Ashes 2011 (28 page)

Over the years, making your debut for Australia has been a pretty cushy deal. Nice cap. Nice little earner. Above all, lots of protection, like having your own personal posse of bodyguards. The arrival of Usman Khawaja today told you something of changed times locally even before he had faced a ball.

Test batsmen seldom play their debut innings at number three. Don Bradman, Ian Chappell, David Boon, Ricky Ponting: all achieved greatness in the role rather than having greatness thrust upon them. The last Australian to be baptised in a Test match at first-wicket-down is the current batting coach, Justin Langer, who in the absence of a queue to face Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh almost twenty years ago stepped cheerfully forward. But the baggy green was stuck faster to Langer's head than Doug Bollinger's rug to his, and most teams prefer bedding young players down a little more gently. The partner Khawaja joined after lunch today, Shane Watson, began his maiden Test innings here six years ago with the score 471 for five.

Khawaja was, of course, joining a team already beaten soundly in this series, and whose out-of-form proxy captain Michael Clarke was in no real position to act as bulwark, even if he was so disposed. On the contrary, the 24-year-old was there partly to act as protection for his team's most experienced player – a peculiar turnabout in responsibilities.

Not that any of this obviously fazed the preternaturally composed Khawaja, whether it was appearing in the stead of Ricky Ponting, being presented with his cap by Mark Taylor, or being watched by his hero Steve Waugh. He wore his pads to the national anthem, oblivious to any message this might convey about lack of faith in his openers, and through the first session, where the camera found him once or twice, giving a convincing impression of relaxation. It followed him into the middle immediately after lunch, when he whirled his second ball through square leg for four – a pull shot as good as any played by the player he has replaced.

How a batsman meets his first few balls in Test cricket is seldom indicative of all that much. David Gower famously pulled his first ball for four; Marcus Trescothick waited three-quarters of an hour to get off the mark. This was rousing stuff nonetheless: what used to be thought of as characteristically Australian batting, treating each ball on its merits, and its demerits. Thereafter, he performed as instructed, approaching the innings as he would any on his home ground. Khawaja has good soft hands, pleasingly simple footwork, the appearance of time to play his shots as a result, and an impressively unflustered air at the crease. He didn't score a run in front of point, and on a quicker pitch than this might have been squared up more often, but he looks to have the nous to adapt.

As impressive as his enterprise was how he dealt with inactivity. When after a few overs Strauss and Anderson met to intrigue at the end of the bowler's run, Khawaja withdrew a few steps towards square leg and waited patiently while they machinated, then was ready in his stance by the time Strauss had jogged back to slip. Fifteen from his first eight balls, he located only a single from his next twenty deliveries, and only two singles in the twenty before tea, but never seemed agitated. 'I had a ball out there,' he said afterwards – it looked like it.

In mental approach, if not in style, his cricket bears the stamp of his mentor with New South Wales and also Randwick Petersham Cricket Club, Simon Katich, and recalls that straightforward principle of batting once enunciated by Graeme Pollock. Irrespective of the quality of the attack, Pollock argued, a batsman could expect at least four or five bad balls an hour without needing to force the issue. Hit each of these for four, and two sessions was all you should need to be approaching a hundred. It's a philosophy unconsciously imbibed by Pollock's quondam countryman Jonathan Trott, and conspicuously lacking among Australians this summer. Among those most out of touch with this principle of Test match batting, in fact, is Australia's newest captain, whose overeagerness this summer has gradually become overanxiety. To see Strauss post two gullies as soon as he came in this afternoon, and watch him cut firmly but straight to the finer of them, was to feel tangled in a tape loop.

Khawaja continued after tea with a front-foot pull and a square drive from Bresnan that made batting look simple, and dealt coolly with balls that, in seaming past the outside edge, reminded us it wasn't. But just when he should have been hunkering down, he tried for the first time to manufacture a shot, a sweep against Swann's spin before he had quite judged the bounce or deviation. And that put him in the same category as many an Australian batsman this summer: a waster. Since Brisbane, only Hussey has contributed a century to the local cause. Khawaja's was the eighteenth score of 35 or more in that time not prolonged to three figures. If it seems harsh to hold Khawaja in his first Test to account for such an error of judgement, that is the fate of players joining weak teams: they experience pressure to perform at once.

