NEW Zealand skipper Brendon McCullum has taken the attack to David Warner in his column for the Daily Mail, slamming the opener for not acknowledging Joe Root’s century.
“David Warner is a fine player, but I was disappointed to see some of the petulance on show in Cardiff. When Joe Root got his hundred, Warner just stood there with his arms folded. There was no applause,” McCullum said.
“Some of the great Australian players – guys like Shane Warne, Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist, Mike Hussey – were hard customers on the field. But if you had success against them, they’d go out of their way to acknowledge it,” McCullum said.
“I understand the way Warner’s trying to play, but he needs to show more respect. He might look back on his career and have a few regrets about the way he carries on. The danger is that people won’t think about his cricket as much as they should.”
Warner wasn’t just copping it from McCullum, with The Sun running the rather creative headline ‘Shane Warne? No it’s shame, Warne’, for a story in which the Australian opener was criticised for the timing of his dismissal on day four in Cardiff.
“The consensus of opinion was that Warner had gone after Moeen because he thought he was Joe Root (fake beard, nightclub, Birmingham, altercation),” Steven Howard wrote in The Sun.
“Then Moeen returned to the fray with one over to go before lunch. Warner, though, merely had to see out the over. But his mind was obviously on other things and not necessarily the lunchtime cold cuts.
“He was planning ahead, thinking about the afternoon session and how best to prepare for it. Momentarily, his concentration went.
“As Moeen sent down his third delivery, Warner shuffled across his crease anticipating spin that never came as the ball held straight and was out lbw.
“It was the moment the Aussies lost the match.”
Legendary former all-rounder Ian Botham used his column in The Mirror to explain just how England now has nothing to fear from this Australian side.
“There has been a bit of chat from Aussie captain Michael Clarke and their coach Darren Lehmann about the pitch in Cardiff, which shows how much England have rocked them,” Botham wrote.
“I think England simply out-bowled Australia and I don’t see why they would be worried about any grass or extra pace in the pitch at Lord’s this week. I actually believe any assistance will help England’s bowlers more than Australia’s and when it comes to pace in the pitch I think the home batsmen will be just as happy with that.
“England won’t be worried about what the Aussie bowlers might do, they have no fear, and in any case it is the tourists who have got the worries.”
“It was interesting to see the comments afterwards from their coach Darren Lehmann, who said he wanted some pace and bounce in the pitches. But what was he expecting? When you play away from home in international cricket, you have to adapt to conditions: Australian pitches have more life in them, Indian pitches help the spinners. It’s the beauty of international cricket.
“It’s no secret on the international circuit that they’re less comfortable when the pitches are on the slow side. And they’d be mad to expect England to accommodate them.”
Meanwhile, Brisbane’s favourite Pom Stuart Broad revealed at a Hardy’s Wine event that Australia’s sledging brings the best out of him.
“I grew up on Ashes cricket. I like the battle of it I suppose. My stats are a bit better against Australia than my career stats, which is quite rare. I don’t know what it is, I just enjoy it. The Aussies will always challenge you in different ways.
“They like to have a bit of banter with you, which maybe steels me up a bit and gets me into a battle. You always want to test yourself against the best and they’re the best team around. It makes me tick,” he said.
Despite England comprehensively winning the match by 169 runs, Broad maintained that his side were lucky in some aspects.
“We won the toss, Joe Root got dropped, and a few decisions went our way,” Broad said. “We’re well aware we had a bit of the rub of the green. That happens in cricket, and it might not be the same this week. We will have to work hard to get a win.”
Australian writer Gideon Haigh focused his attention on Michael Clarke for a column in The Times.
Haigh described how a man he had observed in close quarters appeared to be feeling the pinch even before the series had started.
“He appears ever more a man apart, still setting his leg gullies and short mid-wickets, but from a remove, inscrutable at slip behind his opaque, space-age shades,” Haigh wrote.
“Off the field, he gives the impression of a man rather worn down. At the pre-match press conferences in Cardiff, his tone was cold and mechanical.”
The Telegraph’s Jonathan Liew also focused on Clarke, breaking down the Australian skipper’s post-Test press conference.
Following a big loss in the first Test, Clarke revealed his frustration at the amounts of his starts his batsmen had thrown away.
“The hardest part about batting is getting to 20 or 30. Once you get there, you’ve got to have that hunger inside you to want to go on and make a big score,” Clarke said.
“‘Hunger’ is one of Clarke’s favourite words to use in interviews. For Clarke, it is hunger that has kept him on the field when his back is screaming in pain, which it very often is. It is hunger that kept him going through a summer blotted by the death of Phillip Hughes, all the way through to a World Cup victory that he later dedicated to his friend. And in Clarke’s words, there was a tacit admission that he was not seeing enough hunger around him,” wrote Liew.
In his column for the Guardian, Jason Gillespie opined that Australia lost the Test by failing to bowl to their plans.
“The message to Australia, who I know will look to right a few wrongs at Lord’s, is to keep faith with the bowling plans and not lose patience. Because that is where the first Test in Cardiff was won and lost,” Gillespie wrote.
He believes this failure cost Australia dearly against Joe Root.
“Don’t be fooled into thinking Australia underestimated him going into this series on the basis of what happened 18 months ago. I know for a fact that they rate Root incredibly highly. But as an overall observation, I thought they were too quick to abort Plan A – top of off stump or just around – when they strayed and went for a couple of boundaries. They didn’t realise that it wasn’t the plan that was the issue but the execution.”
