Seventy-five years of history was never going to end with a whimper. And, fortunately, the bang looks like being of cricket rather than umpiring. Midway through the afternoon, fifth-day tickets for this Test match were hardly worth the price of their paper; if Michael Clarke and Brad Haddin survive the first hour tomorrow, they just might be worth their weight in gold.
In a kind of protracted re-run of Edgbaston 2005, where Australia advanced coolly on a target they’d hardly any right to approach, Clarke and Haddin used the last three hours of the fourth day to add a bright and sometimes even breezy 185 for the sixth wicket, putting Australia in sight of, if not quite in touch with, a remarkable Test victory. Australia need another 209 runs; England need a further five wickets. By most cricket calculations, England is way ahead. But the Lord’s pitch is flatter than Nevada, and that oh-so-precious momentum, at least in the last hour of today, was Australia’s.
For the first half of the day, after Strauss had declared overnight and set Australia 522 to win, the momentum was with England—and the umpires.
So far in this series, Flintoff has acted as a sort of media wind turbine, taking up an extraordinary amount of oxygen while generating relatively little energy. Today he showed why the oxygen has been worth it, pounding in from the Pavilion End like there was no tomorrow—as indeed, there hardly is.
Flintoff first followed a plan devised by the South Africans, who had some success against Katich bowling slightly wide, outside his eyeline. It worked a treat, Katich skewering to backward point, although it might have come to nought had umpire Koertzen been more vigilant about the front line: Flintoff’s left foot had trespassed about 6 inches.
The 6 foot, 2 inch Flintoff then launched himself at the 5 foot, 6 inch Phillip Hughes, initiating the twenty year old in some old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon as he tested out his technique against the short ball at speeds consistently in excess of 90 miles per hour. It was stirring bowling, every ball pregnant with menace, even if Flintoff then called for physio Kirk Russell in order to remind us that these spells are not without cost.
Ponting punched his first offering from Anderson down the ground for four—usually a sign that his batting is in good order. Two balls later, Anderson retaliated, jamming Ponting’s bottom hand against the handle—hard. Katich is a habitual leg-side perambulator between deliveries; Ponting not usually. Nor does Ponting commonly remove his gloves to examine a bowler’s handiwork. Here he did both, his shoulders sagging as he did so, not with pain so much as resignation: that’d be right, he seemed to say. There was no call for the physio. Ponting has perhaps ceased to believe in them.
Hughes then edged low to Andrew Strauss—very low, so that the effort of Strauss to insinuate his fingers beneath the ball looked like one of those miniature cranes with which you grapple for candy in a seaside amusement parlour. Koertzen again turned to Doctrove, a sight that now looks as reassuring of imminent seriousness as a consultation between Mr Bean and Frank Spencer. The umpires had turned a low catch over to their video jockey Nigel Llong the day before; had they done so now, he would almost certainly have advised invoking the benefit of the doubt. They did not. With Ponting urging Hughes to stay, England insisting he go, and Hughes wandering round, looking as disoriented as Jamie Neale, Koertzen raised his finger, almost furtively, as though he knew he’d regret it later. If he doesn’t, he should.
Ponting settled as if meaning to stay a while, swaying into two sumptuous hooks off Onions and constructing some portentously secure defensive strokes. Then, in Broad’s fifth over, he stood tall to punch off the back foot without getting across and played on as the ball came back slightly down the slope. As if he couldn’t take his leave fast enough, Australia’s captain gave not a backward look.
Hussey did likewise, although in his case it was an act of commendable restraint. Swann’s tenth ball spun sharply from the footmarks and was neatly pouched by Collingwood at slip. That Hussey’s bat had been only roughly in the vicinity did not deflect Doctrove from deeming it a catch; the replay confirmed another gaffe. It was becoming harder to remember correct decisions than mistakes in this game. When North played Swann on, it seemed drably unambiguous, and it gave Swann 2 for 2 in 19 deliveries.
Clarke played exactly as one would expect a batsman of his quality to play against a workmanlike attack on a lifeless pitch, which was with great assurance and fluency. Which is not to underestimate his innings: as Mitchell Johnson has shown, it is a talent to be able to meet expectations. He let Flintoff bowl him one maiden, Swann another; otherwise he was unflaggingly enterprising, whether caressing through the covers or flicking off the legs, a blur between wickets, busy even between balls. England tried to starve him of scoring opportunities and partly succeeded: his second fifty took a dour 101 balls after the first arrived in a sparkling 58. Mind you, Strauss might have made the 90s a little harder for a batsman who fell nine runs short of a century here four years ago—if they did not make it simple, Swann and Paul Collingwood barely made it complicated.
Haddin has been as secure with the bat as he has been insecure with the gloves in this game, which is saying something. He, too, put the pitch in perspective, trusting the even bounce to play his signature back cut on several occasions, as well as the usual array of muscular drives and punches. Remarkably, the Clarke–Haddin combination was only the second hundred partnership of the game, and the first since its first wicket. It could hardly have come later.
This was cricket of an unostentatious competence. Even the celebration of Clarke’s first Test hundred in England was subdued by modern standards—a kiss of the crest, a bit of man-love, then back to business. As England took possession of a new ball just before 6 p.m., Strauss convened a team huddle to ginger up his colleagues, to no immediate avail: the sixth-wicket partners negotiated the day’s last six overs in safety, accepting finally the offer of bad light. Tomorrow’s weather forecast is good; the cricket forecast isn’t bad either.