Pastorale

While the English batsmen were clawing their way to victory last Saturday afternoon, I was walking through north west Kent along the long distance footpath which is called the London Loop. This describes a circle of roughly 150 miles broken by the Thames at Erith, and crossing the river in the west at Kingston. It passes through some surprisingly quiet countryside, given that its entire length is within the M25 London orbital motorway – but in case you’re thinking of trying it, I should warn you there are a few moments of grimness too!

About seven or eight miles from the Thames the route passes through the urban village of Old Bexley, a mile or so from the house where I spent most of my childhood and adolescence. From the High Street, the walker hangs a left up raggety Tanyard Lane, goes under the railway bridge, and turns right parallel to the railway up a path which will eventually bring her to an open space where once there were large gravel pits – this is the shallow valley of the River Cray. To the left about two hundred yards from Tanyard Lane is the ground of Bexley Cricket Club. Cricket has been played on this spot since the mid eighteen-seventies, but the history of Bexley C.C. goes back at least to 1805. It’s still today a very pretty ground, well managed and almost pastoral, given that this is distinctly suburban London. Quite by accident, I’d timed my arrival perfectly: it was midday and the game was in its first over. I stood and watched from the fence for a moment. The second over began, bowled from the far end. I took out my camera, clicked on the fourth or fifth ball, and as if I’d summoned up magic the batsman clipped the ball loosely off his pads and the fielder at mid-wicket took an easy catch. Disconsolate, his day ruined, the batsman walked from the ground slowly, so slowly, and threw his bat through the door of the little pavilion where it landed amongst his kit with a clatter and a curse. Drawn in by the little drama, I went through the ground gate and sat down on a bench by the scoreboard to ease my blistering heels and eat a sandwich. I was amazed to be greeted – in more friendly fashion than in many churches - and handed a hymnsheet – I mean a scorecard. There were as far as I could see, no other spectators apart from the teams and their immediate acolytes.

The next surprise was to recognise the bowler at the near end, who was also fielding beside me at third man when he wasn’t lumbering to the crease. I asked the man who’d handed me the scorecard, ‘Isn’t that Darren Cousins, who used to play for Northamptonshire?’ He said it was. ‘You follow Northants then?’ I admitted it was where I lived. Cousins is now in his mid to late thirties, I guess, at county level a worthy journeyman seam bowler, who for a couple of years did rather well in Northampton, on a pitch which was never exactly bowler-friendly. It seems he now lives in Cambridge but makes the round trip of 140 miles each weekend to play for Bexley in the Kent Premier League: the opponents this week, St. Lawrence, whose home is the Kent county ground at Canterbury. Only one other name on the scorecard meant anything - St. Lawrence’s P.G.Dixey, a young wicketkeeper currently on the fringe of the Kent side, kept from it by the excellent Geraint Jones. But 140 miles! No money for this, probably not even expenses, unless they’re paying him a subsistence wage to be a ‘senior pro’ and coach the kids.

It was evident I was watching a good class of cricket, and much, much better than the standard I remembered from occasional childhood visits. Cousins was not having one of his better days, but Jason Benn, bowling from the far end, was distinctly swift, even on an evidently sluggish pitch, particularly when he bent his back. The batting was cautious and entirely measured. A lovely checked extra cover drive was played off Cousins, never an inch off the turf, technically quite perfect. Checking the scorecard on the web a few days later, the second wicket pair got to 79 before the next wicket fell, and the new batsman, Charlie Hemphrey, eventually went on to make a classy century. I’d have stayed longer, but I was only halfway to my eventual destination at Petts Wood station, and I knew I’d have to nurse my feet on the way – it’s either my gait or my right boot, but too often I end up wounded when I walk. However, it was good to be reminded where the heart of the game beats in England, played for fun, but with great attention to detail. It deserves an audience. What a pity there isn’t one! I’d like to think that if I were ever to retire back to Bexley, I’d be a regular on the bench, swaddled in my peasant’s smock, and shaking a stick at each wicket that fell. Yet, there are probably equally fine prospects around the Northamptonshire villages, and who’s to say the quality of play may not be as good there too.

