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Healy: England, try the hard way, like those ‘has-beens’ of the past
Ian Healy • November 25th, 2025 1:37 pm
England, try the hard way, rather than the two-day slogging and poor shot selections at Perth.
Former English legends are piling in, and rightly so, because they were dismissed as has-beens and irrelevant from a team who keep highlighting how respectful they are of the game and its history.
Botham and Vaughan banished them, and Boycott decided to go to print writing, ‘When you keep throwing away Test matches by doing the same stupid things, it's impossible to take you seriously. They never learn because they never listen’.
Upon hearing that, my Aussie mind went back and reflected on stories I heard on my first West Indies tour about Allan Border's heroic deeds against them… and they had an even more fearsome quartet than England last Friday.
In Trinidad, Joel Garner captured 6/60 off 28 overs on an unsteady surface. But AB withstood 314 balls to be left stranded on 98…
314 balls… it was that hard, but he still scored 98 as the boys were bowled out on 255.
When the second innings arrived, AB entered at 3/15, with no chance of winning, let alone making the West Indians bat again.
But he got 100 not out from 269 balls. Even Terry Alderman, who didn’t like batting, got him there with 21 not out of 69 balls.
AB faced 583 balls across those two innings. It was an equally historic performance as that of Travis Head's beauty on Saturday.
583 balls is 179 more than England faced in total in Perth, and AB was able to save the match; they drew it from nowhere against the mighty West Indies.
Be aware, though, even if England don't listen or don't care for the game's history and the courageous feats of many, they'll automatically improve, because they now know the level.
Very few of the top six really had a go and played BazBall anyway.
They succumbed to a little extra pace in Perth, which they were warned about, meekly nicking to slip. So, they'll be better than that.
But resisting change assumes you have control over it, and these teams now have to take absolute control of their batting strategy.
Keep going and get better, or change and try some hard stuff mixed in… a little bit like the few hundred has-beens have done before for your country very proudly.
