England’s Ashes campaign is in disarray and it seems the dressing room can’t agree on how to turn it around.
Joe Root took aim at his seam attack for not bowling at a full enough length in the wake of a humiliating defeat in the second Test.
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“If we’re being brutally honest, we needed to bowl fuller,” he said.
“As soon as we did in that second innings, we created chances.”
Those comments caused quite a stir and while admitting it was a “fair” criticism, teammate James Anderson has now pointed the finger at the batsmen instead.
Writing a column for the UK Telegraph, Anderson hit back at the criticism of England’s bowlers in the wake of Root’s reality check.
“From a bowlers’ point of view you want to be hitting the right lengths all the time,” Anderson wrote.
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“We did our best on the first two days to do that. I thought Australia left well and maybe we could have gone a touch fuller at times but we still created quite a few chances that were not taken.
“We have to be better at assessing it during a game. We can’t just go after the game, ‘We should have bowled fuller’.
“If we are bowling too short, at lunch we need information back saying we need to push our lengths up. We have to be a bit more proactive at that too as a whole group.”
Anderson then went on to put a share of the blame on England’s batsmen, with the Poms guilty of collapsing far too easily in the first two Tests.
“We did not bat well enough on a pitch where the data said it was one of the flattest Adelaide surfaces ever produced and the pink ball did the least it has ever done in a day-night game,” he added.
“Look at the numbers. They show both sides bowled similar lengths. They did not bowl any fuller than us. But it is a case of the difference in techniques of the batters. It must be, because they took 20 wickets and we didn’t.”
Former England fast bowler Steve Harmison said earlier in the week he worried Root’s criticism of his bowlers may have split the dressing room.
“What’s worrying about Root’s comments is that his words directed at the bowlers turns any team meeting into a batsman vs bowlers situation,” Harmison said, speaking on behalf of Genting Casino.
“The bowlers might see Buttler face 200 balls on a fifth day pitch as England only score 230 and 190 and think that’s not good enough and say ‘I won’t let anyone have a go at me like that. You can tell me to pitch it up all you want but you lot have to score runs.’
“That’s when it turns nasty in dressing rooms and all of a sudden fractions come – there’s groups of twos and threes forming – and it tends to be the bowling unit that stays together and has a go at the batsman.”
Mark Wood though dismissed reports of any rift inside the camp, although like Anderson he too pointed out the batting woes were also to blame.
“As a bowling group we can always get better,” he said.
“I just feel like with the batting, as we discussed in the meeting, these heavy collapses we keep having is what is costing us Test matches.
“But it doesn’t feel that it’s a batters v bowlers thing, with all the batters in one corner giving snidey talk about the bowlers, and all the bowlers in the other corner snidey-talking about the batters.
Root also had a scathing assessment for the playing group behind closed doors, described by Mark Wood as a “kick up the bum” and “different from other team meetings I have been involved in” by Anderson.