Ashes 2011 (19 page)

Three lbws and a bowled today reflected both bowling accuracy and batting diffidence. Pushed so far back by sharp bouncers, Trott and Collingwood had nowhere to go when the ball jackknifed back; creeping so far across, Pietersen placed his eyes dangerously outside the line. Once out of position against a bowler of Johnson's velocities, prayer is a batsman's only recourse. The trio didn't have one between them when their pads were struck.

All the same, it is another indication of the changed nature of Australian cricket that it depends to such a degree on a bowler of humours so variable. If his country is to fight its way back nearer the top of international cricket, Johnson will not only need to bowl as bloody well as Miller, but also to make it an act as simple.

Just before 6 p.m. tonight, Ricky Ponting hurried towards the players' pavilion, head down, wringing his left hand, in the company of an Australia trainer. Two nights ago, with Australia under the cosh, the sight would have been cause for further dismay. Great – now the captain's cactus. That'd be right …

As it is, the situation would have taken the edge from the pain. Ponting had actually just made a bit of a meal of a straightforward chance to second slip by Jonathan Trott off Mitchell Johnson, but in parrying it upwards provided a second chance for Brad Haddin to take. And between them, they had made sure that the Ashes of 2010–11 would go to Melbourne pegged level.

The last doubt was removed in the following over, the day's last, when Paul Collingwood was pouched at second slip by Ponting's stand-in Steve Smith off Ryan Harris. At the close, Australia were five wickets from victory, England 310 runs away. As his team headed in, Ponting emerged from the shadows to meet them, stretching his good hand out to shake those of his team-mates, who have carried Australia, and perhaps also his captaincy, back from the brink of oblivion.

Reducing England to 81 for five was well ahead of Australia's expectations when they began bowling the day's last twenty-seven overs after tea. If not quite as exciting as expected, Cameron Sutherland's pitch has been a gift to cricket: the carry is still excellent, with no evidence of variable bounce, and the pace is quick, although not so quick that Watson and Hussey haven't been able to pull off the front foot with impunity. Aggressive fast bowling and sharp catching did the trick: the game now won't last long enough for Australia to feel the lack of a specialist slow bowler.

It was also a triumph for cumulative pressure. A quite full, very quiet house, refreshed by a pleasant breeze, hung on each ball through the first hour, when Watson and Hussey showed as few signs of budging as at one stage did the sightscreen in front of the Lillee-Marsh Stand. They can put a man on the moon …

Strauss's thinking was a little static too, involving a 7–2 field with sweepers on both sides to Watson, thinking to slow his progress, on the suspicion, not unfounded, that his innings would peter out of its own accord. But perhaps because Watson was not called upon to bowl his usual allotment of overs in England's first innings, he was more active and alert than usual, the presence of the responsive and nimble Hussey encouraging him to take singles, mixing twenty-six of them among his eleven fours. It also had the effect of taking lbw out of play – quite a concession to a batsman England had already dismissed five times in like manner, and would finally dismiss a sixth.

Hussey raised the 150 with a sizzling square drive from Anderson, then pulled Tremlett exuberantly in the air in front of square leg. With all Australia's morning forebodings allayed, and Billy Cooper ecumenically trumpeting 'Waltzing Matilda', Watson charged through the 80s with a celebratory cover drive and off drive from consecutive Finn deliveries.

Fortunately for England, Watson soon after planted his front foot against Tremlett, and was given out by Ray Erasmus. Watson solemnly sought the intervention of the referral system, only to be baffled by the verdict – like someone whose cash card has been swallowed by an ATM, he trailed away feeling himself a helpless victim of a previously trusted technology. The replay clarified with a cruel candour: Watson's bat had snicked his back pad just before the ball had hit his front pad. One wonders if cricketers will one day miss their illusions.

It was a decidedly mixed day for the referral system. Smith (1) had more luck, joining the queue of batsmen to challenge Billy Doctrove in this match when a ball from Finn emerged from between bat and pad in transit to Strauss at first slip. Showing some presence of mind, Smith referred promptly, with a small shake of the head, whereupon the replay revealed that the delivery had both missed the bat and would also have cleared the stumps. Hussey was then given out lbw to the session's last ball from Tremlett by Erasmus, then given in after a referral, the ball clearing the stumps – bounce here taketh away as well as giveth.

