The Ashes, for a generation almost thought of as an Australian birthright, will have to become used to shared custody. When Mike Hussey’s long, largely lone hand, 121 in five and a half hours, ended to a bat-pad chance at 5.48 p.m., Australia lost the Fifth Test at The Oval by 197 runs, the series 1–2, and possession of the trophy they recaptured only thirty months ago.
Never all that great in Ashes cricket, the difference between what is and what might have been has this summer been measurable in microns: a dropped catch here, a no-ball there, and at The Oval a coin toss, which delivered England an advantage they never ceded. The gap was widened today by the infinitesimal distances involved in two run outs, costing Australia their captain and vice-captain at a crucial stage.
After batting so skilfully on Saturday evening, Australia’s openers struggled to regather themselves this morning, Stuart Broad bowling a testing wicket-to-wicket line and Graeme Swann extracting considerable turn, although it was a ball from the latter going on with the arm to which Katich padded up in the fourth over that gave England their first breakthrough. For the fourth time in five innings, Watson then fell lbw to a straight ball, chest on, head outside the line—not the position one expects an opener to get into, really, as, indeed, Watson still isn’t quite.
Two scoreless batsmen could hardly have been a more propitious beginning for England. Ponting was determined to pull Broad, while Hussey, facing Swann, and surrounded by two slips, a silly point, a short cover and a short leg, took 13 tense deliveries to escape his pair with a jab into the off side. But for almost forty overs, both offered an object lesson in batting on this pitch, which required immense care, great concentration and a sense of humour, accepting that one would periodically be beaten, and learning to think past it. The smile that crossed Ponting’s face when he played and missed at Broad after lunch was probably the broadest of the tour.
There is pressure on bowlers under such circumstances, too. As at Edgbaston, Swann sometimes tried too hard, Ponting driving him through cover from consecutive deliveries off the back foot, then the front, Hussey pulling successive boundaries to raise the hundred stand. While Harmison hit the deck hard, extracting as much lift as anyone during the game, the conditions offered few incentives to Anderson or Flintoff. With Australia 2 for 217, the last nine wickets had fallen in the span of 551 runs, making the popular licensed-to-kill pitch story of the last few days that bit more difficult to sustain.
Hussey chipped to mid-on, called promptly and set off. Ponting, however, was watching the ball, much as at Trent Bridge four years ago when fate and Gary Pratt interposed. He was still watching, transfixed, as the ball reached Andrew Flintoff at mid-on, and he was only fully underway from halfway through the run, Flintoff’s clean gather and powerful side-arm throw beating him by a distance. Flintoff contributed little to his farewell Test, but here was evidence that his cricket is more than brute force and ignorance, for an overarm throw would almost certainly have gone over the stumps after bouncing on the hard pitch surface.
This brought to the crease Michael Clarke, in his batting prime and in the pink of form, although for his first three deliveries he looked surprised and a tad uncomfortable with Swann’s turn. The fourth offered a glimpse of relief, a ball he could clip to leg, and on the pleasing sensation of a crisp connection he set off. All summer, Cook had stood beneath the lid at short leg to no obvious purpose, as ornamental as a bird-bath. Now he extended his left leg, and the ball deflected from his ankle to leg slip as Clarke turned to regain his ground. Strauss’s underarm throw was swift and accurate, dislodging a single bail as the bat reached but did not quite cross the line.
All this happened in a fraction of the time it will have taken you to read that paragraph—so swift it almost eluded umpire Billy Bowden, who seemed a little loath to call for the third umpire. Finally, as he walked in to repair the stumps, he made the appropriate signal, which in Bowden’s case is rather like the barrel girl on a quiz show making the shape of a microwave oven. A roar announced that Australia’s best two batsmen had fallen for 3 runs in six deliveries.
When Prior stumped North smartly, the batsman stretched too far by an ambitious sweep, only the margin of victory seemed in dispute. But England is still short of making the excellent habitual—Collingwood grassed a regulation outside edge offered by Hussey (55) off Swann, and Onions dropped Haddin (14) at short midwicket off Anderson. Hussey now looked utterly rehabilitated, moving into the nineties with a perfect pull shot off Anderson’s predictable loosener with the second new ball, through them with a cover drive from his salad days, and to his first hundred in twenty-eight innings with a like stroke. Haddin celebrated his escape with two demob-happy shovels over cover, then perished to a wretched shot, trying to clear the two fielders deep on the leg side on a turning pitch—a shot that, at last, savoured of defeat.
It was not long in coming: Australia’s last five went quietly, for 21 runs in 46 deliveries. Cook took two catches, and Graeme Swann finished the match with 8 for 158, although Stuart Broad’s first-innings 5 for 37 earned him the individual award. The celebrations were noisy but, compared to 2005, relatively brief. Perhaps the spectators grasped that it had been a close-run thing; perhaps they also concluded this was something they might even get used to.