You're not going to like it Mr. Spock

If there’s life on planets in distant solar systems, and it's intelligent, do you think it plays sport? It seems a likely universal that, however many legs you've been given, you’d want to know who can move them the fastest. Perhaps unknown to us fleas really do have their own Olympic Games to celebrate who can jump the highest. The joy of football is its ease of play in a variety of situations, so perhaps an analogue for the ‘beautiful game’ is a possibility somewhere out near Alpha Centauri. Citius, altius, fortius. But somehow the eccentricities of cricket seem unlikely to be mimicked anywhere else in the depths of space, though maybe that’s just another tedious example of a human wrongly thinking that the world revolves around him. Well at any rate, if aliens ever make contact, let’s hope that they have a sense of play for mutual enjoyment, rather than the crueller notion that seems, for instance, endemic to cats. ‘To play with’ has a number of connotations. But I digress.

For all that cricket’s so steeped in stats, it’s sometimes a very illogical game in terms of who wins and who loses. Unpredictable, sometimes even rather random in its elevation of individuals to hero status, it maintains its charm by means of arcane laws and (in England at least) meteorological whim. And so it’s been at London’s Oval cricket ground these past few days, as England stuttered to a famous victory in the final Test match of the summer, and thus regained the Ashes they’d lost so overwhelmingly in Australia two years ago. If you still don’t know the significance of ‘The Ashes’ I once again commend you to Google where I’m sure many folks are gagging to tell you about this piece of Anglo-Australian heritage, which has resulted in an enduring and fascinating sporting rivalry. Anyway, 2009 now goes down in history alongside 1953, 1956, 1981 and 2005 as a Great Moment in recent English cricket history.

Here’s how it happened, though I still retell it through something of a haze of disbelief.

On Tuesday and Wednesday last week the weather was good in London. On Wednesday it was very good indeed with one of those puzzling and frustratingly short temperature spikes which England sometimes experiences. For one day and one day only, the mercury ascended to just around 30 degrees.

Now it was in everyone’s interests that the fifth Test produce a result. If the match were to have been a draw, the rules say the Ashes would have stayed with Australia, because the series itself would have been drawn one match apiece, and Australia were the winners in the previous series. England therefore went in to the match fully committed to attempting a victory. But no doubt the Aussies too would have preferred a win so that they could go home saying that they’d beaten the Poms fair and square. Again. Australians are like that.

But what seems to have happened last week was that the wicket was left exposed to the elements for longer than usual. Before the commencement of play it was, ex-England captain Michael Atherton observed ‘the colour of a rich tea biscuit’. Nevertheless I think everyone expected that like most Oval pitches it would be absolutely hard and true at least for the first half of the match. Later, maybe, spin bowling would be a decisive factor. So it was something of a surprise to see the ball begin to take chunks out of the surface of the wicket on the second day. One one occasion an Andrew Flintoff delivery caused a positive explosion of dust. These things play on the minds of batsmen. If the surface is uneven, the ball is likely to deviate awkwardly when it pitches: the batsmen can never trust to the line of the ball. The unusual state of the pitch can only have been conscious preparation by the groundstaff – but of course they wouldn’t have known which side it would have favoured, until the coin had been tossed, so this was a gamble, not a conspiracy. One thing was certain: the side winning the toss and batting had the advantage – and on this occasion that was England. Or so the logic ran – except that in the event, both sides scored more runs in their second innings than in their first.

The composition of both sides was controversial. The Australians omitted their spin bowler, Hauritz, presumably because their battery of quick bowlers had done so well for them at Leeds, and it would have seemed churlish to discard any of the four quite so quickly. As things turned out it was a pusillanimous piece of selection, although not as crucial as it might have been had the Australian batting been more steadfast in their first innings. If the game had been closer, Hauritz might have been the difference. By contrast England took the gamble of playing fast bowler Harmison and debutant batter Trott. The first selection turned out to be useful, the second absolutely inspired. Or remarkably good luck. When Trott has played a dozen more Test matches, we’ll have a clearer idea about that. In the event Panesar was omitted, and eventually this can be seen as a good decision in view of his lack of form. However there was a moment on the fourth day when we wondered if we would lose for lack of the 'turbanator'.

Once again, the umpiring in this match was undistinguished. Billy Bowden and Asad Rauf have made too many quixotic or just plain wrong decisions in this series, and they kept to their form here. Batsmen were given out caught when they hadn’t hit the ball, and leg before wicket when they had. Decisions were given against batsmen when the bowler by overstepping the bowling crease had bowled a no-ball – an ‘illegal’ delivery. It would be hard however to make a case that one side suffered more than the other: perhaps the Australians came out of it marginally worse off. This often seems to be the case for teams playing away from home, even with neutral umpires. Is the crowd the critical factor, even in mild-mannered Britain?

