England's discipline is far better than Australia's

After spending the field watching England's top order batsmen send the cricket ball to all parts of the field, many experts are critiquing the Australian bowling attack's poor performance. In a previous article at Sports Analytics, we identified how the Australian bowling attack needed to bowl to the English batsmen and have a definitive plan. Whilst the Australian's have not adhered to this plan in the slightest, at Sports Analytics Inc we thought we could not provide analytics of the Australian bowling attack without doing the same for the Australian batsmen. 


Despite the Ashes series only being 1 and half tests old, we've seen some big technical deficiencies in many of the Australian batsmen, which has further placed enormous pressure on the Australian bowlers because on flat wickets, the bowlers have not had enough runs to defend. 


The Australian batsmen continually fall to the full pitched swinging ball early in an innings. Why is this you might ask? The major problem in this instance is for so long Australian batsmen have developed a mind frame of coming in and playing aggressive from ball one. This mindset has worked wonders for Ricky Ponting and his old team mates of Matthew Hayden, Justin Langer and co. However opposing attacks these days have enhanced the quality of their deliveries. 


The Australian batsmen need to understand that when you enter the arena as a batsmen the first thing you must do is get your eye in. Play conservatively and pay utmost respect to the bowler until you work out the pitch conditions, the bowling speed, the movement. Far too many times in the past 12-18 months, Ponting, Clarke, Katich, and Watson to a lesser extent, attempt to play heavy handed shots too early in an innings, which is their ultimate downfall. This is Test Match cricket that goes for 5 long days. One might ask what is the hurry initially? Well there should not be one, until the batsmen is 'in' as they say. 


Australian coach Tim Neilson should instigate a rule to his top order batsmen that for the first 6 overs minimum, each batsmen must play with a straight bat, ultra defensive nature and protect his stumps. Attacking on the first ball to drive through covers to a swinging delivery is just tempting fate too often, especially when the likes of Ponting and Clarke are attempting these shots on the run. 


At Sports Analytics Inc, we believe Punter and his cronies could be best served looking at tape of the English batsmen early in their innings and notice the likes of Cook, Trott and co. are getting themselves in and playing only shots against the bad balls early on, to acclimatise to the conditions before setting themselves for a big innings. 


The game of cricket is a holistic, cause and and effect game. These failures with the bat, have only compounded Australia's inability to bowl out the English because the Aussie batsmen have just not occupied the crease long enough when the pitch conditions are at their finest. 

Ponting surrendering his wicket to Anderson