Try explaining this to an American. For much of this First Test at Sophia Gardens, England were a shambles, humiliatingly poor, virtually finishing fourth behind Australia, Wales and then some daylight. Yet thanks to their last pair, James Anderson and Monty Panesar, who warded Australia off for 69 deliveries this evening, they go to Lord’s with the series still 0–0.
Cue all sorts of cod psychology. Is it as good as a win for England? Is it a form of defeat for Australia? Ricky Ponting admitted last night that the visitors’ dressing room was ‘quiet’ at the close, with the qualifier that this would only last for an hour or two. Andrew Strauss spoke of feeling ‘pride’ but mainly ‘relief’, with the admission it had been ‘horrible to watch’.
Both sides have certainly learned a lot; in England’s case, this has been at best salutary, at worst embarrassing. The Australians—captain, players and press—were feeling hard done by at the end, sensing perfidious Albion behind late on-field sorties by England’s physiotherapist and twelfth man, which smacked of time wasting.
What’s for sure is that the series needed just such a result: drama 2009 style, rather than a warming over of 2005. For this was a day’s play full of plots, subplots and intrigues, a fine advertisement for what, in the spirit of Twenty20, will probably soon be called Four-Hundred-and-Fifty450.
Before play, Cardiff was enough to make any Melburnian homesick. Rain was pouring one moment, sunshine gleaming the next, with the best cricket weather probably at 6 a.m. Play began beneath cloud cover but by noon the arena was flooded with light, surprisingly warm, and full of fans trying to make the most of a day that few could see going past tea.
Pietersen apparently exchanged words with the tourists during the morning’s warm-ups, when a ball he struck interfered with an Australian routine. It was his last effective stroke. When he batted, he went as close as one can to playing a shot without actually playing one: it was like smoking without inhaling. Two overs earlier, he had allowed Hilfenhaus to hit his back pad while letting a ball go that came back slightly; this time, he held his bat high as a ball zeroed in on middle. At the last split second, the bat began descending, but posthumously; the delivery held its line, collecting the top of off.
Pietersen might have been leaving on length, banking on the bounce to save him; Pietersen might have been leaving on principle, to show, after his first-innings indiscretion, exactly how responsible he can be. Who can say? The contents of Pietersen’s head enthral English cricket fans, as the contents of Michael Jackson’s spellbind the tabloids.
Whatever the case, his technique at the moment is a train wreck: balance amiss, front foot barely budging. This was a dismissal with a touch about it of Michael Vaughan, a high-class batsman who could nonetheless make a nondescript delivery look like the proverbial sostenutor.
With Pietersen’s dismissal, odds on an English victory were officially listed at 501 to 1. Longer than Headingley ’81! Time for a plunge, surely! On the other hand, a pound’s a pound. Five of them and you almost have enough for a cup of coffee in London. When Strauss was then caught at the wicket in Hauritz’s first over, the odds shot out to 601 to 1. Here was a lost cause in which not even Dennis Lillee or Rod Marsh would have invested.
The Test would have been over by lunch had Katich been perched a couple of feet closer at bat-pad when Collingwood (11) got a glove on Hauritz. The next ball, too, rolled to within a micron of the stumps, until Collingwood’s groping back foot interposed.
These alarms apart, Collingwood batted with commendable coolness. No England player looks quite so grim on the field; none stretches his talents so far. Nor did he make the same mistake as at Adelaide Oval two and a half years ago, when the strokelessness of his defiance (22 not out in 198 minutes) cost runs that might have extended Australia’s victory chase, although paralysis did seem to set in when England did not score a run in the first five and a half overs after lunch.
Awkward slip catches made to look simple accounted for Flintoff and Prior, and Broad completed a poor match lbw to Hauritz, having the nerve to shake his head afterwards when any umpire other than Billy Doctrove would have given him out first ball, hit on the boot by Johnson. The chirpy Swann provided Collingwood with the most productive support and also the most protracted, spinning the seventieth over out to ten minutes by twice calling for cold spray after he was hit on the arm and finger. He might have requested it a third time for his ears after some gratuitous advice from bowler Peter Siddle.
The second new ball finally did for Swann, lbw in what proved the mysteriously underbowled Hilfenhaus’s twelfth and final over for the day. And at this pass, as the match came to its climax, Ponting seemed to miss a trick, depending on a swift Siddle but a wayward Johnson, then, anxious to squeeze in the maximum number of overs, Hauritz and North.
Siddle had Collingwood caught at backward point, and the Australians rejoiced again; Collingwood, devastated, could be seen in the dressing-room window for the rest of the innings, still wearing his pads. But Johnson bowled three wides in a sloppy six overs and, apart from some speculative running, Anderson and Panesar looked unexpectedly untroubled, the pace bowlers operating without a short leg, the spinners not extracting the turn they had on the second day. England went into the lead with 45 deliveries to go, an Anderson thick edge flying for four to third man, followed by another to point. The crowd was ecstatic. One half expected a chorus of ‘Land of My Fathers’.
After North had bowled the 102nd over, England’s substitute fielder Bilal Shafayat came on with fresh gloves, and their physio Steve McCaig with an urgent consignment of Juicy Fruit—or something. The message imparted was that the match was being played to time rather than overs, so it was essential to reach 6.40 p.m.—ten minutes before the scheduled finish, but the effective end because of the time required for a change of innings.
Ponting was decidedly unimpressed, and after another unscheduled visit he let the interlopers know it. Anderson, to his credit, was hardly more impressed. He turned away and looked faintly embarrassed: it could just as easily have worked Australia’s way by disturbing the batsmen’s concentration. Strauss later called it a ‘misunderstanding’, a convenient euphemism. But in the end, the 105th and last over beginning at 6.39 p.m., it probably did not entail any net loss of bowling time. Anderson met each ball from Hauritz with the deadest of bats, apart from the last, from which was run a final bye.
Actually, never mind an American. Try to explain this match, and the sheer fun and excitement of the final hour, with defensive shots being cheered to the echo, attacking strokes sending a chill up the collective spine, to Lalit Modi.