The secret to winning the Ashes down under? Silence the Australia fans, says Graeme Swann
The former spin bowler says England must 'stop the noise' and get on top of their opponents quickly to prevent the home supporters getting behind their team
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Your support makes all the difference.Graeme Swann has revealed the secret to winning an Ashes down under: driving a wedge between the Australian team and public.
Swann was part of the great England team that won 3-1 in 2010-11, and seven years on he said this England team have to do much the same thing in Australia. That means silencing the Australian crowd, especially at the first Test in Brisbane, which starts next week, before turning them on the Australian players over the course of the series.
That is what England did in 2010, starting with a heroic series-turning rear-guard at Brisbane, going 221 behind in the first innings before reaching 517 for one to save the game. England went on to win at Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.
“The thing you’ve got to do is stop the noise,” explained BT Sport pundit Swann. “And the easy way to do that in Australia is to get on top of them. Like the crowd in Rocky IV, who are all cheering for Ivan Drago at the start, but as soon as you get on top, they start cheering for Rocky. That is what the Australian crowds are like. In that second innings at Brisbane [in 2010], when we were 517 for one, you could hear a pin drop. By the end no Australians were in the in ground.”
Swann pointed to what happened in the first day at the MCG that series, on Boxing Day, to show how what happens on the field can transform the field inside the ground, and how quickly an intimidating atmosphere can melt away. “Melbourne 2010, day one,” he said. “The noise was just phenomenal with 87,000 people there. But by the end of the play when we were 157 for none after bowling them out for 98, there were 25,000 Englishmen left in the ground. So that’s what you’ve got to do with the Australian crowds. If you get on top of the team, they’ll quickly turn on their own. But obviously the hard bit is getting on top of them.”
Looking back on the damaged relationship between the Australian fans and then-captain Michael Clarke, Swann knows how toxic things can get for the home side if England get the upper hand in the Ashes. Asked for any specific lessons this team can learn from the 2010 triumph, Swann said: “Shutting the crowd up, getting their crowd to turn against their own team, because they certainly do that. You’ve got to get that inter-state rivalry working. When we won the Ashes in the 2010, I’ll never forget playing an ODI at the MCG and Michael Clarke getting booed every single shot he played. He was batting well as well, being booed by the entire ground.”
The MCG is the home of Victoria, and Clarke represented New South Wales, but Swann said the issue was deeper than that. “Not just because he was a New South Welshman, but he was the Aussie captain who’d just lost the Ashes,” he said. “So the whole ground turned on him. If you can do that as a team, you can instil into everyone what it’s possible to do. Imagine the whole weight of your own country on your back. That’s when you know weak-minded people will start buckling under the pressure.”
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