On the first day England spluttered their way to 307 for eight wickets. There was a fifty from Strauss, and a good half century from the recalled Bell. He needed to show that he could contribute to the first innings of a ‘chips down’ Test match. But largely the tendency for English batsmen to give their wicket away once they’d made a good start to their innings was confirmed. Collingwood was particularly to blame: his technique outside the off-stump at present is inadequate. Cook looks to have lost his way technically too. His strength square of the wicket on the off side has become a weakness, and he’s lost his balance and composure at the crease. Prior and Flintoff also fell to shots they won’t have been proud of. Trott played very solidly and confidently for someone making a Test debut in such an important match until he was ‘run out’ as he overbalanced playing the ball into the leg side. Katich’s reactions were tremendous in throwing down the stumps before the batsman had time to recover: an excellent piece of fielding.

On the second morning, Broad and the tail enders squeezed out a few more runs to take England to 332, but the pundits were pretty much agreed: this was an inadequate England score on this pitch. The expectation was that the Australians would score far more heavily, and put possibly terminal pressure on the English when they batted again. England had thrown it away.

And at 73 for no wicket, and the initial storm of fast bowling weathered, that seemed to be the script. However Stuart Broad had other ideas. By keeping the ball full and allowing it to swing he quickly removed the heart of the Australian batting to the extent that sixteen overs later they were 111 for 7, and the match was effectively won, though the English weren’t yet daring to allow themselves believe it. Broad has often looked ineffective in these first years of his international career, but here he showed that with his height and rhythm he can cause problems when he’s prepared to be patient and consistent. These unglamorous, slightly dogged virtues can be hard for a golden lad to make his own in an age where media attention rakes in the cash. After slightly stiffer resistance from the tail, Swann – who was bowling very nicely – wrapped up the innings at 160, and to their surprise England found themselves batting again. They stuttered and stumbled to 58 for 3 at the close with Strauss and Trott clinging on. Collingwood and Cook had again failed. At this point the expectation was that the wicket would deteriorate further and England would be lucky to make 200. Since the lead was 172, the task for Australia would still be formidable – probably beyond them.

But again, on Saturday, the pitch confounded everyone. Although it looked bad, and dust continued to puff up from the ball when it pitched, batting was obviously quite possible. Strauss was excellent in making 75, and Trott extraordinary in maintaining his calm to end on 119. The late middle order was enterprising, particularly Graeme Swann who biffed 63 from 57 balls to leave Australia absolutely on the ropes. When England eventually declared at 373 their opponents now had to make more runs to win the match than anyone had ever previously achieved in any Test anywhere. Only the weather could save them now, and that didn’t seem likely.

And yet. And yet. Although logic told us that it couldn’t possibly happen, not on this pitch, not in this match, as Australia went to close of play at 80 without loss, we began to wonder. I said to someone after church on the Sunday morning that I thought it would go to a fifth day at least, and although a wicket fell in each of the first two overs of the day, one to Swann, one to Broad and both lbw, by mid afternoon with Australia 217 for 2 and Ponting and Michael Hussey looking quite untroubled, anything still looked achievable. Then in the space of a few overs the English fielding, so often lack-lustre, regained them the initiative. Thus far Flintoff’s match had been a quiet one apart from clean bowling Hilfenhaus to end the first Australian knock and striking four quick boundaries second time around. Did Ponting assume that the injury Flintoff was carrying would provide him with an extra second or two to make his ground in taking a quick run? If so, he was wrong. Flintoff’s quick gathering of the ball and direct hit to the stumps saw off the Australian captain. And then, Michael Clarke replayed Trott’s first innings overbalancing act, revealed by the cameras as a frame away from safety when Strauss too flicked down the stumps from a short distance away. Thereafter, there was scant resistance from a demoralised batting line up, and by about ten to six, the England team were expressing their jubilation. Even the neglected Steve Harmison had played a part, prising out three of the Australian batters. The atmosphere at the end of the match reminded me of an extremely large fete – good natured, jolly, but rather restrained. There was little or no triumphalism.

