In the Sydney Pardon press box at The Oval this morning, with an hour to go before play, they are showing the Channel 5 highlights package. For some reason, the colour is turned down, with the result that Ricky Ponting is being interviewed in black and white, his faded baggy green a ghostly baggy grey; with the gasometer in the background, you half expect Len Hutton to appear next, fielding questions from Brian Johnston or Peter West. It somehow suits the feel of this match so far—a polite, middle-aged audience watching some polite, middle-aged cricket.
There are, however, already shades of 1953, when Australia went into the Test without a slow bowler, relying on Bill Johnston’s left-arm variations, and England chose two local boys, Jim Laker and Tony Lock. When chunks flew from the pitch’s crust during Alec Bedser’s first over, Lindsay Hassett walked up the pitch to confide to his partner Arthur Morris. ‘I can see who this pitch has been prepared for,’ he griped. But by then it was too late. Without a specialist spinner, Australia were unable to retard England’s fourth-innings chase, and England won their first Ashes series in twenty years.
Which is not to say that I foresee events repeating, although the parallels are instructive, and complaints about the pitch, such as those from my esteemed colleague Scyld Berry in today’s Daily Telegraph, seem misplaced. Both teams have stared long and hard at this surface. It was open to both to choose an XI to suit the conditions; Ricky Ponting could very easily have won the toss and batted, in which case I fancy Australia would have batted somewhat better than England. Scyld seems to fancy some sort of deliberate malpractice: ‘It is an abuse of the spirit of the game to tailor a pitch quite so blatantly.’ But had the pitch been prepared according to some secret administrative fiat, one would have expected Panesar’s inclusion alongside Swann. Scyld’s theory depends, then, on believing that the ECB are capable of cocking up even a conspiracy.
Hmmm, on the other hand …
The Ashes tradition was minted at The Oval 127 years ago in an Australian Test victory wrested from the jaws of defeat. Nothing short of a repetition will prevent England regaining the Ashes after an Australian collapse unusual in the annals of the game, let alone the events of this series.
After a solid start, and chiefly to two bowlers in Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann who had hardly threatened them all summer long, Australia lost eight for 72 in 24.4 overs. The resumption after lunch had been delayed fifty minutes by rain and murk, which the visitors must now wish had lasted all day, but which might just have freshened the dry surface slightly. When it lifted, Broad snared 4 for 8 in 21 quick, mainly full and swinging deliveries; Swann chimed in with 4 for 18 in 43 slow, teasing and turning off-breaks.
Each wicket was received with hosannas from an excited and faintly disbelieving crowd, who had arrived with the expectation of heaving a valedictory cheer for Andrew Flintoff, but who weren’t fussy. At the close of a prolonged day, England led by 230 at stumps with seven second-innings wickets remaining, Strauss having piloted them through a few late anxieties.
England’s last two wickets added 25 runs in as many minutes on resumption, Anderson’s curious duckless streak of fifty-four innings coming to an end, and Broad laying about him to some effect. But this was clearly to be an attritional day, as Australia’s batsmen prodded the pitch as though trying to stifle embers. On 4, Watson survived two handy shouts for lbw, first to Anderson, then Flintoff. Flintoff shot Asad Rauf a quizzical glance, although not quite as quizzical as the glare Watson cast at the deliveries reaching Prior on the second bounce.
Yet how much the pitch had to do with Australia’s later decline is debatable. At the end of the first day, Peter Siddle described it as ‘a decent wicket’ that ‘became deader’ as it ‘flattened out’, and even ignoring the natural predisposition of bowlers to see the world as a giant flat-track conspiracy, no batsman here encountered anything truly unplayable.
Certainly there was more bounce from the Pavilion End than the Vauxhall Road End, and the surface gave hints of being two-paced, but the emphasis was on the repeated rather than the unique: Watson simply was hit on the pads by a straight ball, as at Edgbaston and Headingley; Hussey propped forward, as also at Edgbaston and Headingley; and Ponting, the key, dragged on, as at Cardiff and Lord’s. When Michael Clarke, taken at short midwicket at Lord’s, then drove in the air to short cover, Australia had gone from 0 for 73 to 4 for 93 in what seemed the blink of an eye.
There was some bad luck for Australia to rue, and good luck for Swann to celebrate, Rauf failing to hear the inside edge onto North’s pad, then imagining an inside edge onto Clark’s—incorrect in both cases. The excellence, nonetheless, was excellent indeed, particularly Broad’s slower, away-swinging yorker to dismiss the dangerous Haddin, and Prior’s sticky-fingered snare after Johnson had wellied a couple of boundaries. The situation would have been still worse for Australia had Cook, soon after holding Katich there, held Siddle (4) at short leg. As it was, Siddle got a few brave blows away as if to prove his earlier point. These batsmen: always complaining!
One area in which Australia have certainly changed their views is selection. If the use of part-timers North and Katich for thirteen of the twenty-eight overs Australia bowled before stumps was not an expression of regret for the exclusion of Hauritz, it was nothing, even if the bowler with the keenest edge was Johnson, who caused both Bell and Collingwood to fend rather limply to Katich.
Australia took the field with two hours to go as a fairly bedraggled assembly; even their huddle looked a tad perfunctory. Wickets excited them, and England were thankful for the aplomb of Strauss, whose straight bat and relaxed body language advertised his growing confidence. For his own part, Ponting must have gnawed his nails back to the cuticle— there can be few consolations after such a day, heartbreaking considering his many months of hard work and the patient application his team has shown in clawing their way back to parity.
History, as observed, might encourage him. Billy Murdoch’s Australians won here in 1882 by 7 runs, carried to victory by the self-belief of Fred Spofforth, abetted by the timidity of the home team. But history cuts both ways, for Murdoch would later become the only Australian captain to twice lose series in England—the fate that may now await Ponting.