TEST MATCH TALKING POINTS: England have a call to make on Leach

SAM MORSHEAD looks back on day one at the Gabba as Australia took complete control of the first Ashes Test

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England find themselves trailing by 196 runs, and Australia still have three first-innings wickets remaining, after day two at the Gabba. 

The Cricketer looks back at the key talking points from the day's play...

The promise of Wood and Robinson

First, the positives. Because there were some in the first two sessions of the day. 

No, really, there were. While you were sleeping, England’s seamers showed they do have the skill, discipline and consistency to cause Australia problems in Australia.

In particular, Mark Wood and Ollie Robinson stood out - for different reasons.

Wood, the last remaining spear of the raw pace project which England had originally earmarked for this series, hit 94mph in his first over and hurried Australian batsmen throughout.

Used in short, sharp bursts by Root (who wouldn’t dare risk injury to his one genuinely quick bowling option at the start of a five-match series in Australia), Wood extracted bounce from the Gabba track but didn’t get carried away by the idea of chucking it in short.

Instead he mixed his lengths to excellent effect, in the process ensuring that Australia’s batsmen did not get set against him. Warner might have made 94 but he looked scratchy against the Durham bowler across his innings, was regularly beaten by the pace, and was struck on the body more than once. 

Most impressive of all was Wood’s capacity to maintain speeds above 90mph through many of his 20 overs in the day. 

It was dangerous, at times ferocious, and certainly challenging for Australia’s batsmen. 

Robinson, meanwhile, mixed nagging lengths with his natural height while extracting a little lateral movement to cause problems throughout.

He picked up three wickets - Marcus Harris, Warner and Cameron Green - and beat the bat on enough occasions to merit a scrapbook. 

By the middle of the final session, he was evidently feeling the strain of the effort he had put in, but that should not detract from a very fine introduction to Ashes cricket. 

Robinson is the real deal. England fans should be excited by what he can offer this team in years to come. 

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Ollie Robinson enjoyed a good day for England (Chris Hyde/Getty Images)

The what ifs and the fine margins

It was a day of half-chances and near misses for England, yet at the end of it they find themselves just as far adrift as if they had never had a sniff. 

The evening session might have degenerated into a messy froth of Aussie tubthumping and English angst but in the hours which preceded it, the visitors did have opportunities to close the gap.

The morning session was littered with nearlys and maybes, and the afternoon carried promise, before it all went to pot late on.

David Warner produced among the least convincing contributions of note in his Test career.

He was given lifelines of one sort or another on 17 (bowled by a Ben Stokes no ball), 48 (a routine catch dropped at second slip by Rory Burns) and 60 (Haseeb Hameed missing a nailed-on run out from close range.

Furthermore, he did not look assured against the pace of Wood, nor the guile of Robinson, and came very close to offering up chances to Stokes at cover and to the slip cordon on more than one occasion. 

Marnus Labuschagne, while much more composed than Warner, also only avoided being caught by Ollie Pope at short fine leg and by Joe Root at first slip by a matter of inches. 

Had any one of those five moments gone differently, maybe England could have held on to Australia’s coat-tails for a little longer. 

The trouble is, those small differences add up. And a thousand fine margins soon become a chasm.

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Haseeb Hameed misses a run out chance (Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)

Leach’s difficult day

Australia’s approach to Jack Leach on the second day of this Ashes series will have left England’s management with some serious pondering to do.

Leach was included in this England XI at the expense of Stuart Broad, as the tourists chose to balance out the side with left-arm spin rather than employ a five-pronged, right-arm seam attack.

It was always going to be a tough gig for the Somerset man, even before his colleagues in the batting department left him with little by way of a run cushion to play with.

That David Warner was then given multiple lives made it that much harder, and then Leach had to contend with an evidently pre-determined plan to try to smack him out of the attack from his very first ball.

Treating Leach with the same sort of respect that they might show grass cuttings lodged in their spikes, Warner, Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith immediately switched into limited-overs mode, routinely coming down the track and aiming England’s frontline spinner over the infield and, on more than one occasion, over the boundary rope. 

His first three overs went for 31 and Root was compelled to pull him out before lunch. 

When he returned, the plan from Australia was still the same - an uncamouflaged, unsubtle attempt to bully and intimidate.

Leach has faced his own fair share of trying situations during his career - and in life in general. This is a man who has fought sepsis, and feared for his life, after all. He is no pushover.

But against Australia’s many left-handers, on a pitch which was never likely to offer a great deal, and with the Aussies taking the attack-dog approach to batting on day two of a Test match, he didn’t so much leak runs as let the entire bathtub fall through the ceiling - his innings figures: 1 for 95 from 11 overs.

England have been criticised on multiple occasions for opting for all-seam bowling line-ups during the tenure of head coach Chris Silverwood, but in Australia if a spinner is neither causing problems to batsmen nor tying down an end and implementing some control on the run rate, their usefulness will always be called into question.

When they are being used as a sacrificial lamb, they are no longer useful.

Struggling as an English spinner in Australia is not a problem unique to Leach: it has happened to just about all of them, with the exception of Graeme Swann, over the past 10 years. 

It is why a Broad for Leach straight swap under the lights in Adelaide may make sense, and why England’s decision not to call up a wristspinner to their Ashes squad doesn’t.

In fact, just down the road at the Ian Healy Oval, the two spinners with something “a bit different” in their arsenals - Matt Parkinson and Mason Crane - didn’t even get a spot in the England Lions XI for the game against Australia A.

Root and Silverwood will obviously see how Leach goes in the second innings here - if indeed England get to bowl a second time - but a very familiar conundrum faces them. 

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Jack Leach claimed the wicket of Marnus Labuschagne but struggled (Patrick Hamilton/AFP via Getty Images)

Injury worries?

Ben Stokes seemed to spend much of the second half of the day limping.

Ollie Robinson looked flushed to the point of exhaustion when he left the field for 15 minutes in the evening session. 

England’s bowlers put in the hard yards on Thursday, but it was a worry to see the impact it had on them physically.

While management insisted that Stokes was okay after appearing to jar his knee fielding the ball in the morning session, his spells later in the day - a slightly stilted run-up, a little down on pace, and far from his best - suggested something was not quite right. 

Robinson, meanwhile, had just about recovered by the time he got around to doing post-match media duties but his pace dropped into the low 70s in the third session, rendering him a shadow of the threat he had been earlier in the day.

This is a long tour, with modest preparation - and that is being kind. England will know injuries are a risk. How they manage the physical output of the players will play a major part in keeping the series competitive. 

I do declare, what a ridiculous idea

By the end of the day, discussion had already started about when or if Australia would declare.

Why on earth would Pat Cummins choose to do that?

We’re two days into the game, the forecast has improved considerably, Australia are so far in front that, had this been a political race, England would be in pretty serious danger of losing their electoral deposit, and Australia can inflict a pretty major psychological blow.

Let Travis Head bat, and let him bat some more. Make the lead so big that the scorers can write “an innings and” in the result column even before England go out to bat again. 

Our coverage of the Ashes is brought to you in association with Cricket 22

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