Ashes 2011 (22 page)

The other possibility is 21-year-old Steve Finn making way for the older, steadier Tim Bresnan, on the grounds that Finn is too costly, conceding 4.3 an over. It seems like a retrograde step, but teams often make them after a defeat, albeit that it always seems to be bowlers rather than batsmen who are first under the bus. The Australians have attacked Finn this summer, perceiving him as the weakest of England's four bowling links, but his fourteen wickets at 33 are one of the reasons that England in consecutive Tests have taken twenty Australian wickets, something they were expected to struggle to do.

All is set for another new-fashioned arm-wrestle, of tiny differences that may or may not grow large. For England in Perth, the second day dismissal that ramified was Alastair Cook's. England were cruising at 78 for none. Cook had played, for him, expansively, enjoying the bounce. Johnson had bowled 282 deliveries in the series with barely an appeal, let alone a wicket; indeed, he had hardly beaten the bat.

Johnson's 283rd ball did not so much swing as slide away from the left-hander. It was the kind of ball Cook had been safely letting go all summer, but he was a batsman in hot form, England were on top, and Johnson was a negligible quantity. England's vice-captain looked to drive on the up through cover point – the shot of a winner, keen to put away a weakened opponent.

When the thick edge was smoothly taken by Hussey at gully, the predominant Australian emotion was relief rather than relish, marking the end of something rather than the start of something else. Yet for the next half-hour, Johnson was like a fox in a hen run, making a bloody, feathery mess of a middle order hitherto cock of the roost. Without that nanosecond's relaxation by Cook, Johnson would have continued bowling to left-handers, generally good leavers of the ball. As it was, Johnson's bowling exploded like a perfect storm: a succession of right-handers, a helpful wind, a bowler suddenly confident to stretch for a few extra clicks, and a referral system hovering over every lbw.

It is hard to see England relaxing again in the same way. They are the better led, the better drilled and the more even team. Australia have relied on individuals rising above themselves, hitting long-lost straps, rekindling long-doused fires. Duncan Fletcher used to talk about cricketers 'coming to the party'. England's has been a pretty good-humoured one in which nobody has been sick in the punchbowl. Australia's has depended for its good cheer on someone every so often putting a lampshade on their head.

Whatever happens from here, the fortunes of the series have provided (cricket) season's greetings to Cricket Australia. Their slogan all summer has been 'History Will Be Made': there is, on Boxing Day, just the chance it might, with the fifty-year-old Test record attendance of 90,800 set at the same ground under threat. For once in a journalistic lifetime, the expression 'standing room only' will be more than a cliché: the Melbourne Cricket Club have released standing-room tickets, of which 5,000 in total are available. The attendance of members will affect how many of the arena's 95,000 seats are filled. If the record does not fall, the rest of the crowd's practice of booing the members when the Mexican wave reaches their enclosure will be well and truly justified.

It was a record day at the MCG, as expected. The mega crowd did not actually eventuate, 84,245 leaving the fifty-year-old world attendance record intact. The records instead were of ruin: from the lowest Australian first innings at home in almost sixty years, to its lowest in the Ashes at the MCG ever.

As a long day waned, having been prolonged by a rain break, England were 59 runs ahead with all their wickets in hand, Australia having capitulated for 98 in 42.5 overs – ten more runs than they scraped together against Pakistan five months ago, although that was at Headingley while their countrymen were thinking football-shaped thoughts rather than on the biggest day of the local summer. With an unchanged XI and a ring of confidence, Australia allegedly came into this Fourth Test with that sought-after 21st-century quality of 'momentum' – just as England did in Perth, in fact. The way things are going, pretty soon we'll be talking about the curse of momentum.

As batting conditions go, these went. It was cool, overcast, with a little moisture in the pitch as well as the air. In the middle of the day, the bowlers were refreshed by a ninety-minute weather hiatus; an outfield rendered slow by football forgave errors of line and length; grass lush from rain preserved the ball's shine.

Both captains wished to bowl. Only one could. Strauss was blessed – and burdened, because inserting the opposition attracts disproportionate condemnation when it goes wrong. Under such circumstances, a captain wants everything to stick, and Watson vexed him by being dropped twice before he had scored, by Collingwood low to his left at third slip, by Pietersen at head height in the gully. Although neither was straightforward, both fell into the category of chances England have become accustomed to taking. There would have been some sweaty palms in the visiting cordon until Tremlett's lift caught Watson unawares in the fourth over.