When the Australians were beaten in 2005, there was daftness in the air – open-top buses, MBE decorations from the Queen for all of the players, including some, like Paul Collingwood, who had contributed little to the victory, loose talk about England being the best team in the world, lionising of players who still had much to prove. The legacy was the infamous trip Down Under which followed eighteen months later, where the English players were exposed as hollow men. Four years later the mood has been far more sombre and appropriate, partly by design, insomuch as the players now move immediately into one-day matches where reputations will quickly be enhanced or redressed, and partly because a lesson has been learned.

What might better be said of this match, which ebbed and flowed – as the series has done – with collective wills evident and individual skills glowingly expressed – is that it was a great advertisement for the enduring appeal of a sport perhaps, in this form, in its twilight years. I’m grateful to have been able to follow it. Its memories will warm the cockles of my heart as Bolton Wanderers play some other mid-table EPL soccer club on a dark January Saturday afternoon.

England 332 and 373 for 9 declared: Australia 160 and 348.
England won by 197 runs, and won the series 2-1

Sorry, Mr. Spock. Unlikely. Illogical. But true. Throughout the series Australia scored more runs, and took more wickets. Their fielding was better. They were the better team man for man. They remain one place ahead of the English in the world rankings. Yet at a few key moments they weakened, and so lost. Even in the weird and wonderful world of cricket, this is quite rare.

Tribal matters

A significant book could be written about the history of race and cricket. Someone’s probably done it already, and without looking it up I’d guess that C.L.R. James the great West Indian socialist and writer about the game may have been the one. At the very least he’ll have serially passed comment on many of the relevant issues while he was alive. But it’s still a developing story. How sad that the only native Australian to have represented his country in recent times, Andrew Symonds, should have hit a brick wall with the game’s administrators in the way he’s done. How odd that so few British born people of Afro-Caribbean descent are currently even knocking on the door of the English team. And what a lesson to us that the effects of ‘apartheid’ still rumble on, forty years after John Arlott brought Basil D’Oliveira – a ‘coloured’ man - out of the South African cricketing wilderness eventually to play for England. You can’t overturn the consequences of evil politics overnight. Like cricket, that’s a long game.

One of the unexpected consequences is that so many white South Africans with cricket in their blood have made Britain their home – though for differing reasons. After D’Oliveira came Tony Greig, six and a half feet of blond aggressive intent, who rallied English cricket briefly before sailing on to Australia where he helped change the sport into something else, floodlights, pyjama clothing and all, during the late seventies and early eighties. Then there was Allan Lamb, who the town and county of Northampton got to know very well during the nineteen eighties: a diminutive, dashing, bristling batsman with a robust sense of humour. He teamed up with Ian Botham, and even now TV ads for British meat occasionally pop up using a ‘Beefy and Lamby’ strapline – a joke probably understood by a diminishing number of the audience. Then we had great hopes of Graeme Hick, a refugee from Zimbabwe. On his first showing in England with a young Zimbabwe team he scored two big double-hundreds. We believed that Hick’s powerful frame and broad bat would deliver a cascade of runs for England after his qualification. But by the time he’d qualified the fearlessness of youth had ebbed away, and although Hick played often for England, in the Test match arena he became famous for not delivering as it was hoped he might. In the contemporary side, there’s Pietersen of course. This time, as opposed to Tony Greig, the cricketer has left South Africa because he feared that racial bias against a white man might militate against selection for the country of his birth. Andrew Strauss too has as many South African credentials as English, although the trace of accent is now very slight. And now welcome Jonathan Trott, the latest recruit to the English Test team, another man of giant physical stature, one of whose forbears, Albert, played with distinction for both England and Australia in another age.

Whether Trott is a wise selection we’ll find out in less than a week’s time. He’s had a great season with the bat, and is said (well they would, wouldn’t they!) to have a great temperament. He used to bowl a bit of medium pace too, but as often seems to happen in England, this talent has been neglected recently. In his stead the selectors could have chosen Mark Ramprakash to play on his home ground. Like Hick his record in Test cricket (and Ramps last played some years ago) doesn’t measure up to his enormous talent, which in the last five years has simply taken apart anyone who’s bowled against him on the county circuit in a way without precedent in my lifetime. But the selectors in their wisdom have decided a leopard can’t change his spots. Trescothick, the other English batsman of massive talent, seems still too mentally fragile to respond to the call, so Trott it will be. Hot to Trott? Or on a bad trot? Pick your headline.

