Tests against Australia have traditionally been the acid test for England batsmen, but Jonathan Trott has so far bucked that trend, with two second-innings centuries in his only two matches
Andrew Miller in Adelaide01-Dec-2010Tests against Australia have traditionally been the acid test for England batsmen, but Jonathan Trott’s brief flirtation with Ashes cricket has so far bucked that trend, with two second-innings centuries in his only two appearances, at The Oval in 2009 and most recently at the Gabba last week.But if any cricketer in the England team knows what it takes to begin again from scratch in Adelaide this week, it is Trott, whose unflappable desire to pile up runs irrespective of circumstance has made him indispensable at first drop in England’s order. His plan for dealing with Australia’s bowlers for the rest of the series is simple: “We don’t want to give them a sniff”.Coming into the first Test, Trott was the only member of England’s batting unit not to have made a half-century in any of the three warm-up fixtures in Perth, Adelaide and Hobart, but having shown promising signs of form during his first-innings 29, he made it count second-time around to bat England to safety with a massive unbeaten 329-run stand with Alastair Cook.”Leading up to the Test match I felt in good nick but I hadn’t been able to kick on and get a big score, so I was very pleased to contribute to an excellent fightback that was set up by Staussy and Cooky,” Trott said. “I’ve been pretty fortunate to do pretty well [against Australia], but individually and as a team things can change pretty quickly.”Trott’s unbeaten 135 has given him a share in two triple-century stands in consecutive Test matches, following his record eighth-wicket 332-run with Stuart Broad against Pakistan at Lord’s back in August. By his own admission the conditions in Brisbane were benign by the final day, having assisted the bowlers on both sides early in the match, but the powers of concentration he displayed during his six-hour stay with Cook were not to be under-estimated.”The wicket flattened out and that’s what Test cricket is about, it’s about hard yards,” said Trott. “Sometimes you get on wickets as a batter that are tricky to bat on, so it evens itself out. At the Gabba it probably wasn’t what you want as an ideal Test wicket, but you get on with what you’re given, and we did that pretty well. To be 200 behind wasn’t ideal in the first Test of the Ashes, but we showed great character in the way we were able to get back in the game.”With unseasonal rain interrupting preparations ahead of the second Test, there is a slim chance that the Adelaide wicket will prove to be more sporting than the one at the Gabba. However, the ground’s new curator, Damian Hough, has promised a “traditional” pitch for his first match in charge, which implies it will be slow and full of runs, with some assistance for spin bowlers late in the game. Much as was the case on England’s last visit four years ago, in fact, when Shane Warne spun them to a standstill on a shocking final day, despite the teams each registering 500-plus totals in the first innings.Trott is the only member of England’s top six who missed that fixture, but he admitted that the memories, although ancient history as far as the current squad is concerned, still serve as a cautionary tale – not least on the final day of the Brisbane Test, when the satisfaction at rescuing the team from a sticky first-innings situation was tempered by the knowledge that their lead going into the fifth day – 88, with nine wickets intact – was actually worse than had been the case in that fateful Adelaide match.”The way we approached batting on the last day [in Brisbane], obviously we were only 90 ahead, and I was speaking to Alastair, and he said they were only half of that ahead in this game [Adelaide],” he said. “So we were making sure that our mindset was to bat for each hour, then reassess. It was normal Test match batting. We don’t get ahead of ourselves, we just do what we do well as a pair, and as a unit. But I don’t think the guys will be worried about four years ago. It was in the past and we’re looking to come to Adelaide and win.”England’s overall approach to the series has been as measured as Trott’s own approach to batting. The desire appears to be to take the series one ball at a time, let alone one Test at a time, and extraneous issues such as the form of Mitchell Johnson or the likely make-up of Australia’s attack, with Doug Bollinger and Ryan Harris both competing hard for inclusion, are not being allowed to impact on the team’s overall planning.”When you’re batting as a pair you don’t worry about outside things that are going on,” said Trott. “The fact we could bat for a long length of time is very pleasing, and that’s our job, to get their bowlers into their third and fourth spells, and get ourselves big scores. We don’t want to give them a sniff.”Johnson most certainly wasn’t given a sniff in the first Test. He went wicketless for the first time in his career, with England frustrating him with their disciplined refusal to flirt outside off stump. “I think that’s generally the idea in Test cricket,” said Trott. “You don’t want to be playing where you don’t need to be. There’s no huge urgency on run-rate, and although it’s good to have a positive mindset, you want to be playing in your areas of strength, where you know you can score and are confident.”Trott may have played his part in finishing the first Test on a high, but having being bowled out for 260 on the first day of the match, he’s under no illusions that improvements are required from England’s batting if they are to make good on any psychological ascendancy that may exist. “The one thing we look at in Brisbane is our first innings,” he said. We didn’t get as many as we’d have liked, because if we’d got a big score we’d have put pressure on them. As a batting unit, first-innings runs in Australia are very important. Hopefully it’s in this game.”