John Dillinger was still on the lam when England last won at Lord’s against Australia. They have had to wait for Dillinger to become the subject of a big-budget biopic for it to happen again. Australia was a similarly elusive quarry, compiling the highest score in the fourth innings of a Test at Lord’s; England followed like G-Men, not always brilliantly, or even intelligently, but effectively enough.
The man of the match that finished at 12.45 p.m. was Andrew Flintoff, who ended his farewell Test appearance here with his longest spell of the game, ten overs, and only his third Test five-for, 5 for 92. He arrived a week ago looking fed up with cricket, having decided that this would be his final Test summer; he ended it looking disarmingly fit, and sounding suddenly refreshed, his complaint of ‘a few twinges’ as airy as the cowboy’s proverbial deprecation: ‘Just a flesh wound.’
For his part, Andrew Strauss confessed to a previous night’s sleep ‘a little bit disturbed’ by the confidence with which Michael Clarke and Brad Haddin had held England yesterday. When Haddin perished without addition, the break for which England had toiled three hours, Collingwood’s low catch at second slip was received with transparent thanksgiving. Apparently at this point, Flintoff told his skipper he could keep going until there were no more Australians left; Strauss was delighted to let him.
Clarke never retrieved his fluency of the previous day, when he had benefited from the freedom of little hope. Now he struggled to sustain the optimism. Finally he came skipping down the track to Swann, as he had done so often, but was hoodwinked by the slightly wider line; passing him on the full, the ball pitched and hit the top of off. Having made his best Ashes score, Clarke stooped as disconsolately as a batsman dismissed first ball.
While Flintoff burst the defences of Hauritz and Siddle, Johnson slightly redeemed his Test with a 62-ball halfcentury containing eight quality boundaries. When he first saw Johnson at Australia’s cricket academy just over a decade ago, that shrewd judge John Inverarity took him for a batsman, noticing that he owned as pure a bat swing as anyone around; you see his point when Johnson’s hands and hips swing through his shots, and a stroke with an abbreviated backlift and minimal follow-through streaks to the fence. The only chance Johnson gave was a return catch that almost took Swann’s arm off; Swann had the nerve to vacate the cow corner boundary, and induced a fatal slog.
Both Strauss and Ricky Ponting handled the inevitable questions about umpiring with consummate diplomacy. Strauss’ sincerely held line was that his catch of Hughes had been fair, and that he had ‘bruised fingers’ to prove it; Ponting deemed the adjudication as ‘irrelevant now’ and involving ‘nothing we can change’.
All of which was very commendable. The unfortunate reality is that with two closely matched sides challenged to take twenty wickets in a game, umpiring is of disproportionate importance. Already there is a sense of foreboding about Edgbaston, where Rudi Koertzen is scheduled to make a return appearance, his 101st alongside Aleem Dar. To his 100th Test, he was the Dillinger: public enemy number one.