Ashes 2011 (8 page)

One of these was Hussey, swallowed at deep mid-wicket as he pulled for once in the air; another was Mitchell Johnson, who by rights should have been in after twenty minutes, and showed how this mattered by being bowled rather lamely. Steve Finn finished with his best Test figures, six for 125, although as a consolation this rather fell into the 'Apart-from-that-what-did-you-think-of-the-play-Mrs-Lincoln?' category.

To the first ball of England's second innings, Strauss padded up to Hilfenhaus, and for a batsman on a pair waited with impressive insouciance while the excited Australians referred Dar's not-out decision: it was, just, too high. The visiting captain and vice-captain negotiated the last hour dourly, only reducing the lead to 202 but avoiding further alarums. The first hour tomorrow should be at least as tense.

The first sound I heard on approaching the Gabba on day one of the First Test were the strains of 'The Great Escape' played for a radio station by the Barmy Army's trumpet sergeant Billy Cooper. Surely, I thought, they couldn't be rehearsing for strategic withdrawal already. The English press seemed so convinced of their own team's favouritism that surely the theme from
Rocky
would have been more appropriate.

For members of England's cricket community, though, a little barminess is never misplaced. Just like the last time, a strategic withdrawal is what this opening of the Ashes is proving to be, England having retreated so far for 101 overs and sustained only a single casualty. At stumps, having been outplayed for two and a half of the first three days, they led by 88 runs with a day to play. The effort was undergirded by Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook's partnership of 188 in 398 balls, England's biggest in Ashes cricket at the Gabba for any wicket, although Cook's fluent two-hour century stand with Jonathan Trott was little less crucial, putting distance between the visitors and their hosts once England had erased their arrears.

The tension and hurry of the first day seemed long ago. In the first innings, Siddle felt close to wickets so constantly that he almost added a cradling of his head to the end of his regular follow-through. Today there was as little encouragement for the bowlers as there was lateral movement, save when a ball every so often hit one of the cracks marking the pitch darkly like fading operation scars on a pale abdomen.

Siddle's eighth over was Australia's best of the pre-lunch session. Strauss cover-drove a fullish ball for four to raise England's hundred in two and a half hours, but inside-edged the next to fine leg, then was hit on the gloves protecting his clavicle; he looked momentarily nonplussed. A quarter-hour later, he came down the pitch to Doherty and miscued as the ball hit the rough, but Johnson, advancing overexcitedly, floored the catch.

The moment passed. The pair buckled down anew, constructing their partnership as painstakingly and collaboratively as English journalists construct their expenses. Strauss looked less like a batsman avoiding a pair than one coming off back-to-back warm-up hundreds, neat and economical in everything he did, even in the perfunctory retracing of his guard between deliveries. Getting out to Marcus North will have annoyed him, but he is not the best batsman to do that, Sachin Tendulkar having contrived it eight weeks ago.

Compared to the callow youth of 2006–07 and the limited and somewhat vulnerable figure of last year, Cook was a revelation, accumulating invisibly but invincibly. In addition to his usual repertoire of cuts and nudges, he displayed a pull shot almost as powerful and fluent as Hussey's the day before, and even the occasional unostentatious cover drive. Four years ago in Perth, he marred his only previous Ashes hundred by falling late in the day. Here his concentration was cast iron to the last ball, and his fitness irreproachable.

Bowling circumstances today were not unfavourable. It was warm but not hot; with plenty of runs to play with, there was ample scope for attack. But conditions were very different to those that pertained a year ago when Hilfenhaus won the man-of-the-match award against West Indies. Today he seemed to lack some variety, a bouncer, or an extra turn of speed. In fact, according to Channel Nine's patented Gator Tracker, with which they monitor players' vital signs during the match, Hilfenhaus's heart rate varies more than his pace. At one stage, he was so grooved at 84mph that it was like he had slipped into cruise control.

