"Moeen has been a great servant to England but he doesn't look like he has anywhere to go at the moment, so it might be the best thing for him to have a break. He is offering nothing with the ball at all and his batting has been embarrassing."
Saturday 30 December 2017 11:11, UK
England were thwarted by a benign pitch and the indomitable Steve Smith as the fourth Ashes Test finished in a draw – but at least they ended any danger of a whitewash!
SCORECARD | ASHES 2017/18 HOMEPAGE
With Alastair Cook and Stuart Broad also returning to form and Tom Curran far from freezing on Test debut, England will head to Sydney in a positive frame of mind - except, perhaps, Moeen Ali.
Ali's torrid Ashes tour continued in Melbourne with a skittish innings and no wickets - he is averaging 19.42 with the bat and 135 with the ball in the series. If only those stats were the other way round!
Ali is where Bob Willis begins his latest Ashes Verdict, with the Sky Sports expert saying the off-spinning all-rounder's confidence looks "shot to pieces", calling his batting "embarrassing" and saying it may be best for him to sit out the final Test at the SCG.
Read on for that, plus Bob's views on the pitch, Cook, Broad, Smith, Curran, and those fourth-day murmurings of ball tampering…
Bob on Moeen Ali's troubles
Ali's confidence must be completely shot to pieces. I am very reluctant to leave out senior players, especially someone who has been as great a servant to England over the last three or four years as Moeen has, but he doesn't look like he has anywhere to go at the moment, so it might be the best thing for him to have a break. He is offering nothing with the ball at all.
I don't know whether the split finger has affected him but the Aussies' eyes light up as soon as he comes on to bowl and he has been completely out-bowled by Nathan Lyon. His batting, meanwhile, has been embarrassing - the seamers bowl short at him and when he tries to play shots against Lyon he gets out straight away.
England would have to look very carefully at how they balance the side if they gave Mason Crane a debut - I think they probably made an error going for the romantic vision of Crane's leg-spin as opposed to Jack Leach from Somerset - but if they leave Ali out, they would have to play Crane as they would need a front-line spinner at a ground where turn plays a part.
Bob on the MCG pitch
It was dead as a dodo, totally unsatisfactory. We are trying to keep Test cricket at the top of the tree and a pitch like that won't do anything to help it. It was very batsman-friendly but it wasn't that easy to play shots on, while it didn't deteriorate at all and there was nothing in it for seam bowlers or spinners at any stage.
It was a turgid, flat nothing which you might have seen in Pakistan 40 years ago - no use to man or beast. We are going to see more drop-in pitches as stadiums become more and more multi-purpose but we certainly don't want one like that. I hope we never see the likes of it again in Test cricket. It is key there is a balance between bat and ball.
Bob on Steve Smith's batting
You saw Cook, on one hand, grafting away and willing himself back into form and then Smith hitting everything in the middle of the bat as he got his head down and saved the game, first with David Warner and then Mitchell Marsh. England have tried most things to try and get him out - I think they tried too many things in Brisbane - but it hasn't worked; I think he has got the best eye I have seen since Vivian Richards.
His unorthodox technique must mean his hand-eye co-ordination is second to none. A little like Jeff Thomson's bowling action, which I have been encouraging someone to mimic for 40 years, people have got to start mimicking Smith with the bat! People say he will struggle with the ball swinging around in England in 2019 but I think he is something really special - a once-in-a-lifetime player.
Bob on Alastair Cook's return to form
Like Smith's, Cook's innings was phenomenal - it was a shame his monumental 244no did not produce an England win but, as discussed, the bowlers were completely hamstrung by the surface.
I don't think I have seen him drive the ball better; we think of Cook as being very much a square-of-the-wicket player - extra-cover and round to point and third man on the off-side, and off his hip and pulled through the leg-side - but he hit the ball so sweetly down the ground.
That comes with confidence and hard work in the nets and happily he has quietened those saying he should be dropped. Cook has got a lot of Test runs left in him and I hope he goes on to break all the batting records that are there, possibly even Sachin Tendulkar for the most Test runs. There's certainly no reason he couldn't finish second to him.
Bob on a resurgent Stuart Broad
Stuart attacked more than he did while going wicketless in Perth, perhaps due to the placid nature of the pitch. He decided containing wasn't for him - he didn't go mad with short balls, which were pretty ineffective on this surface, but he bounded in better and had his wrist behind the ball.
You don't write quality players like him off, especially as young as 31, and the fact he and James Anderson were still trying to get the opposition out late on day five is testament to their fitness and commitment to the England cause. I thought it was a tremendous exhibition of bowling.
We also saw Stuart get runs, scoring a quick-fire fifty - he has a tremendous eye and one only hopes this could reignite his batting which has been in the doldrums since he had that crack on the head against India. It was a very valuable innings from Broad, who took the bowlers on very bravely and very entertainingly. It wasn't just a support role to Cook.
Bob on Tom Curran's debut
It was such a shame Curran bowled Warner on 99 with a no-ball but I suppose having Smith as your first Test wicket is pretty special!
Like Craig Overton - who also made Smith his first Test wicket, in Adelaide - he has shown an enormous amount of guts, on probably the flattest pitch he has ever seen. He's bowled on some flat ones at the Oval over the years but nothing like this.
I thought he kept going extremely well - he's not lightning quick but his stamina, will and determination to get everything out of the pitch was a good advert for England's bowling resources in the future, as we haven't got the flat-out pace bowlers that Australia have.
Australia haven't got them behind their main three, though - they will tell you different but there is a notable drop-off. Jackson Bird has been knocking over state sides but looked innocuous on this game, so England will be hoping he plays again in Sydney.
Bob on the 'ball-tampering' row
I thought it was a storm in a teacup. The cameras were on Anderson and England cleaning the seam and trying, legally, to get everything they could out of the Kookaburra ball - I didn't see anything mischievous. I hope that story quickly dies a death, which it seems to have done.
If anyone was blatantly changing the condition of the ball then I think the umpires would be on to it pretty quickly - it caused the abandonment of the Test match between Pakistan and England at the Oval in 2006 - so I think the bowlers would have to be magicians to get anything past them.
I don't think England are serial offenders, though a lot of people would say on a pitch like that that the bowlers should be allowed to do anything!
