‘History is more or less bunk,’ Henry Ford said famously. The Second Test is providing support for his view. For seventy-five years Australia has ruled Lord’s, unbeaten, seemingly unbeatable, by its oldest opponent. Today Ricky Ponting’s team disintegrated as noisily and abjectly as an old Tin Lizzie.
It was Ponting’s fall that portended the collapse, which left Australia 70 runs short of avoiding the follow-on with only two wickets in hand. At each subsequent wicket, the camera tracked him to the balcony of the Australian dressing room, biding his time, biting his lip—as well he might have, given some of the headstrong strokes played. Hughes, Katich, Johnson, North and Haddin all fell to pull shots, the kind that in Cardiff produced spectacular boundaries but here a mix of drag-ons, strangles and skyers.
James Anderson’s history against Australia, meanwhile, had been somewhat gruelling: four Test matches, seven wickets at 74.7. Today he reduced it to 51. In the last Ashes series he bowled two lengths and seemed to have lost a yard; in taking 4 for 36 here from seventeen overs, he looked more like the bowler who swung the ball consistently at 90 miles per hour at Chester-le-Street against the West Indies.
Not only was the past no guide to today, but the ease with which the batsmen were playing in mid-afternoon provided no hint of Australia’s impending doom, having polished the last four English wickets off for 61. The leading indicator was the dismissal of Ponting, who found a bizarre, almost postmodern method of dismissal, being correctly given out by incorrect means.
It takes some explaining. The catch that Strauss pouched at first slip had come from Ponting’s pad with no involvement of bat, contrary to umpire Koertzen’s suspicions. Having not hit the bat, however, the ball was seen on replay to be destined to hit leg stump. Ponting was officially caught at slip because Koertzen failed to ask third umpire Nigel Llong whether the replay revealed the batsman to have hit the ball; all he did was check if it had carried.
Under the referral system to be phased into Test cricket at the end of this series, Ponting would probably have been given out lbw. But while justice was done, it was not seen to be done, for the only people who knew ought of the matter were television viewers aided by video slo-mo and Hawk-Eye. Ponting had to surmount his annoyance and disorientation quickly, for fifteen minutes later he was presenting his team to the Queen. The temptation was to reach for a speech balloon: ‘My husband and I reckon that Rudi is a rubbish umpire too.’
Deprived of its copper-bottomed Ponting run guarantee, Australia’s innings needed a new underwriting. Two rain breaks around an interlude of 21 balls posed a further challenge: concentration was disrupted, the pitch juiced up. Katich again proved his dependability and his idiosyncrasy, his little shuffle like a fencer’s advance, his shots executed like jujitsu chops. Having made a century on his maiden first-class appearance at Lord’s six years ago, he did not perhaps feel the same strain of unfamiliarity as his fellows. But he got himself out when the going was good, mishooking a long-hop to fine leg, as he had at Worcester, after adding 93 from 154 balls with Hussey. And from little things, big things grow.
Hussey’s second Test fifty in his last fifteen innings contained some crisp drives, some succulent pulls and only one alarm; when 40, he zigged as a ball from Onions zagged, just clearing an unprotected off stump, Hilfenhaus having ended Strauss’s entrenchment in a similar fashion with the day’s second delivery. The Australian did not learn from his mistake, allowing Flintoff to hit the top of off unimpeded sixteen balls later. When Clarke was then neatly caught at short midwicket off the resuming Anderson, Australia had lost three for 8 in 25 deliveries, and the game’s complexion had changed as completely as Michael Jackson’s.
North had the misfortune to lose the bulk of the strike for a period, idling thirty-three minutes before dragging on what was only his fourteenth delivery, a slightly fretful pull. Johnson skyed his attempt at the same shot, Haddin miscued his, and the team that batted so deep at Sophia Gardens was suddenly out of its depth. Anderson aside, who bowled to a full length and consistent line, the English bowling was essentially serviceable rather than penetrative. Broad was mainly unthreatening. Flintoff touched 93 miles per hour again, although when he rose gingerly from a skid while fielding off his own bowling, he was the apprehensive focus of all eyes: hell, if he took a deep breath these days you’d fret about the wear and tear on his diaphragm. In the end, though, England’s only concern was that Pietersen spent part of the last session off the field, replaced by MCC ground staff member Adam London, who sounded like a creature of Martin Amis’s imagination but looked like Nigel Moles-worth’s nemesis Fotherington-Thomas.
The post-tea session, encompassing six Australian wickets for 69 from twenty overs, is only the third the tourists have clearly lost on tour, but it may be enough to send them behind in the series—an expensive lesson for this young team. Ford also observed that ‘as we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities’. That saying is getting a good run at Lord’s too.