AGs series player ratings:
Khawaja 8. Stood up well, fine series. Half a point deducted for his Watto reviews.
Warner 3.5. Sick of hearing how crucial his 20s were. Shouldn't have been picked.
Labs 5. Weird series by a weird man.
Smith. 7. Not at his best and looks like his powers have waned. Still pretty bloody good.
Head. 6.5. Bazballed but eould have loved to see him kick on to a big score.
Marsh 5. One outstanding innings then back to the Marsh we all know.
Green 4.5. Most of his points are for his catching.
Carey 6.5. Kept well, usual inconsistency with the bat.
Starc 6.5. Pick of our bowlers which tbh, isn't saying much.
Cummins 5. Probably bowled better than his figures indicate. Really bad as captain which brought his bowling chops down too.
Boland 2. Got found out big time. Needs a plan B when things get rough.
Hazelwood 4. Typical Hazelwood. Not quite a great bowler.
Murphy 4.5. The potential is definitely there.
Lyon 5. Hard to rate but still bald.
For me the only players who did well were Carey, Woakes and Wood.
No batsman averaged more than 60. Few above 50. On flat tracks. In particular Labs, Smith, Warner, Root, and Stokes were underwhelming to an alarming degree. Again, on flat tracks.
Only two innings totals were above 400. Again, I say, on flat f**king tracks.
Aside Woakes and Wood most bowlers averaged more than 28. They along with Lyon (by his absence) proved the point of difference between the sides.
Stokes out-captained Cummins but only because Cummins was so bad.
Selections were seriously stupid. Boland got hung out to dry. Anderson was a 5th wheel.
Australia also had no Buchanan-like plans for bowling to these batters. You could see they hadn't thought about it till it was too late. Not even a MCGrath like "top of off". The amount of short pitch desperation from both sides showed that they were both clueless to varying degrees.
It may have been a close series but it wasn't a good series, from either team.