defensively good enough.
And then you go to the last Test match at the Oval, where, fair enough, England played unbelievably well on that final two days in order to give themselves a chance of winning it. But when they really had India on their knees, Brook plays that mad shot and loses his bat and gets out, Root then follows him. Then, on that final morning when you only need 30, came out and batted like their arses were on fire and ended up losing the game - there was a series to be won, and they didn’t quite have the know-how to go out there and nail it down.
That’ll be something that Australia will play on for sure. If they get themselves in positions of strength, or even if they don’t - the point is that England can find ways of being in positions of strength and still not quite nail it down.
England Cricket Team
Series Preparation
I don’t think it’s ideal having just one warm-up match; however, I would point out that England have won twice in Australia since 1986. No matter what the preparations have been, the results have pretty much always been the same. They probably could have played against an Australian opposition, giving themselves one more warm-up game and getting themselves into the battle.
I didn't really pay much attention to what happened in warm-up games because it wasn't real. Those games were just a glorified net session for what was coming up afterwards.
I wouldn't be able to say they've got it completely wrong because I didn't hold much store in those games anyway. I can completely see the use in them for some players; some batters like to spend long, long periods of time in the middle as they warm up for a Test match.
Some bowlers need extra mileage in their legs in order to be ready for a Test match, but I'm happy to go with how McCullum, Stokes and Key have decided on it, because at the end of the day, it doesn't make any damn difference. As I've said before, plenty of teams have done months of months of preparation in terms of State games and all the rest of it and got whacked anyhow, so it doesn't make a lot of difference.
Former Player Criticism
Facing criticism from former players is part of the gig the fact that Stokes has decided to rise to it and have a bit of a pop back is interesting, but that's his character anyway. You'd expect him to stand up for his own team and stand up for the decisions that they've made and live and die by that.
The interesting thing is that in my line of work, you have to be able to be honest in terms of what your opinions are, but always look at it from the point of view that there's a constructive point to what you're saying. You don't just have a pop at people for no particular reason, at least.
That's just part and parcel of it - when pundits and people are asked questions they're meant for the public. And if there's a team that gets under your skin, then that perhaps is more your problem than it is anybody else's. But I honestly wouldn't pay too much attention to it.
Players To Watch
The Secret Weapons
Josh Tongue - if England decide to go with him, he is somebody Australia won't have seen a great deal of. He could be expensive, but whichever other three seamers they have or the other two, including Ben Stokes, they should be able to keep things tidy enough as well as pose a wicket-taking threat. Tongue can look like he's bowling all over the place and then suddenly knock three or four over in no time. He’s a weapon that England would be very wise to use in Australia because wickets can be hard to come by down there. The conditions we're hearing about have been very different down there the last two or three years in terms of being bowler-friendly. But if you have a guy who bowls wicket-taking deliveries and he cleans up the tail for fun, then you'd want him in your team.
I remember the amount of times I played tests in Australia, where we had moments in both of those series where there was an opportunity to win a test that we eventually lost. And the reason we lost them was because you'd have them five down for nothing, and then you couldn't get rid of the last five, Gilchrist would come in at 7, and the tail would wag and and before you knew it, the game was out of control. But if you've got a guy like Josh Tongue who can who can clean that up as fast as possible and back up the good work that your new ball bowlers can do in terms of taking early wickets, then you've got a massive chance.
He’s somebody that is very much a secret weapon, not only from an England point of view, because they might not think that he should start, and he might not. But from an Australian point of view, they haven't seen him and he's very dangerous. My lineup would be, batting-wise wise set in stone - Crawley and Duckett, Pope at 3, Root at 4, Brook at 5, Stokes at six. Then you'd go Smith at 7, Bethell or Jacks at 8 and Atkinson, Archer and Tongue.
From an Australian point of view, there aren't really any secrets with them; we’ve seen them forever. Travis Head could be dangerous in terms of the batting - you've got Brook and Head in the middle order for each team who are extraordinary strike makers. If you've got a situation in these first two games where runs are very much at a premium, if either of those two guys have a good hour and a half, two hours scoring at the rates that they do could be the difference between winning or losing the Test match.
Travis Head is somebody that has been a real pain for England in the recent past, and so he's going to be very dangerous.
Series Prediction
Series Prediction
If England go down in the first Test match, it could be trouble. But if England win it, even though Australia have had a pretty good record in the past of bouncing back. They did that last year after they disastrously lost to India in Perth and then turned it around and ended up winning that series.
But, if England get off to a good start and quieten down all the external noise and a couple of their batters put in big performances and the bowlers do what we think they can do, they’ve got a chance. The big thing is that the Australian public have heard a lot about this bowling attack, but if Archer, Atkinson, Tongue, Stokes and co can put the jitters up the Australian top order, then they’ll know.
There's talk that Usman Khawaja’s eyes have gone, and they've got a new opening bat potentially in Jake Weatherald. England have a really big chance of doing something extra special. But, if England go down in the first Test match, then all the opposite is true. I'm not giving you a prediction, but it's going to be well worth staying up watching because it should be a lot of fun!
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