Brydon Carse: A hammer in a chisel's role
Brydon Carse has done what England wanted of him, but he is the wrong tool for the job.
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Brydon Carse’s chest points straight at what he wants. When he bowls, he almost never gets into a side-on position; he just charges straight through the crease like an eager hippopotamus, hoping that the ball will continue on in that pattern through the batter. It is a simple method - it’s not so much about skill as strength and effort. Carse has plenty of both.
No one who has ever seen the big fast bowler worries about how much he tries. He is whole-hearted, whole-chested, whole everything.
But he’s limited to how and where he works. He is a hammer, and sometimes you need a chisel.
Carse is not the most skilful bowler. Nothing shows this more than how he goes by over block in Tests. Carse is a uniquely terrible new-ball bowler. In Adelaide, England had him bowling around the wicket, swinging the ball back in to the left-handers. It was like asking a butcher to do open-heart surgery on a hamster. Maybe someone like Trent Boult could pull off this manoeuvre, but for Carse, it was an odd choice.
Because he is a better bowler outside of the first 20 overs, which is such a weird tick. But England must know this.
Because the big man has never once been asked, in his entire first-class career, to deliver the first over. That is where you give the ball to your most skilful bowler - the one who won’t waste it, and can use its lacquered glory to create early wickets.
When Carse bowls with the new ball - which is less than a quarter of his career - he averages more than 35. When he is at first change (his natural home), he’s under 30.
So quite clearly, and to the surprise of no one with human eyes, Carse should not be using the new ball for England.
But in Bazball, and even previously, England have been spectacularly bad at using their players. I have an entire 10,000-word unpublished piece on Jonny Bairstow, and I could add Jos Buttler and Moeen Ali to that as well. Of recent times, we’ve lived through Will Jacks the frontline spinner, and England somehow used Sam Curran so poorly he no longer seems to exist. When England get a player with a hint of all round ability, they miscast them like using a monkey wrench to twist in a screw.
While they have this history, it is also very tour-from-hell vibes for you to turn up in the third Test and find out that your opening bowler doesn’t even do that for his county team. We get that Bazball thinking is that the domestic game doesn’t matter, but surely they never meant this.
What England have ended up with is a whole-hearted first-change bowler taking the new ball badly. Brydon Carse has done what England wanted of him, but he is the wrong tool for the job.
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This Ashes, England’s heavy-ball merchant has managed to take wickets while going at a huge economy. In a series where his batters have struggled, he’s picked up the slack for their slow scoring by going at more than four and a half runs per over. But he has the second-most wickets at a good clip.
If you told England that Carse was going to finish with more than 20 wickets at an average of 25, they would be expecting to win the Ashes.
That is at least in part because they prepared for these Ashes like it was 2010–11, and not the current conditions.
