In stark contrast to England’s preparation, all of Australia’s likely first Ashes Test XI will have a Sheffield Shield tune up after Travis Head prioritised red-ball preparation over the Twenty20 series against India.
Head, who faced just 89 balls across five white-ball internationals against India, has withdrawn from the final two matches of the T20 series to play in South Australia’s next Shield match against Tasmania.
Head joins Steve Smith, Josh Hazlewood, Mitch Starc, Nathan Lyon, Cameron Green, Usman Khawaja, Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Beau Webster and Marnus Labuschagne, who are all expected to feature in the Shield round.
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Reserve quicks Brendan Doggett, Sean Abbott and Michael Neser are also all expected to play with the squad for the first Test against England, starting November 21 in Perth, to be confirmed this week.
It’s a similar Test build-up for Head to last summer. The left-hander played just one match of Shield before being the dynamite leading run-scorer across the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series against India.
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Travis Head has withdrawn from the Twenty20 series to focus on the Ashes. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake/Getty ImagesSource: Getty Images
Australia’s focused preparation comes as England endured a horrific whitewash by New Zealand in a three-match One-Day International series.
Most of England’s Test batters played in that series, including Jamie Smith, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jacob Bethell, and produced record-low numbers.
Harry Brook was the only English Test star to fire, with an unsupported century in the second match.
But England coach, Brendon McCullum was unconcerned by a run of poor scores from Test mainstays including Ben Duckett and Joe Root declaring they would be “better for the run”.
“They’ve marked centre a few times and gone through the process and I’m sure they’ll be better for it,” he said before leaving New Zealand.
“With the prep that we’ve had with the other Test guys who’ve been here for a while too, we’ll have no excuses come Australia.
“I think when we do come across the trickier conditions in Australia and Test cricket, we have a pretty good understanding of how we’re going to go about it. It doesn’t guarantee us anything but it gives us a level of confidence going into that series.”
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Nonetheless, McCullum did offer a surprising admission about how the batters have fared in anything other than benign conditions.
“I think when we’re confronted with good, flat wickets, we’re a very, very good cricket team. I think we play a high-octane style of cricket and those conditions suit us,” he said. “When the wickets have a little bit in them and they’re a bit more challenging, whether that be spin or seam or swing, we probably can’t quite adapt our tempo quick enough.
“We’ve got some talented players but, unfortunately, our performances at the moment in this form of the game aren’t quite up to scratch and we need to rectify that.”
McCullum added that once the Ashes kick off, England will “have no excuses”.
That is despite the fact that England will play just one red-ball match between now and the first Test – a three-day game against the England Lions at Lilac Hill in Western Australia.
That decision has proven controversial among past English players, such as Sir Ian Botham who said the team will be undercooked.
“We’re going to wander in and have a little game with the ‘A’ team,” Botham said on the Old Boys, New Balls podcast.
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“Not one (state match), which borders on arrogance. You’ve got to give yourself the chance. They are saying we play too much cricket. I don’t think you play enough.
“The conditions are different when you play cricket in Australia — the sun, the heat, the bounce, the crowd, the Aussie players — you’ve got to get used to all that. You’re not playing against the Australian cricket team, you’re playing against Australia – 24.5 million people.”
Former England captain Michael Vaughan has also expressed concerns over how the nation is preparing ahead of the Ashes.
Vaughan wrote in The Telegraph that “what is true in ODIs will be true in Ashes” with England’s batters showing a difficulty in shifting gears when required.
“You have to be able to react when the ball is nipping around a bit, and it is not just, “oh, we’ll dance down and try to hit them off their length”. The better teams will just see through that – you will end up losing four or five quick wickets, and there’s your Test match gone,” he wrote.
“The worry is that Australia will look at what New Zealand have done and think that is the template for how to beat England in the Ashes. Remember that Australian pitches have offered the seamers a lot more in the last few years.”
Meanwhile, Tanveer Sangha was also released from Australia’s T20 squad while Ben Dwarshuis was added for the final two matches.