Perhaps the oddest moment of the day was when Anderson appealed for lbw against Smith (28), referred when Erasmus demurred, and was repudiated on the basis that even though the ball was hitting leg stump, it wasn't
hitting it enough
– a third as opposed to a half. The decision thereby devolved to Erasmus again, who unsurprisingly stood by his initial judgement.

Smith survived to prosper, with a little luck, albeit well deserved, helping Hussey add a busy 75 at four runs an over. He has the face of a sitcom mischief-maker, built to break into a snicker, and a similar playfulness to Greg Ritchie, whom Alan Ross once said you expected any minute on the field to start munching a Mars Bar. He hasn't bowled a ball in the game but already looks a better bet than Marcus North and Xavier Doherty put together.

When Tremlett removed Smith and Haddin in short order, and Johnson drove Collingwood tamely to short cover, England found themselves in better cheer than for a day. Collingwood celebrated with a bouncer wide that would have been a half-volley had it been bowled from the other end, Finn with a bouncer from the opposite end that Harris turned into a wicket with a needless hoick.

Hussey by this time had a chanceless and tireless thirteenth hundred, a second against England on his home ground. He was helped by some indifferent tactics, Strauss cajoling his bowlers into a predictable diet of short-pitched deliveries, which Hussey never wearied of hooking and pulling. His light feet also nullified Swann, England's match-winner at Adelaide, who came on at 1.30 p.m. and bowled only five exploratory and expensive overs. At 284 for eight, Swann also dropped Siddle (0) at short cover, an awkward chance to his right, but one that by England's recent standards was eminently catchable: Australia's lead was then 365, an awkward size but by recent Perth benchmarks gettable.

It added subtly to the pressure when England began their chase of 391 to win circumspectly, and with a heart flutter, Cook having to scamper back after setting off prematurely for a single, bowler Johnson's kick not quite as accurate as in Wellington in March when he caught Tim McIntosh short of his ground. Not that it mattered overmuch, Cook falling in the next over when Harris bent one back into him which would have hit leg stump had it not been impeded by the batsman's back pad. Having escaped Johnson yesterday, Strauss was not so lucky today, caught between wind and water, playing and not, as the ball held its line on off stump.

Had England gone into the close with two wickets down, they might just have slept optimistically. Pietersen was certainly of that mind, resisting sternly and strokelessly for almost forty minutes and only three singles, only to perish to a wretched shot, defending with the face of the bat towards cover as he walked forward – a cardinal sin at the WACA. It was Hilfenhaus's first Test wicket for 471 deliveries, since his dismissal of Strauss in the first over of the series, although by the close this was mainly a curiosity.

Collingwood kicked the ground angrily as he trailed off, not surprisingly as the ball before he had had a chance to get off strike but been turned back by night watchman Anderson – when you're not hot in this series, you are very cold indeed. Just ask Ricky Ponting.

A balmy day, a happy crowd, an England collapse, an imminent victory: it might almost have been an afternoon out of Australian cricket's salad days. Tomorrow is Ricky Ponting's birthday and, while his finger might be sore, they really will all have come at once.

As a victory, it won't be a classic. Australia will finish as they started, a team in transition. But the transition will at least look like it is to somewhere rather than involving further steps into the unknown. And while the bowling will have clinched it, it will have been the much-maligned batting that set it up, having in doing so provided a glimpse of Australian batsmanship past, present and future.

It is not unkind to see 35-year-old Hussey, stoutest and stickiest of Ponting's old band of brothers, in the past tense. He is a representative of Australian cricket's abiding values, having added a cubit to his span by an ethic of unrelenting self-improvement.

Hussey started his career about 25km north of the WACA, at the Perth first-grade club of Wanneroo, where his father Ted is still secretary. At the Roos, he was a contemporary of Damien Martyn, so intimidatingly gifted as a teenager that he would call laconically after each shot – 'one', 'two' or 'three'; fours came too easily to bother.