In addition to being a distinctly handy player, Khawaja is, of course, a Muslim – the first of that faith to play cricket for Australia. This seems as unimportant to him as it seems important to many others, and the novelty is showing signs of wearing off quite quickly: in the media area, Australian journalists already refer to him familiarly as Uzzi, in the same nickname tradition that gave us Hughesy, Smithy, Warnie etc. They have been teasing their visitors all summer with the proposition that South Africa's best batsman plays for England; how long before Pakistan's best batsman is said to play for Australia?

Khawaja marks a new Australia, however, in a more conventional cricket sense, by being a young player with an already man-size task. One would prefer not to burden him with great expectations. But it may not be that easy.

'Come on Aussies show your spirit' read a deathless tweet flashed on the Sydney Cricket Groud replay screen this morning to show how in touch Cricket Australia is with the ways of young folk. Another reference to Johnnie Walker, perhaps. Under their new captain, nonetheless, Australia did exhibit some extra spunk, in a well-contested second day of the Fifth Test.

After England's domination of their first hours in the field and with the bat, one would hardly have rated Australia's chances of coming third in this match. Yet were it not for the no-ball that prolonged Alastair Cook's crucial innings, they might well be slightly ahead: as it is, England remain 113 runs in arrears with seven wickets remaining. Again, a replay shaped events. Cricket is fast becoming two games: one in real time, the other in slow motion.

The day's opening stanzas were summed up in the
moue
of appreciation formed by Michael Hussey as a ball from Tim Bresnan pitched leg and missed off stump by two feet. Probing bowling in helpful overhead conditions was matched by sublime fielding, and there was a whiff of demoralisation when a flat-footed Haddin flailed at Anderson in the day's fourth over.

Hussey and Steve Smith joined forces without ever appearing a happy or complementary partnership – just two batsmen thrown together, doing their best but somehow out of kilter, Hussey dour to the point of inertia, Smith fighting against his kid-on-red-cordial excitability, Hussey fussing around his crease as if in need of a dustpan and broom, Smith waving his bat around like a feather duster. They seemed to have just come out the other side when a nagging spell of medium pace from Collingwood parted them.

With the memory of his second-innings dismissal in Melbourne fresh, Hussey fell into a lulling routine of crisp drives to short and extra cover. But just when a comfortable détente seemed to have been achieved, Collingwood zipped one back to bowl him off a mix of inner edge and outer thigh. It was almost as though Hussey had so drilled himself not to be dismissed in one fashion that he overlooked all other possibilities: he had the minor consolation of joining a useful list of batsmen defeated by Collingwood's pawky variations, Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly and Sangakkara among them.

The new ball was taken with immediate effect, Collingwood now at third slip when Smith wasted an hour and a half's application with a wild drive at Anderson, who dismissed Siddle in his next over. But forty minutes before lunch, England got a little ahead of themselves. Pietersen could be seen essaying phantom shots at mid-off, while Strauss pushed the field back to give singles to both Johnson and Hilfenhaus in order to maximise the latter's strike.

When Hilfenhaus played and missed long enough to get a sighter, Australia's ninth wicket added 76 from 89 balls in sixty-four minutes of uncomplicated clumping either side of the intermission. Hilfenhaus, having incurred an inert pair in Melbourne, strolled into a six off Bresnan that landed among laughing members. From the next two balls, Johnson swept Swann for four and six into the terraces in front of the Brewongle Stand, and after a parodic block raised his 63-ball half-century with a single to square leg. Australia's 280 was beyond their overnight expectations, and well beyond those that would have been nurtured after their batsmen's early eclipse.

When England commenced their reply, Michael Clarke entrusted Hilfenhaus and Johnson with the new ball – not a bad shaft of captaincy, as it was hardly what England would have expected. Australia's new captain also had his first experience of what is known to befall best-laid plans, when Hilfenhaus and Johnson opened with several overs of weary dross.

Strauss has perhaps never played with greater freedom in Australia. He hooked Hilfenhaus twice for four, then massively into the members for six, a shot the more impressive for its almost nonexistent backlift and bravura follow-through. When he drove Siddle down the ground and through cover for four, England's captain flashed his partner a smile as broad as after retaining the Ashes.

