To show how Test cricket has changed, let me take you back in time (cue: harp glissandi/dry ice). The year is 1961, and as now, it’s the second week of July. England are playing Australia at the Headingly, Leeds ground in the third match of the series. They’re one down, and in the fast bowling department things are sufficiently bad that they’ve called up Les Jackson, a forty year old with a single 1949 Test appearance to his name and thinning hair. As now, public expectation is great: the previous series against Australia in England has been famously won, on the back of unparalleled bowling feats by off-spinner Jim Laker, who’s now fallen out with the cricket authorities and is sulking somewhere in a beer tent learning journalism, writing a rather good book about the series.
On the first day Australia are all out for 237, and England have five overs to bat until close of play. Jackson goes quite well, but ‘Fiery’ Fred Trueman takes the plaudits with five wickets. Trueman is already something of a sporting celebrity, and is to become a greater one in subsequent years. By the close of his career he will have taken 307 Test wickets, more than anyone else at that time, and more than any contemporary or recent English bowler has achieved - in an era when far more Test cricket is played. In that first Australian innings the English bowl 110 overs. The English reply is at an even more sedate pace: it takes them another four sessions of play and 149 overs to reach 299 all out. The pitch is sluggish, and relatively bowler-friendly. The most dangerous Aussie bowler, the left-armer Alan Davidson, reduces his pace and concentrates on bowling ‘cutters’, running his fingers down the left-hand side of the ball to make it ‘cut’ towards the waiting slips. He bowls 47 overs for a personal cost of 63 runs with twenty three of those overs being ‘maidens’ (i.e. no runs are scored from them). At one point Murray and Barrington, neither of them strokeless batsmen, play eleven consecutive overs without a run accruing. This slow rate of scoring is remarkable because fielders then were invariably closer to the batters than they are now, affording to modern eyes, many opportunities to hit ‘over the top’. And also because there is at least one remarkable assault on the bowling which highlights the negligible rate of scoring during the rest of the innings. On the Saturday morning the left-arm spinner Tony Lock strides out to bat, and in three dramatic overs and seventeen minutes hits thirty runs with eight boundaries. Lock was an aggressive cricketer in everything he did. It’s been sometimes said of the great Shane Warne that he was a slow bowler with a fast bowler’s temperament, and the same was true of Lock. He fielded superbly in dangerous positions close to the bat on the leg-side at a time when head protection was entirely absent, and his batting, though usually short-lived, could be brutishly effective. This time it’s probably the turning point of the match. When Australia bat again they collapse in not much more than two hours and are all out for 120 on an increasingly unreliable pitch, destroyed by Trueman’s pace and hostility. The selectors say thank you to Jackson, and he’s never picked again. Mind you, Trueman’s relationship with them, like Laker’s, is scarcely conducted on a bed of roses. All three were regular pro’s in a game at the time ruled by amateurs with dodgy upper class accents and hats. It was the first time I’d ever encountered a real ‘batting collapse’ and I remember the sense of exhilaration as yet another Australian wicket tumbled. England have a small target to chase and win with eight wickets to spare, the match being over in just three of the five days – even more unusual then than now.
In yesterday’s play at Cardiff, 348 runs were scored, from far fewer overs than were seen at Leeds in 1961: just the regulation union rules 90 minus two for a change of innings. Back in 1961, there was no need to stipulate a minimum number of overs. Even though there were already complaints about bowlers wasting time, eighteen overs an hour was pretty standard, more if spin bowlers with short run-ups were operating. By comparison, batsmen took fewer risks and showed less enterprise, as witness the comparative scoring rates. When England were finally all out for 435 this morning, their overall scoring rate was just a shade over four runs an over – double what it was in 1961. The Australians bowled only eleven maiden overs in the entire innings. But this morning too, an English spin bowler launched a succession of bold shots against Australian bowling. Graeme Swann boosted the likely England total with an exciting innings of 47 not out from just forty balls faced. In 1961 the slowness of batting was to provoke a ‘Campaign for Brighter Cricket’, and this in turn led to the invention of ‘limited overs’ versions of the professional game, culminating in the changing patterns of format we see today. Older folks will sometimes say the game hasn’t improved: on that it seems to me the jury must remain out. There were faults then, and there are faults now. Whatever the case, the 1961 Headingley Test was a riveting game of cricket, the Saturday particularly so. How many other new young fans were created that day, besides me?
Once England had been dismissed just before lunch, the Australians showed how to bat on this Cardiff pitch. After the young tyro Hughes had been roughed up by Flintoff, and dismissed by a very good catch from wicketkeeper Prior, although not before he’d scored 36, Ponting and Katich settled in. They played straight, they cut down the risks, and they both scored centuries by the end of the day. England could easily lose from here, so quickly has the game moved on.
England 435. Australia 249 for one wicket.