Michael Neser: Australia's antidote to the Bazball way

Michael Neser is the perfect antidote to England's current approach to Test cricket. It's Neser's way that is working as England flounder, with Australia winning and England facing a 0-2 deficit after just five days in this series.

Neser's cricket is about hard graft, calculated thrift, and valuing every opportunity. It's about risk mitigation, amplifying strengths, and finding ways around limitations. For the 35-year-old from Queensland, every day of Test cricket has had the potential to be his last, after years of toiling in Sheffield Shield cricket to reach this level.

Neser's three Tests, all with the pink ball, have come across four years. In that time, he's never stopped steaming in at full tilt, whether for Queensland, Glamorgan in the County Championships, or in nets sessions. That consistency makes it hard to predict if he'll play the next Test, as he brings full-throttle energy to every training session with ball and bat.

While English players have worked hard to reach this level, too many seem to take it for granted, especially with bat in hand. The batters Neser caught off his own bowling, Ollie Pope and Zak Crawley, embody what annoys many about this English Test team: their inability or stubbornness to change their ways based on conditions or match situations.

When Neser started his second spell, there was pressure on him. He hadn't started well with the new pink ball under lights. With Mitchell Starc sore, Scott Boland in and out, and Nathan Lyon on the bench, Neser seized his Test recall by breaking the back of England's top-order.

Pope and Crawley have been persisted with through lean periods, becoming prime examples of batters allowed to bat to their own drum. Their dismissals off Neser's bowling highlighted their license to stick to their methods. England's lack of a reserve opener underscores their trust in Crawley, while Pope's net sessions show he's allowed to bat as he wishes, even when out of sorts.

Neser's dismissals of Pope and Crawley summed up England's anaemic collapse late on Night 3. It was poetic that Australia's battle-hardened workhorse taught England's cavaliers a lesson in humility on a night that may have lost them the Ashes.