Buchanan under pressure

By Scott Heinrich

Australia's captain and coach are coming under heavy pressure

Should Australia lose the Ashes at The Oval, it is likely, if not inevitable, that someone will pay the ultimate price.

Captain Ricky Ponting and coach John Buchanan, probably unfairly, will be remembered first and foremost and the men who relinquished the little urn, the ones who let the old enemy back on top.

By contrast, England can expect to be feted as heroes in every village, town and city across the country - from Southampton to Newcastle, from Bristol to Norwich.

This series has already been dubbed the best of all time, and should they emerge victorious, their names will be talked of in the same vein as 1966 football World Cup winners Bobby Moore, Sir Bobby Charlton and Gordon Banks.

If Andrew Flintoff caps a career-defining series with another colossal showing in the final Test, awards are likely to be showered upon him.

For most of the series, England have played like men hell-bent on altering history.

And Australia know the final Test as their last chance to either shape up or ship the Ashes back to England.

If we lose the Ashes, there will be heads to roll John Buchanan

The onus, as it has been since Edgbaston, is on Buchanan and Ponting to belatedly get Australia back in the hunt.

Ponting, for all the criticism he has taken, will not lose the captaincy even if Australia lose the Ashes, if for no other reason than there exists no obvious replacement.

But Buchanan, whose contract expires next month, would be on shaky ground, and he admitted as much in his newspaper column last Sunday.

"If we lose the Ashes, there will be heads to roll," he wrote. "My job as coach will be on the line, too."

Buchanan prides himself on exploring the mental periphery. He is a thinking player's coach, although some sceptics might regard his approach to the job with raised eyebrows.

In the past he has taken to slipping secret memos under his troops' hotel doors, preaching the teachings of Chinese warlord Sun Tzu, encouraged talks on subjects ranging from wrestler Hulk Hogan to the Bee Gees to improve player confidence and, on this tour, held vocabulary lessons.

The point of the drill was to teach his players how to work a list of poly-syllabic words into everyday sentences. It failed spectacularly, and Buchanan admitted "it was a step too far".

Buchanan's time would have been better spent advising his batsmen how to counter reverse swing, his fielders how to catch and throw better and his bowlers how to keep their front feet behind the popping crease.

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The Queenslander recently admitted to "over-analysis", but in some areas there has clearly not been enough.

He has certainly talked a good game this summer, stubbornly and consistently leading us to believe that all is well in the Aussie camp.

There have been "lots of positives" from poor performances, "confidence" gained from defeats, and advice for counterpart Duncan Fletcher to look inside his own camp rather than question Australia's.

He said he was "accountable, not responsible" for his players' failings. True, he cannot catch the ball for them or play shots for them.

But if it is not his job to best prepare the Australian cricket team, individually and collectively, for every eventuality, then whose is it?

Fletcher has impeccably tutored his players how to target Australian weaknesses, but hitherto Buchanan has had no answers to the onslaught.

Buchanan has had 11 days between the fourth and fifth Tests to get his players ready for one of the biggest challenges of their careers.

It is going too far to say The Oval is a litmus test of Australia's greatness, a challenge to prove they are champions.

They have already answered every question asked of them in the past decade, and every champion must meet their Waterloo sometime.

No, this is a last chance for Australia produce the level of performance the whole of England have been fearing, but has frankly not looked like coming.

Will it finally come? One man's job could depend on it.