Even when seemingly killed off, and the England team it left behind is thousands of miles away, preparing for a series against Pakistan, it has still managed to muscle its way into the fallout from Bangladesh’s seismic victory over Australia in Darwin. Talk about main character energy. By definition, that nine-wicket victory for Bangladesh was no fluke.
Najmul Hossain Shanto’s men didn’t jag a tight one but rather dominated their hosts over four days. And in doing so, they also managed to unite Ashes rivals by demonstrating what a golden opportunity England blew against Australia’s greybeards last winter. To say as much back then was to risk being called as deluded as the team itself; to be an enabler of the hubris that underpinned England’s gung-ho approach.
Stuart Broad, for example, was widely lampooned for saying that Australia, though an excellent side, were ageing and as vulnerable as they had been for a long time. But plenty of Australian voices are now making the same point, either directly or by implication. A common refrain has been that, had England batted “sensibly” – ie with the same gimlet-eyed application of Bangladesh in a match-defining 400-plus total amassed over 138 overs – that sorry 4-1 defeat could have been very different.
While England’s bowling has been forgotten here – Bangladesh opted against feeding Travis Head’s cut shot like it was a goose being fattened for foie gras – thoughts certainly do go back to the defining collapses in Perth and Brisbane, when a string of batters hardwired to attack ignored the risk that seemed so obvious. Among them was Harry Brook, whose most recent act in the whites of England was to go down swinging against New Zealand and trigger another wave of chuntering about there being more brains in a pork pie. Brook was following team orders but all people saw was 21 off nine balls and yet another example of Harry-kiri.
In a parallel universe Brook is about to captain England’s Test team for the first time at his home ground of Headingley this week. Instead, England have turned back to Joe Root as the successor to Ben Stokes, with Rob Key saying the vacancy had come “too soon” for Brook and hinting that greater maturity was needed. Perhaps it was too great an ask for Brook to lead across all three formats, or too messy to hive off the T20 captaincy to another player under split coaches.
Of course the unsaid bit here is that nightclub incident in Wellington last November – the spark for the chain reaction that ultimately created the vacancy. Although beyond learning that knocking back hazy pale ales the night before captaining in a one-day international is probably a bad idea, how much does Brook actually need to change his approach? Clearly driving on the up in unfamiliar Perth was not smart from Brook, likewise trying to larrup Mitchell Starc under lights in his first pink-ball Test.
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