England has made four massive changes to the side for the Melbourne Boxing Day Ashes Test against Australia, with Stuart Broad a major name missing out.
Follow Us
England cricket has made wholesome changes for the third Ashes Test in Melbourne as they aim to stay alive in the series. The visitors, who lost the Brisbane and Adelaide Test by nine wickets and 275 runs respectively, need to either draw or win the third Ashes Test in order to stay alive. England has dropped Ollie Pope, Rory Burns, Chris Woakes, and Stuart Broad for the Melbourne Test. In their place, Jonny Bairstow, Jack Leach, Zak Crawley, and Mark Wood are on the side.
All four players have endured a miserable time in Australia. Pope and Burns have scored just 48 and 51 runs respectively in the whole tour. Burns was out the first ball in the 2021/22 Ashes contest in Brisbane and since then, he has been under the pump. When it comes to the bowlers, Chris Woakes and Stuart Broad have also struggled. Woakes averages 54 with the ball away while Broad took only two wickets in the Pink Ball Test.
The decision to leave out Stuart Broad is a bit surprising as England continues to make some questionable decisions. On a green top in Brisbane, they left out Broad and Anderson as they suffered. Wood, who bowled brilliantly in Brisbane, was surprisingly left out of the Adelaide Test. With the Adelaide wicket taking spin, the omission of Jack Leach was also surprising. The left-arm spinner, who was taken to the cleaners in the Brisbane Test, will be aiming to get some purchase from the Melbourne wicket.
Read | Ashes News 2021: Joe Root rues England’s repeated mistake of four years
Over the last few years, Melbourne’s reputation as a bowler’s graveyard has intensified. England escaped the 0-5 whitewash in 2017/18 only because the Melbourne wicket was a featherbed. The poor performance of the Melbourne wicket saw it getting a ‘poor’ rating. In the last three years, Australia has lost two out of the last three Tests at the MCG. Both losses came against India while the 2019 win was against New Zealand.
Root will be aiming to break the captaincy jinx as well as the player jinx in Australia. He has not won a single game as captain or player during his playing days in Australia. At the MCG, Root will be aiming to overhaul Mohammad Yousuf’s record of 1788 runs in the calendar year which is a record he achieved in 2006. Root is currently 159 runs away. The England skipper has not scored a century in Australia and he will be eager to end the year on a high.
Haseeb Hameed, Zak Crawley, Dawid Malan, Joe Root (c), Ben Stokes, Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler (wk), Mark Wood, Ollie Robinson, Jack Leach, James Anderson
