Ashes 2011 (30 page)

Fifteen years ago,
The Times'
chief cricket correspondent saved a Test match for England against South Africa. Mike Atherton faced 492 balls, although what did this imply other than a lot? Far more evocative is it to recall that he endured for 643 minutes. The image of Atherton's innings that most people recall is not of any shot or even milestone, but the one of him looking up from his haunches and giving his partner Jack Russell a smile – weary, wary but game. Cook, then, has done still more than be the fulcrum of England's exertions in this Ashes series. He has given us a little instruction in cricket – by his deeds, of course, rather than his words.

The final day's play in the Ashes of 2010–11 will commence at 10.03 a.m. The reason: a complex recalculation based on residual time lost to rain on the first day which it would be pointless to explain. The same was very nearly true of play on the fourth day of this Fifth Test, where England outclassed Australia in ways it feels tedious and repetitive to enumerate.

At the close, Australia were set to lose three Tests in a series by an innings for the first time since … well, ever. In the day's first half, their listless attack was relieved of 156 runs in 36.5 overs by England's last three wickets; in the second, they lost seven batsmen in 44 overs either side of tea. Steve Smith and Peter Siddle negotiated an extra half-hour that Andrew Strauss requested, but Australia remain 151 runs short of making their opponents bat again, and England stand on the brink of a 3–1 victory.

Today's should actually have been the best batting conditions of the match – almost of the series. The SCG pitch had flattened right out, the sky was nearly cloudless, the outfield had quickened, both attacks were weary from five weeks' hard graft, and a crowd of 35,622 was in high humour. England certainly revelled. Having taken toll of some tired Australian bowling late on the third day, Matt Prior positively scampered to the fastest English hundred of the series in 109 balls – the fastest by an Englishman against Australia, in fact, for nearly thirty years.

'Crikey,' said an Australian colleague behind me after tea yesterday. 'I've looked up and Prior's forty already. How did that happen?' This is Prior's chief faculty, for surprising opponents with instant aggression, sucking bowlers into his off-stump slot by hanging slightly back, then veritably pelting between wickets. Not even Pietersen in this England line-up scores more quickly than Prior's 62.92 per hundred balls.

Of all England's cricketers this summer, Prior has probably occasioned the fewest words – no bad thing, given that wicketkeepers become most obtrusive by their errors. He has taken twenty-two catches with scarcely a murmur of praise or blame, the best haul in forty years.

Over the years, Australia has not been a happy hunting ground for English glovemen. Alec Stewart never managed a full series here. Geraint Jones and Jack Russell lost places mid-series, Jack Richards and Steve Rhodes post-series. Not since Alan Knott's two tours, furthermore, has a visiting keeper consistently made Ashes runs in Australia. Four years ago, Jones and Chris Read scraped together 98 runs in ten innings.

Prior, by contrast, is that rare English player who looks born for Australian climes, in his keeping and batting enjoying the bounce, the carry and the minimal sideways movement. As he has assimilated these conditions this summer, he has proved more and more effective, helped by some opposition bowling and captaincy that might be politely described as thought-free. As is usually the case, fully 96 of his 118 runs were scored on the off side, including a six down the ground and all eleven of his boundaries. Clarke finally set an off-side sweeper when the quicker bowlers operated, but the simpler expedient of bowling straight and attacking the stumps was somehow thought either too obvious or too subtle. Prior took particular toll of the third new ball, which neither swung nor seamed for the Australian quicks, instead leaving the bat with a crack.

Thanks to some sensible defence and bottom-handed hoicking from Bresnan, England's eighth pair added 102, as its seventh pair had added 107, its sixth pair 154 and … well, you get the picture. England's last pair, Graeme Swann and Chris Tremlett, then purloined another 35 in seven overs to add irritation to insult to injury, and extend England's lead to 364.

