'They’re taking it to absolute extremes' - Mark Butcher rips apart England batters for falling prey to Australia's short-ball ploy

The Day 2 of the second Test in Ashes 2023 at Lord’s saw Australia come up with a plan to put breaks on England’s aggressive brand of cricket, popularly known as ‘Bazball’. During the second session of the day, England were cruising at 188/1 in 38 overs with Ollie Pope (42) and Ben Duckett (90) at the crease. Seeing England in the driver’s seat, Australian skipper Pat Cummins decided to attack the batters with short-balls strategy and managed to get three wickets in 45 balls.

Pope, Duckett (98) and Root (10) all got out while trying to pull, and found fielders in the deep. Following England’s dramatic collapse, former England cricketer Mark Butcher was unhappy with their approach and said that they let go of a dominating position in the game even after the injury to Australia’s premier spinner Nathan Lyon. Notably, the off-spinner got injured while fielding during the third session of the day while fielding at fine leg.

“And then you find yourself in this strange position whereby, having lost just the one wicket, you’re 180-1, their champion spinner goes off and you think if they’re going to be in the game at all given how flat the pitch looked at the time, he was going to be the man that would make breakthroughs and get them. He walked off injured and England just go completely bananas,” Butcher was quoted as saying by Wisden.

Butcher further said that England are going too extreme with their approach and don’t want to take responsibility for their goof-ups.

“The message has gone across Ben, the others are right with you. But they’re taking it to absolute extremes. There’s a comfort in this for the players because you kind of absolve yourself of any responsibility for doing anything daft. If there’s nothing extreme, if there’s no shot that’s too silly, if there’s no risk that isn’t worth taking then basically you’re telling yourself that I can do whatever the hell I like here and it’s no problem,” he added.

Australia take 91 runs lead in the first innings

Meanwhile, England once again fell into the short ball trap on Day 3 in the first session as they could add only 47 runs to their overnight score of 278/4 and got bundled out for 325. Harry Brook (50) tried to smack Mitchell Starc over covers off a short ball but found Pat Cummins. Jonny Bairstow (16), and Ollie Robinson (9) also got out playing attacking shots. As a result, Australia got a lead of 91 runs in the first innings.