They love their cricket in Yorkshire. You’d have said in prospect that the third day of the Fourth Test at Headingley was purely of academic interest, except that not even academics would have spent their time so pointlessly: with England 261 runs from making Australia bat again, and only tailenders to come, there might barely have been half an hour’s play.
Yet if there was not a capacity crowd, it was close, and they got their desserts, England’s tail playing with such improbable jauntiness under a welcoming sun that the occasion became almost festive. In due course, however, England got their desserts too, sustaining a defeat by an innings and 80 runs at 2.05 p.m., the vigour of their batting’s concluding stages rather showing up the earlier petrification of numbers three to five, with 16 runs to show for their combined six innings. That the series is 1-1 seems a travesty of the teams’ relative positions going into the decisive Fifth Test at The Oval.
Anderson fell at once and Prior soon after when play resumed, the latter providing rival Haddin with his best catch of the tour, sprawling wide to his right to intercept an edge that would not have carried to first slip. Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann then united to hack and hoick 108 from 80 deliveries in 66 minutes, as incongruous as a sea shanty at a funeral.
Broad showed some pluck and some pedigree with a rousing 61 from 49 balls, being dropped thrice—at mid-off, deep mid-off and even deeper midwicket—amid some resounding drives and one effortless aerial flick to leg. After his six for 91, nobody could complain of England’s performance containing a Flintoff-shaped hole; it was in every other respect that the home team was lacking.
Swann, meanwhile, last night tweeted that there were ‘2 ways to view 2morrow’, either as ‘a hopeless cause or a chance for immortality’. In the end, he came to a third view, which was as the opportunity for a slog, and proved again that given width and length he can be a dangerous hitter. Taking 32 from two overs of Clark’s, and reaching a maiden Ashes fifty with a top-edged six off his perennial adversary Siddle, it almost looked as though he was auditioning for the number three slot. He could do no worse than the incumbent.
The other distraction of the morning session was the recurrent inability of the umpires to count to six, which rather threatens what, on present trends, looms as their last purpose in cricket; perhaps there will need to be a referral system for that as well. Billy Bowden confused himself by rescinding a call of five wides in favour of four byes, while Asad Rauf seemed simply to lose concentration, perhaps on account of having not yet given an lbw.
Broad finally holed out and Swann was belatedly holed up by some more accurate and shorter bowling, edging behind after lunch. Graham Onions then emerged in a suit of protective gear so enveloping that he might almost have been asked for ID. He quickly collected a pair, providing Mitchell Johnson with a fifth wicket, and probably batting for as long as it took him to get ready.
The post-match presentations were unenlightening except in tone, Ponting sounding confident, Strauss striving not to sound panicked, and settling for old faithfuls like ‘not ideal’ and ‘didn’t play as well as we could have’, mixed with lots of ‘obviously’ and ‘to be honest’. A lot was, indeed, obvious in this game, all of it very discouraging to England. As for The Oval, hope will sometimes earn you a happy day’s cricket, but it doesn’t win you many Test matches.