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.
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.
