For most of Friday, Brydon Carse’s bowling could have been summed up by the ditty the Barmy Army penned for Mitchell Johnson during the 2010/11 Ashes.
“He bowls to the left, he bowls to the right, that Mitchell Johnson, his bowling is …” . You get the picture.
Just as it appeared England were heading to the point of no return, Carse turned from whipping boy to England’s unlikeliest deliverers of hope.
As far as plot twists go, they do not come more bizarre than Carse hoodwinking Cameron Green and Steve Smith with a bumper barrage, the latter falling to a one-handed screamer from Will Jacks.
Up until his third spell, Carse’s pitch map resembled a scatter plot to match a scatter gun approach.
Brydon Carse’s pitch map midway through day two.Credit: Fox Cricket
He was the worst in an attack that was compared unfavourably to third-grade level by Mark Waugh, labelled “horrific” by Matthew Hayden and lacking “sharpness in the brain” by England great Stuart Broad, who was one of the more restrained critics of the visitors’ meltdown in Perth.
Captains need bowlers to have control to set a field. Unable to group enough balls in the same areas bowling conventionally, Carse was sent on a bumper barrage with five boundary riders – two behind square, one in front of square, a fly slip and a deep third – as protection.
With their cues in place, Smith and Green took on the short stuff, plundering 17 runs from Carse’s first over of bumpers.
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Switched to the other end, Carse opened up with a bouncer that sailed so well above Green, who stands at 198 centimetres, it was called a wide.
Anticipating an eighth short ball in a row, Green backed away early again only to be tossed a fullish delivery that he was in no position to play and was bowled. Three balls later, Smith pulled Carse awkwardly but could not clear Jacks’s right hand.
“I think they may have been lulled into a false sense of security,” Waugh said on Kayo Sports.
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