Ashes 2019: England discover the maddening puzzle of getting Steve Smith out as first Test hangs in the balance

A few years ago, on the eve of a one-day international series between South Africa and New Zealand, a South African team analyst accidentally slipped a dossier of bowling plans meant for Dale Steyn under the wrong hotel room door. Naturally, the piece of paper found its way onto the Internet within a matter of hours, and yet as it happened, the fact of the leaked dossier proved far more arresting than anything actually contained within them.

For Martin Guptill, it turned out, the plan was “fourth stump, good length”. Tom Latham: “fourth stump, good length”. Kane Williamson: “fourth stump, good length”. Grant Elliot: “fourth stump, good length”. For the maverick Colin Munro, the plan was “fourth stump, back of length”.

A cushy existence, this team analysis lark: telling the best fast bowler in the world to bowl pretty much where he usually bowls anyway.

The point to all this is that in this data-rich age of international cricket, where all the numbers and all the video can be accessed at a moment’s notice, it’s very often not entirely clear where the sophistry ends and the common sense begins.

That’s not a slight on the dozens of analysts all over the world doing genuinely interesting work, often in the Twenty20 leagues that have proven a fertile breeding ground for fresh tactics. But occasionally, it’s possible to take a certain dangerous comfort in the thoroughness of your preparation, and day three of this absorbing Ashes Test was a case in point.

One of the reasons analysis has taken off in Twenty20 in such a big way is that a shorter game sharpens the need to find a decisive edge. But its influence is increasingly being felt in the longer format too, in culture as much as in practice. What these three days have confirmed for us is what we basically already knew: that England and Australia are extremely evenly matched, flawed in their own ways but of roughly similar strength. And so the idea of first-mover advantage, of finding the one-percenter that will make the difference in a close contest, has assumed an added urgency.

Within the England dressing room, nobody takes his data as seriously as Stuart Broad. It’s amusing to remember now the way he was characterised, at the start of his career, as a sort of pouting, soft-focus celebrity cricketer. As we would discover over the years, there’s no bigger geek in the England team, and after Thursday’s play he offered up another of those answers that manages to be both extremely interesting and extremely uninteresting at the same time.

Apparently, a few weeks ago Broad was talking to his coach Peter Moores and analyst Kunal Manek at Nottinghamshire about something called his ‘leave percentage’. “They told me it was a bit higher than the norm,” he revealed. “And today, my leave percentage was under 15 per cent. Which is really low, as my average can be between 25-26 per cent. It’s a little thing, but it’s brilliant coaching and analyst work.”

A question: what did you feel, as you read those words? Intrigued? Bored? Did you feel a little tingle in your nerdy nether regions? Or did your eyes begin to drift towards the related content and Outbrain adverts at the edge of the page? There’s no right answer to this question, but to me the really interesting part is that it took three of the sharpest brains in English cricket to work out what any semi-regular follower of the team could have told him in a twinkling: pitch the bloody thing up, Broad.

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Anyway, he has, and bowled superbly into the bargain, so we’ll let him off for now. Let’s move on to the Australians, who with a little more luck and perhaps a little more faith could have been in charge of this game rather than clawing their way back into it.

Justin Langer, of course, is a data evangelist. As Perth Scorchers coach, he led them to three Big Bash titles in four seasons with a statistical-driven approach honed by team analyst Dean Plunkett. Now, in tandem with current team analyst Dene Hills, Langer sees data as not only a cricketing solution to Australia’s problems, but a cultural one. “We’ve had enough emotion in Australian cricket for the past 12 months to last us a lifetime,” he said earlier this summer. “But when it comes to games for Australia, you’ve got to take the emotion out of it and pick the best match-ups, the best team to win that game.”

So how does that manifest itself in practice? Perhaps it’s why Tim Paine brought on Nathan Lyon to bowl at Ben Stokes first up, despite the fact that James Pattinson and Pat Cummins were making the ball move around corners. But Langer loves his match-ups, and against two left-handers, the off-spin of Lyon was the way to go. Perhaps it’s why Cummins persisted around the wicket to England’s left-handers, despite the fact that he looked far more dangerous going over.

Perhaps some intricate deep dive had told them not to bounce Stuart Broad when he first arrived at the crease, because even if you can get him out that way, he also tends to score quicker. Certainly that’s what James Pattinson alluded to afterwards. “On this surface, it’s probably hard to force the issue,” he said. “A lot of pace has gone out of the pitch, so you have to find ways to build pressure.” When they finally decided to bombard Broad, of course, he succumbed within minutes. But his partnership of 65 with Chris Woakes had already given England a decisive advantage.

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And even if you look beyond specifics, you can glimpse the outlines of a game within a game out there, of two jittery sides locked in a suspicious dance, nervy and watchful, actively trying to second-guess each other. Joe Root’s field setting for Cameron Bancroft to Moeen Ali – three men on the leg-side boundary in only the eighth over – felt too clever by half. But then it was Bancroft who blinked too soon, taking a pre-emptive step forward to Moeen, forced to adjust to a straighter one and plopping the ball straight to short leg.

Then you had the extremely surreal setup for Steve Smith first up: a short point, a catcher alongside the non-striker at short mid-on, a leg gully, a troupe of mime artists at mid-wicket, four black daffodils wearing sulphur watches at short third man. And as England tried desperately to think Smith out, Smith simply toyed with them: flicking the ball nonchalantly through mid-wicket, forcing Root to plug the gap, and then nudging the ball through mid-on where the fielder had come from.

Smith, of course, is the very antidote to all this: a player who defies any plan you might have for him by simply coming up with a better one. England tried everything in that final session: leg gullies, leg slips, close catchers, boundary riders, bouncers and yorkers​ and Root himself. But all to no avail. Sometimes, perhaps, you can drive yourself up the wall trying to solve the puzzle. And so, if you’re in the England team hotel tonight, it might be worth trying something a little simpler. Just a little note under the doors of the bowlers (double-check the room number first), giving full details of their strategy for Smith tomorrow: for heaven’s sake, get him out.