One has to wonder what subconscious messages have been sent to players by those choosing England teams in recent years. How is it that the three talented players mentioned above – Hick, Ramprakash and Trescothick – have all failed to perform for their England? Surely there must have been – must still be – a failure to nurture on the part of coaches and administrators? And when you add to that the current form of Monty Panesar, whose game seems to have suffered a terrible crisis of confidence, a pattern seems to be established. (Panesar has been picked for the Oval, but has picked up a mere handful of wickets this season against mediocre opposition at great cost.)

There must be the suspicion that ‘man management’ (itself a gender specific phrase) operates, has operated, at a very poor level in the England set-up. If you don’t fit the system, because of raw talent, or colour, (or sexual orientation?) or eccentricity, you don’t get support. Can that really be true?

Good luck to England on Thursday. They’re going to need it if the weather stays fair. They haven't necessarily given themselves the best chance.

It ain't what you do...

On rare occasions sport can be genuinely moving. For me, this is usually when the human body is celebrated by an individual who at their absolute peak of condition shows off the wonderful things it can do. The triumph of heptathlete Jessica Ennis at the World Athletics Championship over the weekend was an instance. I’ll treasure the memory because she’ll perhaps never again be so perfectly able to deliver her combination of skills free from injury or anxiety. It was the kind of glowing performance only a twenty-two year old who’s never won anything major could turn in. Almost as marvellous was the obvious camaraderie between most of the competitors as they congratulated each other afterwards – I’m not sure the Ukrainians were joining in the dancing, but then there’s always a serpent in Eden.

Her triumph was followed by Usain Bolt’s mind-boggling 9.58 win over one hundred metres. I suppose one’s reaction to that should have been the same, but here it’s the desperate wish to believe which colours the result. His sudden improvement over the distance, along with that of other Jamaican sprinters, and their board’s equivocal reaction to positive doping tests, leaves a nagging anxiety. Some of us remember how we were taken in by ‘Flo Jo’ too well.

I don’t find myself moved by cricket very often, and less as I get older. There are the moments when great cricketers retire. One such was Curtley Ambrose, the great West Indian quick bowler at the Oval ground a few years ago, on a golden late afternoon – the ebbing of his career along with a particular season. Intimations of mortality – but also the celebration of a singular physical presence, fluid, purposeful, a man literally towering above those around him. Again it’s filthy lucre that spoils things. If sports men and women are paid to do a job at outrageous rates, excellence is what they’re supposed to deliver, and woe betide them if they don’t. We, who earn far less than they, are robbed of some of our power to worship and wonder.

The rather abbreviated Edgbaston symphony subsided as we all expected it to, although there was an unexpected coda as, after Anderson’s early departure from the crease, Broad and Swann laid about the bowling joyfully. They both made sixty odd, but might have made fifteen between them on another day. Once they located the ball’s direction of travel (and it took each batsman a while) they struck the thing mightily, and for a while discomfited the Australian bowlers, particularly Clark. He took it in good part, accepting the crowd’s applause for being hit all round the ground, while scratching his head under his baggy green cap. Broad was doing to him what he’d done to Broad a day earlier, but with interest accruing.

Commentators coo about Broad’s potential as a batter, and reminisce about his likeness to his father. I remember Broad senior as an awkward customer, who enjoyed one notably successful season on tour in Austalia, but realistically achieved little else internationally. He had an improbable stance at the crease, born of the fact that like his son he was a tall man – in common with Basharat Hassan the one time Nottinghamshire player his bottom stuck out an amusingly long way as he waited for the bowler. Come and hit me, it said, and I expect they did a few times too. We’re told that Broad Junior was an opening batsman at school and was a relatively late convert to fast bowling. He stands tall, can punch the ball through the off-side, and tucks the ball nicely off his legs, but as yet if he drives from the front foot, he looks uncertain, and the ball often becomes airborne. The repertoire of shot isn’t great at present. Jury out.

Swann is an annoying batsman. He has oodles of talent, and apparently little application. His attitude at the crease rarely suggests permanence. There’s a touch of the Pietersen defence mechanism: this is the way I play – accept me as I am, which is encouraged by modern forms of the game. If he could show some discrimination and learn when to play tight, and when to play expansively, he too could score Test match hundreds. But let’s not cavil: these two entertained the crowd until lunchtime, and recovered some self-belief for a badly battered side. Whether they did enough to dispel the demons in advance of the final act of this Ashes drama remains to be seen.

I find it hard to imagine ever being dewy-eyed about any of the cricketers on display at Edgbaston. What are they doing to engender love in the hearts of those who watch? It’s both what you do, and the way that you do it.