It was a nervous, even slightly messy first hour. Hughes and Ponting, 5ft 7 and 5ft 10 respectively, were repeatedly tucked up by the bounce; both inside-edged close to the stumps. England's direction was also poor, Prior too often sent skedaddling down the leg side. In one such instance, Prior cost his team a referral for an Anderson delivery that clearly glanced Hughes's shirt. His reputation for optimism now precedes him; you would not ask him for a tip on the stockmarket or the races.

Having emerged to a pleasing ovation, and from back-to-back
Herald Sun
happy-snap front pages, Ponting played the first resounding shots of the day, when he twice pulled short deliveries from Anderson that arrived at a hospitable waist height. But in the next over, Hughes drove expansively with an open blade, a culpable shot, providing Tim Bresnan with a first Ashes wicket.

Ponting fell immediately after drinks when Tremlett, relieving Anderson from the Southern Stand End, found just about the perfect length for this pitch. Australia's captain departed with a reproachful glance at the pitch, and perhaps a rueful rumination on his luck at the toss: in Ashes Tests, he has now lost more than twice as many as he has won. To the home team's 37 for three there was a cloying familiarity, the team's starts in this series having ranged from the calamitous to the merely mediocre: 100 for three in Brisbane, 2 for three and 64 for three in Adelaide, 36 for four and 64 for three in Perth. Hitherto they have relied on Hussey to set them straight; today they did so once too often. Just as the weather closed in, Anderson drew from him a reluctant, firm-footed jab, and an edge that, to English ears, would have reverberated as pleasingly as the peal of a church bell.

Clarke tided Australia over the rain, but he is not the player who last year almost could not stop himself scoring runs; with the exception of his second innings at Adelaide, he has been batting non-start all summer long. He played one firm drive, several harried prods, and his crouch, pronounced in Brisbane, seemed lower than ever, like he was trying to peer underneath a lorry.

The bowling was consistently dangerous. Tremlett, quicker than in Perth, made Stuart Broad's injury look like England's greatest stroke of good fortune this summer. Normally inscrutable, he allowed himself one sardonic smile when he beat Hughes's outside edge, and what bordered on glee when he had Siddle caught behind. Anderson, less talkative and more accurate than in Perth, puzzled the Australians again with his use of the crease, which exaggerates the need to play him. Bresnan, who replaced Finn, filled in the gaps, and dismissed the dangerous Haddin; Prior took six catches without having to dive or even stretch for any of them. With Australia 91 for nine, the stump-cam showed the back of Harris's bat, which read appropriately 'CHAOS'. Funnily enough, he showed as good a defensive technique as anyone, looking comfortable on the back foot, and playing one tasty square cut. When your most composed batsman has a Test average of 6.4, you know you are in trouble.

As the innings ended, both Harris and Hilfenhaus ran for the boundary, either eager to partake of the bowling conditions themselves, or trying to minimise their embarrassment. In the intermission, however, the clouds parted, and the ground, Strauss and Cook were bathed in sunshine; the sideways movement pretty well vanished. England's openers tucked in eagerly, cutting and pulling with ease, enjoying the trampoline bounce which makes short balls here sit up and beg for punishment. Only Hilfenhaus found the consistency necessary for the circumstances, wringing an affirmative lbw verdict against Alastair Cook (30) from Tony Hill, only to have it countermanded on referral to Ray Erasmus after the replay revealed a thick inside edge.

Australia's avenging angel at the WACA, Mitchell Johnson, was here distinctly earthbound, his first three overs without pace, accuracy or threat. Most importantly, they hung as shapelessly as Mama Cass's kaftan. In the second of his two spells from the Members' End, 3–0–17–0 and 4–0–25–0, Johnson also sent four byes past Haddin's outstretched right gauntlet that would have brought a gulp of recognition to the throat of anyone who watched him in Brisbane. Standing at mid-off for the sake of his finger, Ponting looked unusually friendless and forlorn. The crowd had already started to thin, the lower terraces left roomy by early, disillusioned departures. The way his team-mates had deserted him earlier, the captain might have yearned to follow them. As it was, the happiest Melburnians today were probably those who, like many members, did not turn up at all.

