Tour of England 2013              Captain: Michael Clarke

91st Australian Test tour

37th  Test-playing tour of England by Australia

(May  -  September 2013)

After his altercation with Joe Root in a Birmingham nightclub David Warner was suspended from the squad until the first Test. Until then he was told to join the Australia A team touring South Africa, and did not regain his Test place until the third Test.

The sacking of coach Mickey Arthur swiftly followed Warner’s indiscipline, though it seems likely that keeping four players out of the team in India for not completing an assessment task was mainly responsible for a breakdown of trust between team and coach, and the Warner affair was the last straw. Arthur was replaced by Darren Lehmann (at the time the Queensland and Australia A coach) who initially made a positive impression until he was charged with a Level 1 offence for breaching the ICC's code of conduct. He was fined 20 per cent of his match fee for making comments on radio about Stuart Broad not walking when caught at slip in the first Test at Trent Bridge.

Australia might have won the first and fourth Tests, which were lost, and the third, which was drawn, but for bad weather and poor play at critical moments. However, at Lord’s the team performance was awful and ensured England would regain the Ashes with a 3-0 series victory.

Clarke insisted there was a lot of positives to come out of the tour, including improving their performance over the last three Tests and winning the one-day series. Lehmann went further and said the visitors were unlucky not to win, but in truth England were well below par and, even after the change of coach, the Aussie batting was woeful.  Each Test was marked by a flurry of Australian wickets falling as batsmen got themselves out to poor concentraion and wanton shot selection.

Other Australian Tours

Previous tour

To India 2012-13

Next tour

South Africa 2013-14

Next tour of England

 2015

Members of the Test tour party (16  + 2 added  + 1)

Opening batsmen  Chris Rogers, David Warner, Ed Cowan.

Middle-order batsmen  Michael Clarke, Philip Hughes, Usman Khawaja,  Steve Smith (added)

Wicket-keepers   Brad Haddin, Matthew Wade.

All-rounders  Shane Watson, James Faulkner.

Spin bowlers   Nathan Lyon, Ashton Agar (added)

Fast bowlers  Peter Siddle, James Pattinson, Mitchell Starc, Jackson Bird, Ryan Harris.

⋄  contracted player 2012-13

State representation

  Sheffield Shield teams

NSW   New South Wales (6)

Qld  Queensland (2)

SA   South Australia (2)

Tas   Tasmania (3)

Vic   Victoria (4)

WA  Western Australia (1)

⋄  contracted player

Average age of  team at time of first Test match  (10 July  2013) (including Smith and Agar)  :

 27  yrs 9 months

    ⋄  contracted player

ODI  (C)for Champions Trophy(N)for NatWest Series T20s and ODIs

Test Appearances made before the tour

Clarke 92,  Haddin 44,  Siddle 41,  Watson 41,  Hughes 24,  Lyon 22,  Warner 19,  Cowan 17,  Harris 12,  Wade 12,  Pattinson 10,  Starc 9,  Smith 7,  Khawaja 6,  Bird 2,  Rogers 1,  Agar 0   Faulkner 0.

Tour Officials

Selectors

John Inverarity (chairman),   Rodney Marsh,   Andy Bichel

Selection

Unavailable :  Shane Watson stood down as vice-captain on 19 April.  Pat Cummins and Ben Cutting were injured.

Test Tour Party Announced  24 April 2013.

Ryan Harris overcame his achilles tendon and shoulder injuries to be fit enough for the tour.

Not selected  :  Ashton Agar and Steve Smith were not included in the initial Ashes squad but Smith was later upgraded to a place on tour and Agar was an ‘intern’ kept in the squad for experience.

Stand-bys   The Australia A team to tour England, and then South Africa, was named simultaneously on 24 April.

AC Agar, J M Bird, A Doolan, B J Haddin (capt), R JHarris, M Henriques, U T Khawaja, N M Lyon, N Maddinson, J LPattinson, C Sayers, P M Siddle, J Silk, S D P Smith (vice-captain),

Haddin, Harris, Lyon, Khawaja, Pattinson and Siddle would join the Test tour from the Australia A side after the Champions Trophy.

John Inverarity said further players may be added to the Test squad from this side.

Champions Trophy squad announced :  1 May 2013.

M J Clarke,  G J Bailey, N M Coulter-Nile, X J Doherty, J P Faulkner, P J Hughes,  M G Johnson,, C J McKay, M R Marsh, G J Maxwell, M A Starc, A C Voges, MS Wade, DA Warner, SR  Watson

T20/ODI squad announced :  15 August 2013. 

Australia's 18-man limited-overs squad contained just seven players who took part in the Ashes.  Fawad Ahmed’s Australian citizenship was fast-tracked and made him eligible to play in this series.

On 1 September the NatWest squad was then trimmed to fifteen for the ODI series when Smith and Starc went home injured and Warner was dropped.

Time between selection and departure from Australia

  32 days

 (24 April -  26 May)

Travel   

Sydney  Q  DubaiQ   London

Firstly, there was an official team farewell, with the chief executive of Cricket Australia James Sutherland present to wish them luck. It was held at the Qantas Sydney Jetbase on the morning of 22 May. The touring squad was represented by captain Michael Clarke and other players (Haddin, Siddle, Pattinson, Wade, Starc, Lyon, Cummins, Khawaja, McKay, Hughes and Harris) but they were not flying out until the weekend.

The Champions Trophy squad  [ODI (C) above ] and Australia ‘A’ squad flew from Sydney Airport on Sunday night 26 May, via Dubai, to assemble in London.

