Former Australian Test opener Chris Rogers is confused whether England captain Joe Root is giving his fast bowlers the right inputs as they continue to disappoint in the Ashes, currently underway.
Following their nine-wicket loss in the opening Test at The Gabba, the tourists lost the second Test at the Adelaide Oval on Monday, with the England pace battery, comprising James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Ollie Robinson, Chris Woakes, and Ben Stokes, ‘guilty’ of bowling short in the first innings.
Australia played patiently, seeing through the tourists’ strategy and notching up an imposing 473/9 declared, which laid the foundation for their 275-run victory on Monday to go 2-0 up in the series.
“The thing that stood out to me in what Joe Root said was that they bowled too short and then you think, ‘Hang on, you set the fields, they bowl to your fields and that’s why they bowled so short’,” Rogers said on SEN Test Cricket on Tuesday.
“If he (Root) doesn’t recognize that, I think they have some real issues,” added the 44-year-old Rogers, who played 25 Tests, scoring over 2000 runs.
During the post-match press conference, Root suggested his bowlers were bowling “too short”, hardly threatening the Australian batters’ stumps. Root added that it would have been better had the quicks pitched the ball up.
“When we look at the ball in hand, in particular, I don’t think we bowled the right length. If we’re being brutally honest we need to bowl fuller, and as soon as we did in the second innings we created so many chances, we made it very hard work (for Australia),” Root said after the big defeat.
“We just need to do that more, we need to be a bit braver, get the ball up there a bit further, because when we do we’re going to create chances and we’re going to move life difficult. So that’s one of the frustrating things, it’s something we did four years ago and we got it wrong and we didn’t learn from it,” Root added.