'He's Out', read the headlines in English newspapers at news of the fall of Bradman. It was tempting to imagine something similar as Michael Hussey disappeared from view into the basement catacombs of the MCG's Ponsford Stand to leave Australia 58 for four shortly before lunch in this Fourth Test.

All summer long, Hussey has been the thin green and gold line, a one-man resistance movement, a reminder of better days. In the first three Tests, he compiled more runs than any batsman in the five Tests of last year's Ashes. When he was caught at the wicket today, it seemed insufficiently momentous to say that he had merely been dismissed. It felt like the Fall of the House of Hussey.
Monsieur Cricket: C'est Fini.

In fact, if you're to pick Hussey up cheaply anywhere, Melbourne is where you will do it, perhaps because he prefers pace on the ball, perhaps because he can be a tentative starter and quicker bowlers deck it round here. His MCG average is now less than 30, compared to 75 at the other Australian Test grounds.

This was also the reward for thoughtful, patient, probing bowling. Hussey left half the balls bowled to him today, but England did not grow bored and stray on to the stumps, conceding him easy on-side runs; nor did they bombard him pointlessly, feeding his pull shot, as at Brisbane and Perth. Instead, they counted on a disciplined line, a mostly full length and the influence of the arithmetic mean: sooner or later, the hottest streak must end.

James Anderson had time to bowl only one further delivery, which snaked past Steve Smith's furtive prod, before rain moved in. Time to reflect; for Australia, time to worry. This
had
to happen.
Now
what would they do? It was already almost too late. Smith at number six is a promising cricketer, but as neither batsman nor bowler is he someone to be relied on in Test cricket. If Smith is the answer, you are caused to reflect, what is the question? As Australia's only slow bowler here and in Perth, he has delivered half a dozen patchy overs.

It looked, in the end, a little like a team that thought it could carry the day with a positive attitude, a spring in its step and a bit of baggy-green dreaming. But this was not such an occasion, nor is this a venue at which to rely on fancy and faith. In Melbourne's broadsheet daily,
The Age,
Dean Jones devoted a Christmas Eve column to the subject of batting on the first day at the MCG, stressing the importance of circumspection: he entreated Australian batsmen not to drive, to be wary of the pitch's residual tackiness, to preserve wickets early in order to benefit afterwards. As Smith, Phil Hughes, Michael Clarke, Brad Haddin and Peter Siddle were all dismissed on the front foot, going hard at the moving ball, it was indicative of poor reading habits as well as poor batting.

The example was set early. The contest of opening batsman and bowler is cricket's Socratic dialogue, inquiry and response, proposition and rebuttal. The first cricketer to make a name for himself on Twitter, Hughes seems to see the game in terms of attitude, aggression and a good time rather than a long time. In Tremlett's first over, he slashed square and larruped the ball through the covers. England's bowlers promptly tightened their lines to keep him under control, whereupon he became like a boy threatening to hold his breath until he burst; his open-faced drive on the up to be caught in the gully even as the drinks retinue were waiting by their Gatorwagon was the shot not of a Test opener, which he is meant to be, but of a batsman averaging less than 20 this season, which he is.

Once Ponting had fetched the closest thing to an unplayable delivery all day, it was notable just how minimal was the sense of event about the coming of the rest of the batsmen. Back in the day, the Australian order deployed like the cast of one of those old-fashioned, big-budget star vehicles of the 1960s and 1970s:
The Battle of Britain,
perhaps, or
A Bridge Too Far.
It felt like there was no end to the batting. When Steve Waugh and Adam Gilchrist were at numbers six and seven, it almost seemed to get better as it went on.

Not only does this Australian order have no such star quality, it exudes vulnerability. As an observer, you don't struggle to imagine its weaknesses: Watson's block about hundreds, Hughes's block about blocking, Clarke's back, Ponting's age, Haddin's impetuosity. We saw today the batting in its true light, that Hussey has been guiding Australia across a narrow bridge of struggling competitiveness while a chasm of abject failure has yawned beneath. Had he not failed here, the team would simply have been overwhelmed a little later – but it was always going to happen.