the close of play on day three<\/a>, at which point Australia were closing in on an unassailable 3-0 series lead, England\u2019s assistant coach Jeetan Patel said Bashir had been sacrificed to prop up a struggling batting lineup. But the tactic has backfired, with Jacks making just six during England\u2019s sub-par first innings of 286 all out and, unable to command a steady line, sitting on overnight match figures of three for 212 from 39 overs.<\/p>\nShoaib Bashir bowls during an England nets session at Adelaide Oval. Photograph: Gareth Copley\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Patel said: \u201cWe felt we did need that extra batting cover. I still believe Bash is our No 1 guy and I think he does a fantastic job for us. Always has. But in these conditions, we are horses-for-courses kind of people.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe look to pick the players that we think are going to affect the game the most. With all four seamers firing and Jacksy backing them up, I think that works. But it probably didn\u2019t play as well as we\u2019d like it today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part of the problem was England were down to just three seamers as Travis Head\u2019s unbeaten 142 gave Australia an overnight lead of 356 runs. Ben Stokes was unable to bowl himself all day, strung out by batting for five hours and later seen walking with a visibly stiff gait as he left the ground.<\/p>\n
Playing down suspicions of an underlying injury here, Patel added: \u201cMy sense is he\u2019s just pretty knackered and he\u2019s taken a lot out of himself to get through this point in the game. All I know is he goes at 100%. If he thinks he can\u2019t do it at 100%, I don\u2019t think he\u2019s going to do it. That\u2019s probably where he\u2019s at: he thought he was a risk, so he didn\u2019t bowl.<\/p>\n
\u201cGuys are hurting. I thought some of the plans we chose today and the way we executed at times was fantastic. But it didn\u2019t quite go our way. We\u2019ve just got to hold the belief.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England have doubled down on Shoaib Bashir\u2019s status as their \u201cNo 1 spinner\u201d despite omitting their two-year project…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-358265","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}