Under the circumstances, the Australians did well to regroup. Hilfenhaus resumed after tea from round the wicket and swung one in that held its line to hit Strauss's off stump, and Johnson coaxed Trott into playing on a delivery as nondescript as many of his successful deliveries: for all the dreck he has served up, he is Australia's highest wicket taker this series.

Had a thick inside edge from Pietersen (8) gone onto the stumps, or had he on 26 connected with a glorious off drive whose breeze could be felt in the Noble Stand, England's chase might have faltered. As it was, the crucial reprieve was given by Michael Beer's fourteenth delivery in Test cricket. At 137 for two, Cook (46) forgot himself so completely as to shovel down the ground, where mid-on Hilfenhaus caught the ball amid much rejoicing, only for umpire Billy Bowden to call for a foot-fault referral which revealed the bowler to be pirouetting beyond the front line.

You can tell how gruelling a series this has been from the fact that lines such as 'bitter Beer', 'frothing Beer' and 'flat Beer' immediately sprang to mind, then 'welcome Beer', 'well-earned Beer' and 'Beer o'clock' when he took a nicely judged catch at deep fine leg to catch Pietersen's top edge from Johnson just before nightfall. But Cook, having quietly left 5,000 Test runs behind him, remained encamped at stumps, bending low over his defensive bat, and leaving night watchman Anderson to face the greater proportion of the day's last few overs, intent on the morrow. If the third day fluctuates as the second, and the weather continues staying away, this could be a better game than it initially promised.

Among the many prohibitions blazoned all over the rule-ridden Sydney Cricket Ground is one above eyelevel on the glass of the media area which reads: 'Any disturbance affecting the enjoyment of spectators should be reported to SCG staff.' In the hour before tea today, the phone in the administrative office should have been ringing off the hook.

Out in the middle, with an Ashes Test on the line, Australia's attack was bowling as badly as it has all summer – halfway down the pitch, despite its slowness, and without pace or shape. The fielding was flat. The effort was directionless. Captain Michael Clarke bore the expression of a second-hand-car buyer on the point of realising that the most reliable component of his newly acquired automobile was the ashtray.

For much of the summer, critics have homed in on Australia's batting as the root of all their misfortunes. The bowlers by comparison have gotten off fairly lightly. In fact, while they have had their moments, these have seldom been in combination: Siddle succeeded at Brisbane and Melbourne, Johnson and Harris at Perth, and Hilfenhaus … well, nowhere really. Now they had all taken the day off. At tea, England were 73 for nought in sixteen overs, an unheard-of rate of progress for Strauss and Cook, this summer or any.

How do teams bowl as badly as this? It cannot have been as though the bowlers were unfamiliar with the conditions. Johnson and Hilfenhaus had earlier made merry with the bat for an hour, and thereby acquired a thorough acquaintance of the wicket.

Nor can the Australians have been unprepared. Between innings, there was the now familiar sight of the team about to bowl going through token preliminaries. Tim Nielsen and Justin Langer led a slips catching drill. Bowlers ran round cones and heaved medicine balls. Orange fielding mats were deployed, isotonic drinks consumed, and a last few rousing injunctions issued to 'execute skill sets'.

And then … everyone bowled rubbish, on a pitch without the lift to bang the ball in, and in environs that, thanks to the arena shape the ground has developed so as best to host Australian football, now lack the ground-level breezes that used to abet swing. The third ball of Hilfenhaus's fourth over disappeared over square leg for a contemptuous six, while Johnson's sixth over was his worst since Brisbane – that it cost only seven runs was a tribute to some agile wicketkeeping by Haddin, who to Australia's quickest bowler must sometimes be tempted to take up his stance at short fine leg. Meanwhile, in the equipment driveway beneath the Bradman Stand, the best bowler at the ground was rolling his arm over to the star of, among other things,
Nick Fury: Agent of S. H. I. E. L. D.
and
Shaka Zulu: The Citadel.
Shane Warne to David Hasselhoff: this is the stuff of which Big Bash dreams are made.