An embarrassment of riches, or a richness of potential embarrassments? No fewer than thirty cricketers were at Headingley today, each feeling he was a chance to fill one of twenty-two available places for tomorrow’s Fourth Test.
All, moreover, will badly want to play in perhaps the decisive engagement of this fickle, fluctuating Ashes series. England lead 1–0 thanks to a solid win at Lord’s, the better of a draw at Edgbaston, and considerably the worse of a draw at Sophia Gardens. But with ten further days of cricket ahead, Australia will feel thoroughly in contention, and maybe even confident.
All sixteen of Australia’s tour party had something worth stretching for this afternoon, even second keeper Graham Manou, who deputised for injured Brad Haddin in Birmingham and awaits the success or failure of medical ministrations to Haddin here. Brett Lee has proclaimed his fitness, while Stuart Clark has never denied his; with Ben Hilfenhaus, Peter Siddle, Mitchell Johnson and Nathan Hauritz in possession, that leaves a quart of specialist bowlers to be squeezed into a pint pot of places.
Indications from Ricky Ponting are that Hauritz will be one exclusion. ‘Historically the spinners have found it pretty difficult here,’ he said, thinking probably of Shane Warne, whose three wickets cost 90 runs each. Where Warne failed, it is hard to see Hauritz succeeding. If the selectors lack the confidence to play Clark, meanwhile, his Test career must be considered over, ninety wickets at 22 or not: this is surely his ground.
England’s squad of fourteen is constituted by their XI from Edgbaston augmented by reserve fast bowler Steve Harmison, reserve swing bowler Ryan Sidebottom and reserve batsman Jonathan Trott. All were on group Fredwatch this morning, along with a transfixed media, as Andrew Flintoff bowled gingerly in a black knee brace.
Their captain Andrew Strauss has said that the decision about Flintoff’s inclusion will not be governed by ‘emotion’, which, if he’s serious, suggests that one or more of the reserves will play. As time has passed, Flintoff’s availability has looked less a matter of cricket selection and more like an episode of I’m a Cricketer, Get Me Out of Here. Will he? Won’t he? Does he? Should he?
The availability on which England is really sweating, however, is weather. On the two seriously overcast days of the series, the second days at Lord’s and Edgbaston, England have seemed to have twelve men in the field, taking seventeen wickets for 293, at 17.24 each. When either the sun has been out or the weather has been really cold, as in Cardiff, they have scavenged just nineteen wickets for 1265 runs at 65.66.
One reason Flintoff may not be overly missed here is that his wickets at Headingley cost 43 runs each. James Anderson pays 51, Stuart Broad 122; Sidebottom is the horses-for-courses pick, taking 8 for 86 here two years ago against the West Indies on what was his home ground before he moved to Trent Bridge.
Ashes cricket first came to Yorkshire in 1899. Headingley played host that initial summer but lost out three years later to Sheffield’s Bramall Lane, notorious for its proximity to a colliery, which allegedly belched smoke only while the opposition were batting. England look like paying further for the decline of their country’s coal industry, for Shef-field hasn’t staged a Test match since and the forecast in Leeds is improving by the day—from which, just to confuse things, Harmison’s rather than Sidebottom’s selection can be inferred.
Overhead conditions will be especially important, because the pitch looks flat and featureless: having missed out on a share of the 2005 spoils, Headingley seems to be taking no chances on the Test lasting five days. After years when the future of Test matches in Yorkshire was said to be uncertain, a £21 million redevelopment is underway to transform England’s darkest, most satanic ground into something more reminiscent of cricket than of collieries.
Headingley, accordingly, looks like a construction site. Considerable rebuilding impends. The same is true of the cricket teams of England and Australia.