England 102 and 263 Australia 445

It don't mean a thing...

…if it ain’t got that swing! Try a little experiment next time you have a spare wall and a partially deflated light children’s plastic football to hand – or rather to foot. Stand ten metres away from the wall and kick the ball with the outside of your foot with the intention of hitting the wall on the full. You may find that the ball swings two ways, first to the right (the equivalent of the cricketing ‘inswing’ and then to the left - the ‘outswinger’). The heavier or more inflated the ball, the more difficult it is to reproduce the result – it’s very hard indeed to achieve with a real football. So why does it behave like that? Over to the physicists, I’m afraid. I’m merely reporting the phenomenon, not explaining it.

The ‘swing’ of a cricket ball is still mystifying too, although there are many scientists and sports gurus who claim to understand it. Most bowlers however, even at the highest levels of skill, know there are days on which however much they polish one side of the ball or unbalance it with rubbed in sweat or dirt, however much they concentrate on a correct, upright or slightly canted seam position, the ball will obstinately maintain an arrow straight passage through the air. Other days, as is the current expression, they’ll bowl hoops without apparently having to try. The individual ball clearly has an influence, as do the atmospheric conditions, but the results are always unpredictable. ‘Reverse’ swing is now in our vocabulary too - easier to show than explain in print. Get a handy bowler to show you the principle. This phenomenon too is elusive.

The two-way swing thing does happen in cricket, although usually as a before and after bouncing thing. Wicketkeepers are sometimes left grasping at air as a rogue delivery sells them a dummy. And sometimes bowlers of extremely moderate pace are said to ‘wobble’ the ball – probably a combination of the direction of the breeze and their own natural tendency to swing the ball one way or another. At the age of fifteen I was one such, although an extremely open chest at the point of delivery plus a bowling arm which tended to drop into my stomach meant that the ball mostly just swung in to the batsman, often by quite a prodigious amount. Usually I got batsmen out clean bowled as the ball disappeared under their nose and cannoned into the leg-stump. It was a trick quickly worked out however, and anyway as I grew taller the amount of swing I could generate reduced substantially. Sadly I never learned to properly bowl an outswinger by changing my body position and adjusting the follow-through of my arm. I wish someone had been on hand to properly advise me apart from the one itinerant coach who briefly muttered about ‘bracing my leg’. I get the point now, but didn’t then.

At Leeds, England failed to claw back the fine mess their batters had gotten them into because their bowling lacked discipline, and two of their bowling attack, Harmison and Broad aren’t gifted swingers of the ball. They’re tall men who ‘hit the deck hard’ i.e. their speed and bounce are their main weapons. Anderson is the best England swing bowler, but he seemed to be carrying an injury which reduced both his pace and accuracy, and there was noticeably less attack in his approach to the bowling crease. His swing on this occasion often seemed telegraphed to the batsmen. Onions isn’t yet experienced enough to carry the weight when his colleagues aren’t firing on all cylinders. But there are destructive days to come from him, although maybe not in this series now: like Anderson at his best he can swing the ball late in its flight and at a good pace. The later the ball moves, the more likely the batsman is to feather an edge to the wicketkeeper or slip fielders.

Briefly in the late afternoon we hoped that England might show some fight, and we dreamed of that great Headingley match of 1981 when lagging behind on first innings by a substantial margin, Ian Botham and Graham Dilley launched an assault on the Australian bowlers which carried England to a lead of not very many. Then Bob Willis tore in down the hill like a man possessed (TV pictures of the time show him as a man so focused as not to be really there) and blew the dazed Australian batsmen away so that England won by 18 runs. It was a dizzy, dazzling afternoon of obscure improbabilities. But by the close of day two at Headlingley 2009 five English batsmen had walked purposefully to the middle before trudging back again. There was to be no miracle this time.

Close of day 2: England 102 and 82 for 5 Australia 445

Hindsight

The Headingley pitch has a reputation for producing exciting cricket. Why the grass and weather should interact there as nowhere else has never exactly been explained. But when there’s cloud cover or a sultry atmosphere, batting often seems unusually difficult in Leeds. And then, once the weather’s set fair, as it was for most of the recent match, everything is suddenly so much easier in the batsmen’s world: there’s immediately very little margin for error in the bowlers’ length. The ball ‘comes on’ to the bat when it’s pitched full, which with a speedy outfield and a compact ground means a lot of boundaries. And if pitched too short, the ball sits up and asks to be spanked away. So in one way it wasn’t surprising that the Fourth Test went no further than two and a half days, and given the momentum of the previous game I suppose we should have expected that Australia, not England, would be the winners. But what if England had chosen to ask Australia to bat? What then? The question may be one that haunts Andrew Strauss for the rest of his career because that decision, and what followed on the first morning, may have lost England the Ashes.

