As Australia claimed a famous win at Edgbaston in the first Test match of the 2023 Ashes, several key tactical decisions at the end of the innings played a crucial role in the outcome of the match.

With the match having swung both ways more times than could be counted throughout the day’s play, finally a Harry Brook misfield gave Pat Cummins four and Australia the victory. It was another stunning scintillating finish in England’s new era, and the second close end they’ve been on the wrong side of in a row. Predictably, there’s plenty to unpick from the deciding moments of the match.

Australia flip the switch right at the death

For most of the fourth innings, Australia looked to meet England’s blunt force approach with an attritional schooling. Usman Khawaja and Scott Boland played out 27 dot balls during the first five overs of play, making Joe Root’s first-ball reverse scoop yesterday look like some bizarre Mario Kart malfunction. It might’ve worked for a while as Khawaja and Cameron Green’s partnership extended, and the balance began to tip slightly in their favour. But as good as England have been with the bat in a chase over the last year, their bowlers have been ruthless on their final-day hunts. On every occasion they’d been asked under Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum before today, they found ten wickets every time.

If Australia had continued blocking after Khawaja had finally given England a sniff, they would have fallen short. Their biggest oversight to that point was allowing Joe Root to bowl his first 14 overs for 29 runs. Aside from the wickets he took, the runs he dried up nearly forced them into a hole. But in his 15th over, Pat Cummins finally played the Uno-reverse on England, smashing two sixes and taking almost a fifth of the required runs off Australia’s target as he did so.

Australia had looked reactive for most of the game, and England had dominated the pace of play. For the first time in that hour, Cummins was the one in charge. It could have gone wrong at any point, as it could for England, but today it didn’t and had he and Lyon sat in, they probably would have got out. For Cummins, the risk vs reward element was near null and void. There was more risk in not taking the game on than in attacking it. It was precisely because he, and, to the extent he could, Lyon upped the tempo when they did that Australia got their famous victory today.

The only thing to be said against it is, if they had decided to block it out, a draw may have hurt England just as much as the loss, had they succeeded. England pride themselves on being able to force a result regardless of the situation. As Stokes has famously parrotted, they’d rather lose trying to win than settle for a draw. Nevertheless, Australia leave Birmingham with a 1-0 lead, and whichever way you look at it, that late-on hitting is a large part of what got them there.

Was England’s refusal to take the new ball their undoing?

TV pundits were crying out for England to take the new ball as Australia crept closer to their target. However, at the time it became available, with Australia still needing 54 and Carey still at the crease, it’s not hard to see why they didn’t. In that over, Root took out Carey when he looked to take him on. In the previous over he had bowled, he’d looked like getting Cummins out twice, once beating his edge and once dropping a very tough chance sent back to him. Up to that point, Australia had allowed him to bowl too many overs unchallenged.

When Cummins decided to hit him out of the attack, however, there was less justification. Tailenders are tailenders, and if you gave Cummins or Lyon a choice of who they’d want to face, an uncomfortable spell of Stuart Broad and James Anderson class with a new cherry or a few loopy flighters from Root, they’d always take the latter. The argument Stokes will stick to is that the new ball would have brought more runs. After that over from Root in particular, runs weren’t something England had to play with. The bumpers sent down at the other end also made Cummins and Lyon look uncomfortable when they weren’t hitting them for four. Nevertheless, when they finally did take the new ball, several deliveries came within a whisper of taking an outside edge. Maybe with another over or two, they just might have found it. As ever, we will never know.

No new ball for Anderson after his disappointing returns

When England took the new ball in that last half-hour, as on day one, it wasn’t given to Anderson. It’s a worrying sight that England’s greatest-ever seamer wasn’t trusted to get the job done at the crunch point. Although he did bowl some good balls throughout the match – the one to get Carey in the first innings springs to mind – he looked innocuous by his own elite standards. In both innings he bowled the least of England’s three main seamers, with his economy rate uncharacteristically floating well above three an over in the second. Given their records previously in the match, it’s fair that Robinson and Broad were given the responsibility at the end.

Anderson came into this Test having not played against Ireland off the back of a niggle he picked up in the County Championship. Regardless of punditry over whether he should’ve played more or less cricket in preparation for the series, of all England’s bowlers, he would have been the last predicted to be their least effective on home soil against Australia.

Mark Wood will surely come into the side at some point in the series, potentially for the next match at Lord’s. Before this Test, most would have picked Broad as the one to leave out. Now, on evidence, you would have to go with Anderson. But before he’s subbed out, it might be worth checking his record at Lord’s, I’ve heard he’s pretty good there.

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