As he has been inclined to do all summer, Watson set off as though planning to erase this deficit by stumps on his own, driving, cutting and pulling seven boundaries in forty balls. Hughes all but disappeared from view, only to re-emerge when both batsmen ended up at the non-striker's end having turned an easy two into their second run-out in three starts. Watson, of course, turns up at run-outs like Lara Bingle turns up at openings, but here he could at least share the blame: both batsmen cantered the first casually; both were ball-watching; neither appeared to call decisively. Perhaps still brooding, Hughes fenced at Bresnan six runs later.

Captain Clarke and Usman Khawaja endured through to tea, and the latter had just begun asserting himself, with a reverberating pull shot from Anderson, when he followed one from the same bowler that swung away like a Roberto Carlos free kick. Clarke, who recovered something like freedom in his foot movement against Swann, had struck six affirming fours when he too misread Anderson's trajectories.

Had Bell caught Haddin (7) diving to his right at short cover and reduced Australia to 139 for five, there might have been no reason to return tomorrow. As it was, England shortened their work when Pietersen caught Hussey in the gully. With shadows lengthening across the ground, the man with the longest shadow of all bowled his quickest spell of the match from the Randwick End, Tremlett beating Haddin's pull and Johnson's prod for pace with consecutive deliveries; Siddle just ensured that his would be the only hat-trick of the series by digging out a yorker.

About half an hour after play, the ground was finally swept by a drenching rain, the results of which were left glistening on the covers beneath its floodlights. So it turns out that there
was
one new development today: Australia, it seems, can no longer even do rain properly.

Shane Watson will end this Ashes series with an average of nearly 50. In a team as thoroughly beaten as Australia, such a statistical achievement would normally attract such adjectives as 'honourable', 'laudable', maybe even 'valiant'. Regard this as an exhibit in the case against interpreting a series from the average tables.

Even before he concluded his Test summer today with a run-out of comical awfulness, Australia's Allan Border Medallist had been an underachiever. On seven occasions he has batted for more than 100 minutes; only once has he gone beyond three hours. Even leaving aside the argument that, thanks to flat wickets and fat bats, 50 is the new 40, Watson has achieved a conversion rate uglier than that between sterling and the Australian dollar.

His bowling, a useful adjunct for Ricky Ponting over the last eighteen months, has also faded. Although he has probably bowled a little better than his three wickets at 74 would suggest, you would be hard pressed to bowl worse. His fielding, too, has remained clumsy, and he occupies first slip with as much animation as a waxworks dummy. For all that, a big innings today, as it has for Ian Bell and Matt Prior, might have put an attractive gloss on Watson's season. And the way it did not eventuate arguably explains quite a lot about the Ashes of 2010–11.

The chemistry of some opening combinations produces spontaneous energy; in the case of Shane Watson and Phil Hughes, it is more like gradual decomposition. They cut a curious sight simply in walking out. Where Cook and Strauss walk side by side, parting after a final glove-touch, Watson and Hughes could be playing different sports. While Watson approaches the crease at a deliberate plod, Hughes runs out like an Australian rules footballer plunging through his team's crepe-paper banner.

Nor do they exude permanence and cohesion in the middle. They have the potential advantage of being a left-hander and a right-hander, but neither the alertness nor the fleetness of foot to take advantage of it. Watson is a ponderous runner, and an apparently quiet caller, who had been involved in six Test run-outs before today. He is now in harness with a lazy runner in Hughes. To call them 'partners', in fact, is more a polite convention than a description; at the moment, they are simply two men who, for convenience's sake, happen to put the pads on at the same time. If they were in relationship therapy, the counsellor would tell them that they are 'bad for each other'.

Today's mishap would have made club cricketers blush. Hughes turned Swann to mid-wicket, and both batsmen set off, albeit at no great rate. Michael Hussey, for example, would never have taken the first run so gently; he would have had his head down checking his partner's cues for interest in a second, in doing so increasing the pressure on the fielder. So slowly did Watson and Hughes chug, it was like Sky had gone to the slow-motion replay early.

To the reason for this lack of urgency, one needed to cast one's mind back ten days, to when a hasty call from Watson and a tardy response from Hughes nipped their partnership in the bud. You imagined them between times discussing the importance of not being run out with the same emphasis as Basil Fawlty gave to not mentioning the war. The result was similar, although as funny only if you were English.

