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Australia are relishing Kevin Pietersen’s continued discomfort against Peter Siddle, with their bowling coach Craig McDermott highlighting Pietersen’s dismissal to a spectacular Mitchell Johnson catch as another major step towards regaining the Ashes urn in Perth this week. |
Pietersen batted with huge self-restraint for an hour and a half either side of tea on a broiling second day, taking 15 balls to get off the mark and 40 to hit his first boundary as he and Alastair Cook battled to steer England within reach of Australia’s first innings total.
But after Cook fell cutting to the off spin of Nathan Lyon for the second time in the series when 28 short of a century in his 100th Test, Pietersen made a dramatic change in his approach, and fell three overs later trying to pull Siddle off the front foot over Johnson at mid-on.
It was the third consecutive innings in which Siddle has dismissed Pietersen, having accounted for him twice in the second Test in Adelaide, and the 10th in all.
“Sids continues to get Pietersen out,” said McDermott, the former fast bowler who was reappointed bowling coach before the start of this series.
“It’s one of those things. He just bowls very tight lines to Pietersen. And patience. He was four off 40 balls, he was digging himself a fair hole from my perspective and then he started playing a shot a ball.
Sids has just tied him down time and time again, and then the release valve comes and Sids cracks him open. That’s great for us, we hope it continues.
“We’ve got our plans that we want to bowl to each batsman and certainly that’s the way in which we prefer to bowl to Kevin, and it’s working for us at the moment, so we’ll continue to do that unless he changes his way of batting I suppose.
“I think it plays on anybody’s mind. Some guys don’t like facing certain bowlers, some guys don’t like bowling to certain batsmen. It’s worked out well in Sids’s half at this stage, or more than his half. From his coach’s point of view I hope that continues to happen for him and Australia.”
Pietersen has now scored only 120 runs in five innings in this series, fewer than five Australians including Johnson, and this after he had struggled to match the impact of his first four Ashes series in England in the summer, when he made 338 runs from 10 innings, including a single battling century at Old Trafford.
McDermott’s pride in the performance of all five Australia’s bowlers was a stark contrast to the frustration of the England bowling coach David Saker 24 hours earlier, although Jimmy Anderson led a much-improved effort on the second morning to polish off the four remaining wickets for 59. “The last three and a half hours of bowling was superb,” added McDermott. “Good tough Test cricket. It’s just a great thing that everyone’s chipping in. Bowling tightly, bowling good lines and more importantly swinging the old ball.”
He did not agree with a suggestion that Pietersen’s dismissal had marked the end of England’s chances of retaining the urn, although without refuting it completely. “I don’t know whether that’s totally true,” he said. “There’s a fair bit of cricket left to go in this Test match.”
But he expects England to face a tough battle batting last as several large cracks have already opened up on the pitch after two days’ baking in temperatures in excess of 40C, which have also taken a toll on spectators and beer sales.
“I think the cracks are going to get bigger, there’s no doubt about that,” said McDermott. “There’s a couple in line with the stumps so that’s going to play havoc with batsmen’s minds. The ball may never even hit those cracks, that’s a psychological thing from a bowler’s point of view. It may be better that we’re bowling last when the cracks are wider, it’ll be great.” - Guardian News Service