For much of this tour, Ricky Ponting’s Australians have been burdened by comparisons with the past, with the general consensus being that there is perhaps more talent among the former Australian greats following the tour (Shane Warne, Matthew Hayden, Merv Hughes, Jason Gillespie) than those on the field at any particular time. When Andrew Strauss was induced to comment that the current team lacked ‘aura’, indeed, he was merely expressing what was widely thought, for which the media thanked him by extracting from it a week of soundalike headlines.
The team’s win at Headingley, however, as well as being a kind of DIY ‘aura’ kit, deserves at least semi-legendary status in the annals of Australian achievement—if not up with Port Elizabeth ’97 and Adelaide ’06, then alongside Manchester ’97 and Hobart ’99. Australia didn’t, perhaps, play exactly like the number one team in the world, but they certainly made England look overpromoted at number five.
At the press conference afterwards, Ponting sat beside man of the match Marcus North. After a while, it was almost like North had come in by mistake, having taken a wrong turn on the way to the nearby lavatories, and was too embarrassed to leave. Every question was directed at the captain, and rightly. Like Saint Sebastian, he has stood still taking the arrows on this tour: from the crowds, from the media and from past Aussie greats as well as from his opponents. Now England were the targets and, without gloating, he didn’t mind sharing his pleasure.
With all due respect to North, Ponting would have been a more fitting recipient of the individual award. His innings here was reminiscent of Allan Border’s on this same ground twenty years ago, when he took England’s attack on at a hinge point in the innings: brash, bristling, brimming with shots, full of intent.
Ponting’s first ball from Harmison cut him in half; to his second, well wide of off stump, he played a pull and missed. It was, again, a clinch moment. England had taken an early wicket on a pitch that they had made to seem fuller of demons than The Amityville Horror. Ponting, too, had perished to the pull shot at Edgbaston, having otherwise played his pet stroke relatively little on tour.
What happened next was worth watching. Ponting didn’t abort the shot. He took the bat to the end of its follow-through, held the pose momentarily, then rehearsed the shot once more. Once bitten, he would not permit even the pretence of shyness. We were to see the pull again and again, as Ponting seized on every short ball—and there were many.
His 78 set the tone of Australia’s reply, and also the standard: a guillotine-clean back cut and whipcrack back-foot cover drive off Anderson were shots for the ages. But it was his trademark pull, played with the same panache as Ian Chappell tackled the hook at Lord’s in 1972, that proclaimed Ponting’s resolution. By the time he was out, Australia had a lead which North and Clarke could then extend.
Others will have reason to look back on this game with pleasure. The best figures of the first innings were returned by Siddle, whose robust, repeatable action and crocodilian smile have become reassuringly familiar features of the Australian attack. The best figures of the second fell to Mitchell Johnson, who appears to have grasped the truth about the perfect being the enemy of the good since settling into the role of first-change bowler.
It was Stuart Clark in the first innings, however, who most exactly fulfilled his mission specifications, and Ponting was a noticeably more aggressive leader for the presence in his bowling ranks of such an accomplished restrictor of runs, and also a fourth survivor of Australia’s last Ashes campaign. From the past, then, had come a blessing, further evidence of the complete turnabout this Ashes tour has undergone in the space of a week.