England’s history-making pacer Josh Tongue on Friday (December 26) revealed that it was captain Ben Stokes who pushed the team to bowl fuller in the Ashes — a strategy that allowed him and his teammates to finally bowl Australia out cheaply for 152 in the first day at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
Tongue took five for 45 runs in the innings, becoming the first England bowler this century to collect a fifer in a Test at the iconic stadium. A key factor of the innings was England bowling drastically fuller lengths compared to the previous three defeats, which helped them utilise the swing and movement available on the surface.
However, Australia had always been doing the basics right, despite missing some of their best bowlers and did it again
here to skittle England out for 110 in a rare incidence of 20 wickets falling on the same day.
“It’s been an amazing day of Test match cricket,” Tongue said after the day’s play, with Australia ended at 4/0. “Obviously coming to the ground here this morning, winning the toss, putting the Aussies into bat and bowling them out for 150 odd, I thought we did an amazing job as a bowling unit. Obviously they bowled well, as well. It’s a pitch which is doing quite a bit, and, yeah, we’ve got to come back tomorrow and do the same again that we did first innings. I feel like if you put the ball in the right areas, which I felt like we did today, you’re going to get your rewards. So you just stay patient and hang in there,” he said.
Tongue praised Stokes for drilling the message into the team before making a rally call for his teammates to do more of the same and regain the advantage on the second day.
“I feel like anyone could have taken a ‘five-fer’ today. It could have been Brydon, it could have been Gus,” said Tongue. “When I’m at my best I’m bowling at that fuller length. Stokes has spoken to us quite a bit about it, going a touch fuller but hitting the pitch hard. We get the ball in the same areas tomorrow, we get them three or four wickets down in the first hour.”
