Day 4: Australia 280 and 174 for 6 (Rogers 52, Broad 2-34) need 137 more runs to beat England 215 and 375
Four days of enthralling, gut-wrenching and at times quite remarkable Ashes cricket came to rest at Trent Bridge with England favourites to take a 1-0 lead in the Investec Test series. Favourites, but not so confident that they would sleep soundly. Nobody sleeps soundly at the start of an Ashes series.
Australia will begin the final day still 137 runs short of victory with four wickets left, aware that the first Test tilted towards England in the final hour when they accounted for Michael Clarke, Steve Smith and Phillip Hughes within 17 balls. "Cut off the serpent's head," Graeme Swann had urged before the series began and the loss of Clarke, caught at the wicket off Stuart Broad, caused the Australian body to begin thrashing.
Clarke's dismissal possessed the high drama that already this series is producing at will. The umpire, Aleem Dar, strolled to square leg to discuss whether the ball had carried to Matt Prior, and it was such a critical juncture that he would have probably asked for a TV verdict if he had caught it above his head. Then Clarke upped the tension by reviewing, only for the third umpire, Marais Erasmus, to confirm the decision dint of the lightest mark on Hot Spot and by audio.
Steven Smith followed to the next ball - the first wicket for Swann, in his 22nd over. Swann has never made a match-winning contribution at Trent Bridge, his home ground, and even though this seemed made for him, a pedestrian pitch which allowed time to adjust, and left the shrewdest, most adaptable batsmen scenting that runs were possible, stood in his way.
But, uplifted by Clarke's dismissal, Swann suddenly summoned more turn. Smith fell lbw on the back foot and Hughes followed for 0, the ball just pitching on leg stump and spinning back sharply for another lbw verdict.
No side had ever scored as many as 311 in the last innings to win a Test at Trent Bridge, but the heavy roller further deadened the pitch for a prolonged period and Australia also drew sustenance from the hottest day of the year and a lack of extravagant swing for the new ball.
Their first task was to gnaw away at England's expectations and they did so impressively in a first-wicket stand of 84 between Shane Watson and Chris Rogers. They lost Watson by tea but even that was unfortunate, as he fell to a marginal lbw decision for Broad.
Whereas Watson departed for 46 with sorrowful shakes of the head after his review narrowly failed to overturn Dar's lbw decision, Rogers did win a reprieve on 38 in the following over. He is a survivor: the gnarled gunslinger who pops out briefly from behind a rock and then disappears from view again.
"Caught behind?" he mouthed at Kumar Dharmasena after the umpire had upheld Swann's appeal. Lbw or caught behind, it did not matter; replays found him innocent on all counts.
Australia's new opening combination has already developed a presence. They complement each other naturally and not just because they are right and left-handed. Watson is a domineering figure, always eager to take up the cudgels; Rogers is more furtive, using his wealth of experience to maximum effect.
Upon Watson's exit, Ed Cowan came in on a pair. His first Ashes Test had brought him little pleasure: a first-ball duck and bouts of nausea. For 15 balls, he wondered where his first run would come from but then Steven Finn released the pressure with a short wide one that he gratefully despatched.
On the brink of tea, England's conviction that they could win the first Test soared - and it came from an unlikely source. Joe Root's first Test wicket could hardly have come at a more opportune time. Cowan, enticed into a drive against an offspinner that turned out of the rough, edged to first slip.
England's morning had been one of jubilation. As they added a further 51 for their last four wickets, two batsmen walked off to standing ovations as recognition of efforts largely made the previous day. But for Ian Bell and Stuart Broad, the messages were very different.
The applause for Bell was appreciative, regard for perhaps the finest innings he has ever played for England, the deftest of Ashes hundreds made when England needed it most. The ovation for Stuart Broad carried more meaning: a significant show of public support on a day when he was castigated in the media for allegedly betraying the spirit of cricket for not walking when Dar erroneously gave him not out for a blatant edge to first slip, off the wicketkeeper's gloves, on the third evening.
If Broad was going to receive public support anywhere, it was from his home crowd in Nottingham but when he edged James Pattinson to Brad Haddin on 65 and approached the old pavilion, he will have been moved by the response.
At stumps, Clarke offered unabashed support to Broad on Sky TV. "I've always been a believer that umpires are there to take decisions," he said. "If everybody walked, we wouldn't need umpires. It is an individual decision but I don't think any less of Stuart for what he did."
They were wise words: less than an hour earlier, Clarke had also legitimately stood his ground when he probably knew he had hit it. His edge was considerably less obvious than Broad's but personal morality cannot be decided but how obvious something is. For Australia, though, frustration was understandable. The odds favoured England from the moment that Bell and Broad amassed their seventh-wicket stand of 138 in 48 overs.
If the Broad furore made him the victim of overstatement, Bell's 109, his 18th Test hundred, possessed understated excellence. He was 95 not out overnight and could not have hoped for any more munificence than the present offered up by Mitchell Starc with the second ball of the day, a low full toss which Bell carved through gully to reach 99. He scampered a hundred off a misfield in Starc's next over. Starc finally silenced him, caught at the wicket, but not before he had reprised the deft cover drives and back cuts which had been the hallmark of his innings.
Broad, 47 not out at start of play, passed 50 to rousing cheers when he edged between Watson and Clarke at first and second slip. Australia must have reflected that it was not the time for the two, who have not always seen eye to eye, to behave to each other with infinite politeness.
When Broad fell for 65, edging a back-foot force at Pattinson, Australia rounded up the rest within nine overs. England's innings ended when Swann again invited Watson and Clarke to take a slip catch, both dived and this time Clarke came up with the ball.
