Momentum the great Test force

Watching the boys battling it out for two Tests against Pakistan in the UAE made for tough viewing, but not nearly as tough as it was for the guys on the ground facing those conditions and an opponent that grew in confidence and skill almost by the session.

Momentum is such a powerful force in Test cricket.

Since I’ve been playing at that level I’ve seen how it can shift but also how difficult it is to resist.

England certainly had it against us during my first Ashes series in Australia in 2010-11, and they maintained it in England for a while last year but that was when it started to turn.

And once we got to Australia last summer, we had it and were unstoppable.

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So once you get to the stage that Pakistan did in Dubai and Abu Dhabi where you’re just building momentum and confidence with every day, it’s hard to counter and often it seems the harder you try and the harder you train the tougher it gets.

And once a team gets on a roll in a two-Test series there’s not a lot of opportunity to stop it, let alone turn it around.

I don’t want to venture opinions from the other side of the world. I know how frustrating it can be for players when someone sitting back on their couch becomes an expert in what’s going on in the heat of battle.

But I’ll say one thing – it looked like bloody hard work in conditions that would prove a challenge for any touring side.

There’s no doubt that the end result was disappointing for a team that – although most of them hadn’t played a lot of cricket heading into the tour – went over there having prepared as well as possible and with an expectation to succeed.

Much has been made of our results in sub-continental conditions and there are no easy answers to turning that around.

I know we do a lot of work in practice here in Australia, by sending teams to train and play on the sub-continent to gain more experience and by studying how the teams and individuals who do well in those conditions go about it.

But when you come up against teams playing in the conditions they are comfortable and confident in – India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka especially – it’s a really tough proposition.

When teams come to our conditions we’ve seen how they can struggle. It also took us a long time to win in a Test series in India and we finally did that in 2004 because of persistence and practice.

I know we can expect to see more and more of these dry, slow pitches being rolled out around the world given our results of late, so it’s something we just have to get better at.

Our next Test series on the sub-continent will be in Bangladesh straight after next year’s Ashes in England, which means we won’t have a lot of time - given the packed schedule between now and then - to practice on those sorts of wickets.

I’m certainly not about to offer any advice to our batters, but from a bowling perspective although we didn’t take a lot of wickets I thought the boys bowled well.

Some people have said that deep down I must have felt a bit of relief at not having to toil in that heat on those flat tracks, but I found it really tough to watch knowing I would rather be out there helping my mates and seeing what they were going through.

It’s hard to watch guys you know have put in a lot of effort, planning and sweat only to have the results they’re after elude them and you can only hope that at some point everything they’re trying will yield a breakthrough or two.

At the same time, we simply have to acknowledge how well the Pakistanis played from pretty much the first half-hour of the series onwards.

They batted patiently and then explosively, and even though they had a very inexperienced side their bowlers – especially spinners Zulfiqar Babar and Yasir Shah – bowled very, very well.

Even their quicks did everything asked of them, and the ball that Imran Khan bowled to Pup (Michael Clarke) in the first innings in Abu Dhabi which came back in to hit middle stump was an unbelievable delivery.

They just bowled very, very well and put the pressure on us from ball one.

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I’m sure the boys will have spoken at length about what did and didn’t work, and there will be a review undertaken to look at it in more detail.

But with the international summer at home officially beginning with today’s KFC T20 International double-header with the men’s (against South Africa) and the women’s (v the West Indies) teams in action in Adelaide, it might be best that they simply forget about the UAE series for now.

The focus has to shift from this round of limited-overs matches ahead of next year’s World Cup, and the four Tests against India that begin next month.

And that first Test of the summer, which begins at the ‘Gabba on December 4, is still the match I have in my sights for my return to the Australian team.

To do that, I’ve got to start bowling a bit better than I did in my first outing for the Queensland Academy of Sport in the Toyota Futures League this week.

While it was probably my first real bowl since my knee surgery and it was good to be out there and playing, I learned that I’ve got a lot of work to do on where I’m putting the ball and with my action.

I’m pulling up okay - my knee’s tender but I’m getting through and I got up the next morning after bowling 14 overs, went to the ground and did the warm-up and was actually a bit surprised at how good I was feeling.

That’s the positive sign, but now I have to work hard on getting that feeling at the crease again and making sure I’m putting the ball in the right spot.

Not just two or three deliveries an over, but getting back to where I was against England last summer and I know that’s going to take a bit more time.

So I’m still taking it step-by-step, getting through this Futures League game bowling another 12 or 13 overs and then hopefully into the Bupa Sheffield Shield game against New South Wales that starts at the ‘Gabba on November 16.

I’m not sure which of the NSW Test players will be available for that game given that it coincides with the Carlton Mid ODI Series against South Africa, but it will give me a good gauge to bowl against guys who are quality players in our conditions and who can give me some honest feedback on how I’m going and what I need to do.

So while I’m definitely aiming to be available for that first Test both fitness-wise and also having made sure that I’m bowling up to scratch, at the moment I’ve got a bit of work to do.

The subsequent one-dayers against India and England and then the ICC World Cup are in the back of my mind but I’ve not really thought about them too much as yet.

And to be blunt, if I don’t improve on the way I’ve been bowling so far I won’t be playing too much Test cricket or even Shield cricket for that matter.

In a perfect world, I’d get through the Shield game, bowl well, play all four Tests against India and then some of the one-dayers leading into the World Cup.

But that’s a long way off.

And as we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks, the world can be far from perfect.