Faulkner, Johnson and Watson came from India where they were playing in the IPL (Indian Premier League), which did not finish until 26 May.  Coach Mickey Arthur flew in from South Africa.

Then the Test side came together: Cowan (Notts) and Rogers (Middlesex) were already in England, playing county cricket.  Agar, Harris, Haddin, Pattinson had arrived in the UK in May and played with the Australia A squad.  Some wives and partners accompanied the team throughout the tour.

Other ‘Test players’ - Bird, Lyon, Khawaja, Siddle -  flew in after the team’s early elimination from the Champions Trophy.

Time spent on tour in England

   112 days

(28 May - 17 September)

On-tour selection

Darren Lehmann  (coach)  and  Rodney Marsh (on-tour selector).

John Inverarity, the NSP Chairman, was in England but was not formally part of the selection panel.

As part of a review of Australian cricket two years ago, the coach and captain were granted selection powers but Michael Clarke decided that judging his players in selection meetings clashed with his leadership role.

Reinforcements

David Warner was suspended until the first Test after punching Joe Root in a bar in Birmingham. Because Michael Clarke was suffering from back problems at the same time, another batsman, Steve Smith, vice-captain of the Australia A side, was added to the Ashes squad on 23 June.  

Warner was sent to South Africa between 10 and 29 July to have match practice with the Australia A team.  

Ashton Agar was kept with the squad at the end of the Australia A tour of England, which Inverarity described as “an ideal development opportunity”. Fawad Alam joined the Australia A side and left for England on 8 June.  Agar ended up being selected ahead of Nathan Lyon for the first two Test matches.

Ashton Turner who was playing for Chichester Priory Park and for the Hampshire Academy in the 2013 season, played against Sussex.  South Australia batsman Travis Head was also standing by and was 12th man in that match.

On 22 July James Pattinson  was ruled out of the rest of the tour with stress fractures of the lower back.

Ashton Agar (viral illness) and Jackson Bird  (back strains) were both sent home before the final Test

Ryan Harris left the tour immediately after the fifth Test with hamstring soreness from which he would take 6 to 8 weeks to recover. 

Steve Smith (thigh injury)  and Mitchell Starc (stress fracture in his lower back) had to leave the tour before they could participate in the one-day series.

Fixtures/Results

† not first-class

⊕(T20)Twenty 20 international

§  one-day international (ICC Champions Trophy and NatWest Series).

Time spent in England before First Test:    43 days

(28 May   - 10 July)

Test appearances on tour

5   -    Clarke,  Haddin,  Rogers,  Siddle,  Smith,  Watson.

4   -    Harris

3   -    Khawaja,  Lyon,  Starc,  Warner

2   -    Agar,  Hughes,  Pattinson, 

1   -    Bird,  Cowan,  Faulkner.

0   -    Wade.

Highlights

•   Peter Siddle got off to a great start in the first innings of the series by taking 5-50.

•   Ashton Agar’s 98 at Trent Bridge was the highest innings by a Test number 11 and it was on his debut

•   Agar’s 163-run partnership with Philip Hughes was the highest-ever for the tenth wicket in Tests.

•   Michael Clarke scored 187 at Old Trafford, his 24th Test century.

•   Chris Rogers (35) became the second-oldest Australian after Arthur Richardson in 1926 (aged nearly 38) to hit a maiden Test century.

•   Ryan Harris was the most successful bowler with 24 wickets in 4 Tests, including 7-117 at Durham.

•   In the final Test Shane Watson at last turned in a century (176), his first Test hundred since 2010.

•   Steve Smith’s 138* at The Oval convinced most doubters that he should become a Test regular

•   Brad Haddin broke the world Test series record by taking 29 dismissals behind the stumps.

Tour Summary

Return to Australia

London, Heathrow   QSydney

Sacked coach Mickey Arthur flew home on his own from Heathrow Airport on 25 June.

David Warner was sent to South Africa on 10 July to get some match practice with Australia A. He rejoined the squad in Manchester on Monday 29 July.

James Pattinson’s tour ended early because of stress fractures in his back.  Cricket Australia offered him a two-week holiday before returning but he chose to stay with the team until the squad arrived in Manchester for the third Test.

After being unwell with a virus for a week, Ashton Agar left London on Tuesday evening 21 August.

Jackson Bird flew home on 24 August with back strain.

Ryan Harris was cheered by a representative schoolboy rugby team who happened to be in Brisbane Airport when he flew in on Thursday morning 29 August.

Only seven members of the Test side were retained for the limited-overs section of the tour.

The rest knew they were not going to be in the ODI squad so Cowan, Haddin, Khawaja, Lyon, Rogers, Siddle ended their tour after the Test series. Not all returned to Australia: Chris Rogers played county cricket for Middlesex.

David Warner was dropped from the one-day internationals, and Mitchell Starc and Steve Smith were injured, so they flew back together.

The tour ended after the one-day series. The plane with Michael Clarke and the rest of the team aboard took off from Heathrow Airport on 17 September and arrived back in Sydney Airport on Wednesday evening 18 September 2013.

Time away from Australia

  115 days  

(26 May to 18 September)

Finances

…..

Accounts of the tour

……..

Postscript

During the Ashes the decision review system (DRS) had been in danger of losing credibility, as the off-field umpire failed to remedy some umpiring mistakes and even overruled correct on-field decisions. The I C C decided that the number of reviews would in future be restored to two after 80 overs of an innings.

The two countries would be meeting again at Brisbane only twelve weeks after the Oval Test for their first back-to-back series since 1975 (the Ashes were not being contested in 1979-80 and the 1980 Centenary Test).