This morning’s papers, following up yesterday’s story, elaborate on the alarming if vague reports about an unnamed Australian player approached in a bar a month ago by a bookmaker of shady reputation: the kind of scenario familiar during cricket’s moral meltdown a decade ago. Occasionally, though, and without any assistance from the dosh-for-declarations and wealth-for-weather folk, cricket comes up with situations almost too perfectly contrived to be true.
Australia and England come to the Fifth Test at The Oval with the series perfectly poised at 1–1. Australia need only a draw to retain the Ashes; England need a win to regain them. If Australia lose they slip to fourth on the ICC Test match rankings—a fall from grace that ranks in the plummet class.
Australia won hugely at Headingley, but England’s Siegfried, Andrew Flintoff, is back for a final fling, having foreshadowed a month ago that this would be his last five-day international. He dominated the Oval Test four years ago with pace, power and will. Sounds like the perfect marketing recipe.
The parity of the scoreline, however, almost seems a little misleading. Australia seem to have timed their run nicely, disposing smoothly of the England Lions in Canterbury on the weekend, and with all players fit and mainly in form. Five of their batsmen are averaging more than 50 this summer, and their pacemen are striking every 28.11 runs and 48.83 deliveries. With some rain about over the next couple of days, they have even mooted an unchanged side, again eschewing a frontline spinner.
Ahead of what may be his final Test in this country, Ricky Ponting today almost glowed with confidence. The weather and potential for interruptions will please him as much as they vexed him four years ago, when Australia needed to win but were confounded by the gloom of the ides of September.
England, by contrast, have faded markedly since their win in the Second Test. Only two of their batsmen average more than 40, and their pace attack’s vital statistics are 37 runs and 64.95 balls a wicket. Worse, their success has been concentrated in two second-day bursts in favourable conditions: six for 69 after tea at Lord’s, seven for 77 before lunch at Edgbaston. Spinner Graeme Swann has been still more spasmodic, taking 4 for 87 in the second innings at Lord’s, two wickets for 322 everywhere else.
England’s selectors have finally tampered with a top order that has so far shown all the staying power of a reality television celebrity, phasing out Ravi Bopara in favour of Warwickshire’s well-performed Jonathan Trott, whom his captain Andrew Strauss confirmed would tomorrow bat at number five. Strauss, however, remains the key wicket: England’s only century maker of the series, their scene-setter as well as their taskmaster.
Flintoff bowled yesterday in the nets but not today, which is essentially the reason this will be his final Test bow, his every appearance having become ‘subject to medical advice’. In his role as people’s champion, he will be crucial to the atmosphere of the Test, the crowd’s subdued behaviour at Headingley being not just a function of the events on the field.
His knee should not incommode him: there is no need now to pace himself or hold back. Yet that game four years ago aside, his record here is nothing special: 53 with the bat, but 33 with the ball, 11 wickets spread across four Tests. To excel, moreover, he will need to rise not above his physical indispositions but the ungovernable expectations surrounding his return. It’s hard to see him being a conspicuous performer.
The ground today was picture perfect. The pitch looks sound, if dry, and the outfield will be red-hot, with the practice pitches cut from the wicket table. The Sydney Pardon press box at The Oval, at the Vauxhall Road End, is one of the best appointed in England, a far cry from the old, cramped and stifling quarters on the far side of the ground, where the front rows were baked by the afternoon sun.
The media’s only cause for complaint is that, before every game, staff apply a coating of clouded plastic to its slanted panes, apparently to improve the players’ viewing conditions, but leaving the occupants peering at the play through a glass darkly—one wag four years ago dubbed it the Stevie Wonder Centre.
As the appointed window monitors were busily ruining one of cricket’s best views today, it was hard to ignore the sensation that something similar is happening in this series. The English Premier League season began on Saturday, entailing a total eclipse of the sports media: soccer, incongruously, played all day today on the televisions in the press box. With the Ashes on a knife edge, most papers this morning led their sport sections with either Arsenal’s Champions League win against Celtic, or further reverberations from the Harlequins fiasco, rugby meets not-so-Grand Guignol.
The first four days of the Fifth Test are sold out, but its reverberations may not be felt far from The Oval, or beyond the television audience willing to pay through the nose for their Sky subscriptions. In contention here, then, are not merely the Ashes, but the credibility of cricket as an English spectator sport. To back the hosts after their disarray at Headingley, moreover, a gambler would need nerves of steel.