Two things bother me. One was the confusion which followed wicketkeeper Prior’s ‘ricked back’ which came on as a result of the pre-game kick about. Like others I can’t conceive why it’s thought a good idea to warm up for a game of cricket by playing soccer. The history of injuries sustained in this way is now a growing one. Anderson suffered in New Zealand. And so has Vaughan. And in this case, did the injury to Prior mean that Strauss was reluctant to field first, because Prior needed time to recover? If so that was an extremely expensive coaching mistake, rather than a captain’s misjudgement of atmospheric conditions, and much less easy to forgive. In the event, the ball swung and seamed throughout the first day, although England’s woefully slack batting was collusive, and 102 all out somewhere around two o’clock on the first afternoon meant that the game was as good as lost in the first three hours. Let’s pass quickly over the fact that Strauss also had to give three media interviews after tossing with Ponting, and before going out to open the batting. It’s one thing to be interviewed after you’ve come off the pitch at the end of a game, or at the end of two hours driving round a Grand Prix motor racing circuit – and even then the stars make a deal out of what a chore it is – but quite another for journalists and so-called lovers of the game to go seeking soundbytes when sports men and women should be focusing for a game or event. The tail’s wagging the dog. Perhaps we should have done things differently there, was the gist of coach Andy Flower’s response. You think?

The second thing is the omission of Flintoff. This series was always going to be about ‘Fred’ and ‘Kev’in their presence or absence. But the team selection here was mystifying. Flintoff thought he was fit. The coaching team decided otherwise. But clearly there was enough heat in the disagreement, that the big man was noticeably absent from the dressing room, at a time when you’d have thought he’d have been in there motivating, praising, cajoling. After all, he’s the one who’s supposed to make so much difference to the morale of the team. Perhaps he just couldn’t bear to look during those first catastrophic hours. And indeed what could he have said that was helpful to his erstwhile team-mates later on the second day? In his place they picked Harmison – supported it has to be said by a large proportion of the press – but not by Geoffrey Boycott, who in this matter for once talked more common sense than anyone else. Sidebottom was his pick, and surely this was right. A change of angle from a left-armer, who has a good grasp of swing and knows the ground – wouldn’t that have been a far better bet than someone whose weapon are speed, bounce, and intimidation? And, excellent cricketer that he is, why pick Swann and then bowl him for just sixteen overs while the Australians compile 445? A batsman would have been more useful, and Collingwood might have done an equally good job with the ball on this occasion. He certainly wouldn’t have bowled worse than the other England seamers.

Hindsight is all very well. And yes, after wars, particularly wars whose outcomes have been mixed (and maybe that’s all wars) we need a public enquiry so that we know better what to do next time, or so there isn’t a ‘next time’. But cricket is sport, and the kind of ruminations in which I’ve just indulged are all part of the fun. Sorry, Bill Shankly, but nobody died. What did or did not occur may be fascinating but it just isn’t that important. Except…

These days there’s so much money sloshing around in sport, that there will be enquiries, even if you and I as humble spectators have no right of attendance. Apart from anything else this was a cricket match which only lasted half as long as it should have done, and that will have financial consequences. And you’d think that, knowing that, cock-ups like the one which took place at Headingley on Friday morning would be very infrequent, that planning would be meticulous against all possibilities. Remember then one-time British premier Harold Macmillan’s muttered aside when things had gone wrong, ‘Events, dear boy, events…’

It’s inevitably going to be the one thing you haven't thought about which kills you.

Day 1 : England 102. Australia 196 for 4

Freeze frame

The weather was always likely to have the final say in the Third Test at Edgbaston: from the outset only the most optimistic or partisan watcher would have thought a result likely. That we came as close as we did is a tribute to the efficiency of contemporary anti-rain measures, and the intensity with which both these sides play their cricket. Sadly, the forecast isn’t promising for Headingley either: tomorrow’s first day looks at the moment as if it could be a wash-out too.

