DAY 5 THE OVAL 2001

As Good as It Gets

While England’s cricketers pondered the enticements of India yesterday morning, Steve Waugh was being interviewed by Channel Four as though he was a visitor from the planet Krypton. How did Australia’s captain explain his staggering return to the colours in this Test, from what his interlocutor made sound like the brink of death, though was actually a calf injury? Waugh made it sound compellingly simple. ‘I’m a professional cricketer and I love playing for Australia,’ he said. ‘What else was I going to do?’

What indeed? Yesterday provided another reason why he loves it too: a performance of aggressive bowling and out-cricket at concert pitch. When Adam Gilchrist preached the doctrine of attacking cricket after defeat at Headingley, it seemed a little guileless. When Steve Waugh practised it at the Oval, it appeared altogether intimidating.

Although the English batsmen looked peeved to have been called out on a Bank Holiday, it was another day at the office for Waugh, inhibitingly close to silly point throughout. Hussain drove his first ball off the back foot into his rival’s ankle – Waugh did not move, let alone flinch. Ramprakash did the same – Waugh this time barely blinked. Both batsmen fell with the surrounding convention of fielders very much in mind, Hussain playing pad first, Ramprakash trying to steer a leg break to safety.

Stewart later repeated the error, holding his bat from harm but neglecting his stumps. With others, there was justification for Homer Simpson’s dictum: ‘Trying is just the first step to failure.’ Afzaal lit on the vaguest evidence of a half-volley and skewered it to slip. Occasionally, between overs, as he swapped from helmet to cap, Australia’s captain was seen bare-headed. It looked odd, like a clean-shaven Groucho Marx or Buddy Holly wearing contacts. But then the headgear, and the pressure, came back on.

So the Australians made a little more history. The Oval was English cricket’s final fastness – Australia had not won here since 1972 – yet it fell like all the citadels before it. Rather like the Perth Test of February 1995, where the euphoria of an English win in the previous match lingered no longer than the next Australian innings, the conclusion was sadly anti-climactic. Never mind that Stewart and Gough are suddenly shy of going to India; a few others in this Test have made cases for a winter free of cricket employment.

Where there’s history, there has all summer been Warne (31 wickets for the series) and McGrath (32 wickets). They find it difficult to do anything these days without setting a record of some sort, especially with whole websites now devoted to instances of five-wickets-or-more-by-bowlers-favouring-floppy-hats and rejected-LBW-appeals-by-cricketers-with-surnames-containing-two-or-more-vowels.

Yesterday’s landmarks, though, were not insignificant. By dismissing Ramprakash, Warne passed Curtly Ambrose’s wicket total, moving to fifth on the Test list. By dismissing Afzaal, McGrath left Dennis Lillee behind, moving to second on the Australian list. It is strange that we think of bowling partnerships only in terms of new-ball attacks: Hall and Griffith, Lindwall and Miller et al. In fact, with both Warne and McGrath in his charge, Steve Waugh has had perhaps the ideal coupling, covering all possible conditions and contingencies.

Warne and McGrath have performed their prodigies, moreover, with little support. Brett Lee has been a failure and, after bowling skilfully for the first three Tests, Jason Gillespie has looked in need of the shade of a coolabah tree. More prolonged resistance from England’s batsmen might have tested the robustness of the four-bowler formula, but it never arose.

The talent in this Australian side runs deep. It may be stronger than the impressive ensemble that Mark Taylor led here four years ago. Yet the difference between the contestants in this rubber, rather than being a question of man-for-man talent, seems rather to condense to Waugh’s pre-play comment. He and his players are, paradoxically if you like, professionals who love what they do. For them, missing a Test is painful, missing a tour an ordeal.

This is their captain’s creed, though he himself inherited it from his first skipper Allan Border, who in fifteen years as a Test cricketer did not miss a single trip abroad, and who played more consecutive Tests than any player in history. This spirit is now part of the team’s DNA, and destined accordingly to pass to the next generation.

Throughout this series, by contrast, England have projected an image of confusion about their objectives: in their faulty fielding, their plague of injuries, their coyness about responsibility, and now their misgivings about touring. The Australians, who draw strength from the psychological frailty they perceive in others, have found them almost willing victims. In eighteen months, England and Australia meet again. Some of the faces will be different, but it is difficult to see England uncovering a supply of kryptonite in the meantime.

The Guardian September 2001