Johnson was the gravest disappointment, his arm reaching Malinga-like lowness, with the result that, at his natural length, most deliveries were reaching England's batsmen, who tend to hang back anyway, at a comfortable waist height. There was ample geeing-up for him. After one over, no fewer than seven team-mates ran past to ruffle his hair, pat his backside or maybe compliment him on his moustache. But he is wicketless so far here, and has taken three for 328 since his successful first innings in Mohali.

Watson, by contrast, was probably underbowled, despite his qualities as perhaps Australia's most consistent and certainly luckiest bowler of the last year. And it was a day on which Australia needed better luck than that they made themselves. Four years ago they were catching the chances put down by Johnson, by Clarke when Trott (34) square-cut Siddle in the air, and by Siddle when Cook (103) mishooked Hilfenhaus. The outstanding fielding effort of the day was a headlong dive to save a boundary by Queenslander Lee Carseldine, substituting for Katich, who was recuperating from an Achilles strain. The rewards for desperation otherwise accrued to England alone. It isn't an escape yet. But it has been great.

The first day of the Gabba Test was crowned by cricket's supreme individual feat, the hat-trick, which for an instant makes the spectator forget the other twenty-one players involved in a game. It has been overshadowed since not by individual virtuosos but by partnerships – alike, different and intriguing.

On Saturday, Michael Hussey and Brad Haddin shut the light from England's bowlers, and eventually England's hopes. They were a study in contrasts: intense and driven left-hander, breezy and laconic right-hander. Today it was the turn of Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook, captain and vice-captain, leader and heir, and rather more similar players.

That's not entirely a coincidence. Australians tend to believe in the principle of opposites attracting, and also causing bowlers problems of adjustment in line and length. Katich and Watson are the latest of many left-hand/right-hand opening combinations, including Morris and Barnes, Lawry and Simpson, Marsh and Boon, Slater and Taylor.

The last of these represented another classic and more general contrast, dasher and foil, known in England too. In fact, when two English openers last scored hundreds in the same innings of an Ashes Test, at Trent Bridge in 1938, the perpetrators were Charlie Barnett and Len Hutton, amateur aggressor and professional pragmatist. Barnett was 96 when the penultimate over of the opening session ended, but he was a man who suited himself. 'Don't worry about trying to give me the strike, son,' he told Hutton. 'We've given them enough cause for indigestion.'

Strauss and Cook are peas in a pod by comparison, left-handers strong square of the wicket and off their pads. They are accumulators rather than stroke-makers. Both fancy the pull shot. They run similarly between wickets, rather better than their Australian counterparts, neither pushing particularly hard, but alert for singles. Even their records run parallel, Cook's average being a run greater, Strauss's strike rate two runs faster.

They look so comfortable and complementary in each other's company it is a surprise to find that their average first-wicket stand is just over 40 – compared, for example, to Katich and Watson, who in twenty-six partnerings together have a mean stand of 55. Too often to be quite satisfactory, then, they have been like Cox and Box, one coming when the other is going.

Strauss, however, has argued that their similarity as batsmen is a strength of the partnership, that they understand one another's cues and watchwords: 'Being similar has helped us spot each other's difficulties more quickly.' Both, too, have come to Australia with a kindred sense of mission.

Today's killer stat was that Strauss commenced his second innings with an average in Australia (22.45) poorer than Mike Brearley's (22.7) – a failure or two away, perhaps, from becoming the butt of that standard Australian jibe about English specialist captains. Had he misjudged that first ball of the second innings even slightly, moreover, his record against Ben Hilfenhaus would have been six dismissals for 116 runs in 273 deliveries. He was possibly six inches away from turning a presumed weakness into a downright hoodoo.

Cook's Test record ex Australia of 3,866 runs at 46.57 suggests a player of pedigree; an Ashes average 20 runs less before this Test implies room for improvement. Like Strauss, too, he has played grade cricket in Australia, for Willetton in Perth. It will have left him with friends here in front of whom he would wish to do well.

Both have gone a way today not only to saving England's face, but to answering questions about themselves. Strauss scored almost half as many runs as he managed in the whole summer four years ago; Cook drew the sting from Ponting's pre-Test barb about him 'hanging on to his place by the skin of his teeth'.