Hughes, ball watching, turned and came back without pausing – without obviously calling either. Watson responded to Hughes's advance, set off for a second run, then turned to watching the ball too. In doing so, he missed that Hughes had pulled up, apparently transfixed by Pietersen's fielding. Soon enough, the pair were transfixed by one another – because of their close proximity. It was the sixth run-out in Australia's last seven Test matches, of which Watson has been involved in three, each ending an Australian opening partnership. England, by contrast, have sustained not one such casualty; Trott's at Melbourne is the only close call that comes to mind.

Effective running between wickets is one of the most elusive cricket skills, and also one of the least practised. But it basically comes down to one thing: an understanding of, and a trust in, your team-mates. When you respond to a comrade's call, you are putting yourself in his hands as completely as at any time in the game. That is why good teams invariably run well, and why run-outs always seem to beget other run-outs. When understanding and trust break down in any community, the effect is contagious; a cricket team is no different.

It is a truism to say that England have retained the Ashes this summer because they have been the more skilful side. It is more illuminating to refine that statement by concentrating on the broader aspects of the visitors' superiority, which involve those that bind eleven cricketers into an XI, and make cricket into a game rather than simply a collection of biomechanical processes.

Bowl ten half-volleys to Watson and he would welly all ten through the covers for four – which looks good, is measurable, reproducible, and might lead to a defensible average, but is hardly the end of a cricketer's responsibilities to his team. When it comes to forming part of a unit that punches above its collective weight, Watson exhibits no extra dimension, none of the qualities that galvanise team-mates, light up a game or lift a crowd. He is about as good a cricketer as Australia has put in the field this summer – and he is still not very good.

As the morning waned, and the strains of 'The Last Post' reverberated again from Billy Cooper's trumpet, a disturbance of stumps at the Sydney Cricket Ground ended Australia's on-field agonies in the Ashes of 2010–11. The off-field agonies have barely begun.

At nearly two hours, the fifth day took a little longer than expected, but new balls have been England's sphere of influence this summer, and twenty-eight deliveries with a new one sufficed to see off the last vestiges of Australia's tail, and conclude a victory by an innings and 83 runs. When Michael Beer was the last wicket to fall, it was possible we had seen the last of him in Test cricket. Australia are not scheduled to play a Test match until August in Sri Lanka – there will be a lot of brooding between now and then.

Despite the overnight rain, Steve Smith and Peter Siddle resumed their overnight resistance on time, and brought up their 50 partnership after twenty minutes, whereupon one of the promised 'isolated showers' eventuated and the players dashed for the shelter of the pavilion – all save Tremlett, who allows nothing to disturb his steady, measured tread, and who wandered in some way after the umpires.

Tom Parker's groundstaff did well to limit the interruption to three-quarters of an hour, the ground announcer rather less well when he decided to reintroduce all the players by reference to their images and stats on the big screen. There truly is no limit to the insults heaped on the intelligence of spectators inside Australian Test grounds. Gosh, here's a picture of Alastair Cook with his arms crossed. After all, he's only batted thirty-six hours this summer so you might have forgotten him. The Barmy Army responded as if on cue to mention of Mitchell Johnson's name by launching into another of its growing repertoire of tributes to Super Mitch, then continuing as a kind of human karaoke machine, rifling through its songbook at random.

Finally they exulted in unison when Siddle holed out to Anderson off Swann in front of their lower terrace in the Trumper Stand. For those who enjoy such statistical curios, Siddle, by adding 86 in 131 balls with Smith, had participated in Australia's best partnership in consecutive Tests – which tells you as much as you need to know about Australia's ineffectual top order.

Smith pressed on to Australia's highest score, showing some of his much-lauded spark, while not quite dispelling the image one has of him of a boy waving around a bat too big for him. Tremlett took the new ball at 261 for eight, and Anderson promptly removed Hilfenhaus to give Prior his twenty-third catch of the summer. Within a blink of Beer's stumps being rattled, four of them were souvenired, the two containing stump cams being left behind – even in their ecstasy, the players never forget their debt to television.