When cricket was played at Edgbaston, it was compelling enough, until mid-afternoon on the last day when it became apparent the English bowlers didn’t have the firepower on a still docile pitch to pull the Australian batting apart a second time. And throughout the match there were images to sustain the imagination.

Firstly of course there was the dramatic call-up of reserve wicketkeeper Manou to the Australian team, minutes before the start of the game, and at a point where if Strauss had so chosen, the suggestion that he play in Haddin’s place could have been refused. Haddin had broken a finger in the warm-up – a potentially disastrous moment for the Aussies, because he’s so often proved his value to them with the bat over the last twelve months. There was much discussion in the press about Strauss’s chivalrous action: the informal rules about where ‘gentlemanly’ behaviour begins and ends in cricket are as vague as territorial claims to the Antarctic. There seemed to be general agreement that what Strauss did was A Very Good Thing. But it seemed to me the journalists were leaving room that if Manou scored a hundred on debut, and pouched ten catches, they’d hold the English skipper out to dry. ‘Weak England captain puts Ashes in jeopardy’. In the event, the debutant got an extremely good ball from Anderson which cleaned up his stumps, batted out some time in the second knock, and kept wicket competently, taking just three catches without fuss. The image which remains is of him joyfully receiving his baggy green cap from Ricky Ponting on the second morning. There hadn’t been time for the ceremony on the first. Manou may be lucky to play in a Test for Australia again.

The second thing I shall remember is Watson’s first morning innings. We English had high hopes of the new Shane: we were salivating at the prospect of this one-time all-rounder, now makeshift opening bat, being turned inside out by Freddie’s pace. In the event, Freddie went through the match wicketless, and it was Watson who probably prevented England winning by scoring half-centuries in both innings and being top-scorer first time round. To be fair, during England’s purple patch on the Friday morning when the humid conditions were at their juiciest and most helpful for England’s swing bowling, he lasted one ball – the first ball of the morning – but by then he’d done just enough to take Australia to security. Half an hour into play on the first day, he squirted a boundary to third man, Flintoff bowled him a bouncer and gave him the stare. Flintoff’s stare is meaningful without real menace. Everyone knows he’s much too nice a guy for murder and mayhem, even when less than sober. There’ve been Australian bowlers in the past about whom one would have been less sure. When Dennis Lillee stared, anything seemed possible. And when South African Allan Donald utterly lost his cool in the face of Mike Atherton’s stubborn provocation a few years ago, for all that both sides laughed it off subsequently, there was a real frisson of danger. Anyway, the point is Watson just smiled while Fred glared: an apparently genuine, amused smile. If he was acting, he played the part very well. Flintoff enjoyed batting on this pitch, but he got little reward for his energetic bowling.

On that second morning Onions and Anderson were destructive, swinging the ball at a good pace, and taking out seven Australian wickets for 77 at one point before the tail-enders restored a little respectability. Sweet for Onions. He’d been on the end of some rubbishing from Australian commentators, quick to try and get Steve Harmison into the England team on pitches which wouldn’t have suited him, and where they could have got thoroughly into the big man’s head. You’ve got to wonder whether all along they haven’t been more concerned about the focus of the younger, hungrier bowler. Onions has good pace, and a clever bouncer, which did for Ponting in the first innings. The previous ball had also been short, but slightly slower. The next was quicker, and deceived the Australian captain for pace. The Australian captain didn’t have a great game. In the second innings he was out-thought by Graeme Swann and clean bowled at the end of a very testing over: perhaps the most absorbing six balls of the match.

Flintoff turned back the clock with an innings of the sort he used to play more regularly for England. In Prior he found a good foil, but just when it looked as if their rapid rate of scoring would take England to a point of real strength, he got an oddity of a ball from Hauritz which unlike any other in the match bit into the rough outside his off-stump and hit his gloves to offer an easy catch to slip. An hour more and England might have had a lead sufficient to really intimidate the Australians.

As it was Clarke’s broad bat snuffed out the chance of a win. He seems to be hitting most balls in the sweet spot at present. His driving through extra cover and straight was classically elegant: lovely to watch. There actually never seemed any likelihood that he and North wouldn't save the game.

A final thought. Had this match gone to a sixth day, England would have been the team struggling to survive.

On to Leeds, with pleas for civility from the watching crowd. Which will undoubtedly be ignored.

Australia 263 and 375 for 5 England 376