For all the dissimilarities of the players involved, one feature of both the key partnerships of this Test has been their obvious personal harmony. When Hussey gave his roar of triumph on reaching his hundred on Saturday, Haddin gave a fist-pump of little less gusto. Having endured through the perilous morning to savour the sunny uplands of the afternoon, there was a sense of completed and shared journey. Strauss and Cook communicate by word, gesture and touch – their frequent little consultations, their fussy glove touches. They seldom say much, but seem to like the other to know that they are there, shortening the odds of the contest from eleven to one to eleven to two.

Batting – and, to a lesser degree, bowling – are tackled together. The contribution partners make to one another is not measured and has no obvious material reward, but is an index of cohesion. Interviewed before play today, Justin Langer talked about partnerships being integral to every great team. But this is axiomatic: partnerships are no less important, and perhaps more, to every more modest team that has aspirations to punch above its collective weight. A lot of this series will be about what players help others achieve – Cook and Strauss, and also Hussey and Haddin, have made positive starts.

Nobody was badly injured. The Movember moustaches of Mitchell Johnson and Peter Siddle may have raised some money for charity. Apart from that, today's final day of the First Ashes Test had virtually no redeeming feature for Australian cricket.

Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott, meanwhile, batted as they might in their dreams, compiling the highest English partnership in Australia: Cook made the highest Test score at the Gabba, breaking the record set by Bradman in the ground's inaugural Test against Trott's native land.

The pitch wasn't quite as benign and featureless as all that. Long parallel lengthways cracks had opened, almost as though Jonathan Trott had taken his serial guard-marking on tour, and the ball jagged about when it hit them. There were chances, too, both from the bowling of Shane Watson. When Trott was 75, Clarke dropped the kind of slip catch for which the description 'regulation' was devised; when Cook was 222, Ponting dropped the kind of difficult, full-stretch slip catch which he used to make look 'regulation'.

But nothing is 'regulation' for this Australian cricket team, even the regulations. At 457 for one, Cook (209) turned Doherty in the air to short mid-wicket, where Ponting pitched forward to intercept at grass level. Ponting claimed the catch, albeit without much conviction, and the game ground to a halt while replays revolved inconclusively above. Having acquitted Hussey by a sliver of doubt on the third day, the system similarly exonerated Cook – again, it was probably a miscarriage of justice. Otherwise, the Gabbatoir was under new management, this sense consolidated by the probability that at least 90 per cent of the small crowd were English, sequestered in the southern corner of the ground once occupied by its raucous hill and raising a racket to match.

Cook played shots he can hardly have played for years. It was like someone rummaging through their favourite old clothes and deciding: yes, I used to really like that. Straight drive along the ground off the left-arm spinner? Might try that on. Feather fine-leg glance for four? Hmmm, still fits. Not that Cook ever became much more elegant for that. Even in complete control, he seems to be tucked up by the short ball, to jump in the air in defence, to stumble slightly as he turns to leg. Nor is his cover drive a thing of beauty: it relies too much on his hands, too little on the recommended transference of body weight, and involves him reaching for the ball. But the method is his, and it works. Cook zipped through the 190s with a scissor-sharp back cut from Doherty and a muscular hoick from North, becoming the fourth English double-centurion in Australia with a nurdle round the corner made easy by a misfield. His record, meanwhile, underwent a total makeover. His Ashes average went into the Test a meagre 26; it came out a neat 40.

Trott, meanwhile, became only the third batsman for England – one still hesitates to deem him an 'Englishman' – to commence an Ashes career with hundreds in back-to-back Tests. The other two were archetypal Yorkshiremen, Herbert Sutcliffe and Maurice Leyland, at a time when it was proverbial that when Yorkshire was strong, England were strong. Cynics might say that the correlation is now between the strengths of England and South Africa.

Trott has been typed a one-pace batsman, but it is a pace a team could learn to love, and he essayed some shots of the highest class, in particular a back-foot drive and back cut off Doherty, which somehow threaded their way between a wide first slip and a deepish backward point for consecutive boundaries. His straight drive back over Watson's head for a one-bounce four bordered on impudence.