Brydon Carse hailed England’s “relentless” pace attack after an extraordinary first day of the Ashes, across which 19 wickets fell, ended with Australia nine down with just 123 runs on the board.
After winning the toss England were bowled out for 172, with Mitchell Starc outstanding in claiming seven wickets for 58. But while Carse admitted their total was under par, he said the mood inside the tourists’ dressing room – and that displayed by their captain, Ben Stokes – never dipped.
“He was always positive, always full of enthusiasm, and really very simple messaging, and that’s the way that he has always dealt with the side,” Carse said. “Stokesy said: ‘Let’s smash the wicket hard and let’s get as much as we can out of it.’ He said we’ve got 50 minutes before tea, and I thought the way that Gus [Atkinson] and Jofra [Archer] started was phenomenal, and we carried that into the afternoon session. I thought we were quite relentless as a group of seamers, and Ben rotated us well.”
Asked about his use of the word relentless to describe England’s barrage of pace bowlers, Carse said: “That’s the collective messaging throughout the group, everyone 100% buys in to that and we are never going to shy away from that. Hopefully that relentlessness, passing the ball over to each other and sticking to what we want to work towards as a group of seamers, will stand us in good stead. The group of six or seven fast bowlers that we have, we all offer different skills and attributes and we complement each other well.”
Stokes’s rotation meant that he did not bring himself on to bowl until the 28th over, at which point Australia were 69 for four. By the time the day ended 11 overs later he had a five-fer. “He’s amazing,” Carse said. “His character, his resilience is everything that this team strives to be. And obviously a game-changing spell there in that session.”
Earlier Starc had produced career-best bowling figures for the third time in 12 months, starting by dismissing Zak Crawley with the sixth ball of the match – the seventh time he had taken a wicket in the first over of a Test.
“That’s always the plan, but it doesn’t always happen that way,” he said. “It’s always been my role to be aggressive, to look for wickets, especially with the new ball. I’ve never been one to worry about economy rates.”
The 19 wickets that fell are the most on an opening day of an Ashes Test since 1909, and two more than the 17 that tumbled on the opening day of last year’s Test against India at the same venue.
“We often sit here and say ‘It’s the wicket’ or ‘It’s the batting’, but I think both teams bowled really well,” Starc said. “We know how England wanted to approach the game, being aggressive. That creates opportunities and I thought we bowled quite well, even in a period where it felt like it was kind of helter skelter. We still bowled them out for 172. Sometimes you can just say it’s pretty good bowling from both teams.”
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There was a chaotic start to Australia’s innings as their opener Usman Khawaja was forced to bat at No 4 having been off the field for the end of England’s innings after suffering a back spasm.
“We got caught off guard there a little bit, with the wickets falling pretty quickly at the back end there,” Starc said. “It’s just unfortunate. He’ll manage that overnight and we’ll see how he is tomorrow.”
Starc denied that his team had ever lost control as they surrendered their wickets and their dominant position across the afternoon. “I think we’re a pretty calm group,” he said. “It’s not the first time that things haven’t gone our way. We’re pretty calm, we’ll sit back and no doubt we’ll come tomorrow with the same approach of being pretty calm and pretty level. We’re 50-odd behind, and there’s still a long time left in this game.”