Regarding himself as nowhere near so talented, Hussey decided that the road to success ran through a valley of vigour and rigour. He has since made servants of net bowlers the world over, among the most willing being Monty Panesar at Northants – so much time did they spend in the nets together that restricted access conditions were finally imposed on them.

The other peculiarity of Hussey's technique is that he is a right-handed left-hander – that is, he does everything except bat the other way round. It's a legacy of 1980s backyard games with his similarly right-handed brother David: one of them had to be Allan Border, and Michael volunteered. Into the same category fall David Gower, Stephen Fleming and Matt Hayden, all powerful through the covers, as well as with the traditional left-hander's on-side partiality. Hussey never thrashes forward of the wicket on the off side: he caresses square and punches straight, a strong top hand always in control, with the minimum of backlift and a truncated follow-through. These were profitable shots at the WACA today, where the boundaries down the ground are shortest.

Hussey's signature this summer, of course, has been his pull shot, which he has played fearlessly, especially in Brisbane. England challenged it today, throwing down the gauntlet of Perth's challenging bounce, but Hussey as a native son made the shot look as safe and conventional as a forward defensive.

When a good batsman trusts himself, he does not think twice – it is thinking twice, in fact, that is inclined to cost you. On 92, Hussey, by now in the tail's company, faced Tremlett, refreshed by having just bowled Haddin, and reinforced by three men on the fence. Hussey was ready, pulling from in front of his face, weight on the front foot to keep the ball to ground, controlling it so precisely that it bisected two of the boundary riders; three balls later, he repeated the shot, this time forward of square, to reach a hundred. Hard work, homespun style, heady strokeplay: this innings was Hussey in excelsis.

Twenty-nine-year-old Shane Watson is Australian cricket present, part of its current make-do-and-mend modus operandi, devised to fill the all-rounder role of Freddie Flintoff, finally coming to rest in the opener's niche left last year by Philip Hughes. He oozes power, his check-drives to mid-off and mid-on fairly fly, and he lets the ball go with a decisive flourish – a good attribute in Perth, as witnessed on the first day.

Watson has always been a textbook cricketer, even if for the first five years of his career the textbook was
Grey's Anatomy.
That proneness to injury has since been counteracted by a Brisbane physiotherapist, Victor Popov, who weened Watson off weight-bearing exercise by introducing him to Tabata training: a regime of light weights at high speed to consolidate core strength, plus Pilates to enhance flexibility.

But while the musculature has improved, Watson's batting has rather marked time, perhaps because Ponting's reliance on him for relieving overs, perhaps because his innings seem to decelerate as the ball ages and run-scoring gaps are plugged. Often while opening with Simon Katich, he would streak away with early boundaries, only to be caught up by his dogged partner later – their strike rates ended up virtually identical.

Watson was blessed today on both counts. England's first innings was brief enough that he did not have to bowl, while Hussey's buzzing energy kept the singles ticking where sometimes they peter out. This was his best innings of the summer, and at times radiated real authority, although it was also not too surprising when he fell five short of his hundred: he has passed fifty fifteen times in Tests, and only twice pushed on to hundreds. Watson is in transition as assuredly as his team.

Steve Smith is Australian cricket's future. There is already a sense of imminent eventfulness about his presence at the crease, and today he did not disappoint. He almost ran himself out backing Hussey up too far, bowler Tremlett's throw just missing the non-striker's stumps. A top-edged hook from Finn then landed between the advancing Tremlett and Bell, and an upper cut as he limboed beneath a Tremlett bouncer cleared a gasping cordon. A pull shot from the next ball, however, showed off the 21-year-old's precocity. England must have hoped to stride through at this point; he impeded them like chewing gum on the soles of their shoes.

Smith looks a little like the boy at an Aussie club who smashes it round in the juniors so often on Saturday morning that they finally promote him to the seniors in the afternoon, where he does more than plug a gap, and soon makes himself at home; in the boy-among-men role in this team, he recalls the sight of his captain on this ground fifteen years ago. He duplicated his captain's dismissal in this innings too, succumbing to a leg-side strangle when Tremlett came round the wicket.