Day 3: England 215 and 326 for 6 (Bell 95*, Broad 47*) lead Australia 280 by 261 runs
England will be convinced that they finally broke Australia in a heated final session at Trent Bridge, that the 261-run lead established by the end of the third day is already enough to secure victory in the first Investec Test. Australia will suspect as much, but will cloak it in a sense of resentment that could linger all summer long.
That England achieved such luxury, after an intense battle for supremacy over more than two sessions, owed everything to the serenity of Ian Bell, whose understated innings must be ranked as one of his best, and the effrontery of Stuart Broad, on 37, who shamelessly brazened it out when he was caught at slip, cutting the debutant left-arm spinner, Ashton Agar, only for the umpire Aleem Dar to be misled by a further deflection off the gloves of wicketkeeper Brad Haddin and turn down the appeal.
Australia were desperate for a wicket: at 297 for 6, on a warm, hazy day, England led by 232, the game tilting towards them. But walking has been almost unheard of in Test matches for 40 years or more and once the initial indignation has died down, it is pointless protesting about what has generally become a convention of the game.
Broad knew to stay put for an edge as obvious as this was about as embarrassing as it can get, but that it was expected of him and he had no qualms about doing it. His only compensation was that he reddened up so much in the heat that you could not see him blush.
And so, as the match shifted towards England on a torpid, inconsistent surface, the resentment went the other way. England suffered two dubious debatable decisions by the third umpire, Marais Erasmus on the second day; Dar's blunder infuriated Australia on the third. If they ever lose the Ashes urn, the new ashes could be made up of the burnt offerings of couple of ICC umpires.
Beyond the emotions, Bell played with inconspicuous authority. The pitch was parched and so were the mouths of the spectators, but Bell exuded calm from the moment he took guard in the 15th over of the day, subtle back cuts and glides to the fore, a sensible approach on such a slow, low surface. He played with great selectivity, purred into an occasional deft drive and wavered only once, on 77, the over after the Broad brouhaha, when Haddin missed a tough, low chance off Peter Siddle. Haddin's mood, dark enough as it was, turned a shade blacker.
There were other issues for the umpires to deal with, too. Bell and Broad were warned for running down the centre of the pitch after tea and Pattinson was reminded that when it came to an appeal, once as quite enough as he hollered twice for an lbw appeal against Bell, who got a big inside edge.
England win these days by wearing down their opponents. Their run rate over their last dozen Tests is lower than any Test nation but Zimbabwe and for much of the day they were at their most painstaking as they battled to make light of a first-innings deficit of 65.
Only when Matt Prior briefly broke free against the second new ball did they begin to summon an attacking response. Shane Watson, who had been seen as a reluctant bowler in this Test because of a strain or two, delivered 15 overs of sedate medium pace for 11 runs, bringing the ball back with the risk of low bounce, always likely to take a wicket without actually advertising as much.
Michael Clarke delayed taking the second new ball for three overs but he might have delayed it longer because Prior was still new to the crease, with a single to his name from five deliveries. James Pattinson, in particular, had got the old ball to reverse markedly, England's innings was limping along at less than two runs an over and the slow, low surface was particularly treacherous to Prior who likes nothing more than to feed of off-side width and bounce.
Against the first new ball they made 176 for 5 at less than two an over; against its successor they made 160 for 1 at 3.2.
The new ball was much to Prior's tastes, never better illustrated than by his resounding pull, against Mitchell Starc. But on 31, from only 42 balls, the pitch betrayed him as he tried to pull Pattinson, the ball stuck in the surface, and he holed out to midwicket off the bottom of the bat.
The exhortation in the England dressing room, as they resumed on 80 for 2, only 15 ahead, would have been to bat all day. To make 246 for 4 was more than they dared hope. There was a remorseless mood about Alastair Cook as he registered his slowest half-century in Tests, more than four-and-a-quarter hours, pedestrian progress designed to right the wrongs of England's first innings.
Since his elevation to the England captaincy, Cook had always turned a Test fifty into a hundred. Agar, a graceful Australian debutant having the game of his life, had no respect for such statistics. Fifty was all he got. Agar outdid him with a touch of extra bounce from the rough as he tried to turn him into the leg side. Clarke's springing catch to his left was a good one; soon followed up by some stretches of his dicky back. Cook's wicket is worth 100 hours of remedial massage.
Australia were in no mood to allow Cook's staple diet of nudges off his pads. Their tactics are clearly to stifle him by bowling length outside off stump. On another warm morning, Cook impassively watched the deliveries pass by, like a lizard on a rock, waiting for a suitable beetle to come into range.
Kevin Pietersen, on 64, was England's first batsman to perish, his careworn stand with Cook worth 110 in 49 overs, the memories of England's painstaking progress in Tests in India and New Zealand during the winter revived with every over. He fought hard to play straight, forewarned of the dangers that could befall him if he did not when he whipped Siddle through midwicket and thick-edged the ball through cover, but then he got a ball from Pattinson that said "hit me" and could not resist it.
Pattinson deserved his moment as he caused Pietersen to drag on, attempting an off-side drive. He had found the edge earlier in the over and must have been wearied by its trundling progress well short of slip on such a torpid surface. Pietersen's error illustrated that a drag-on always a possibility. Bairstow became a second victim for Agar, edging to the wicketkeeper as he pushed at one that turned. Agar looks to be Australia's best chance of producing a regular spinner since Warne, but it is a rum list.
But Australia were to suffer for their over-excitement by wasting their final review on Pattinson's lbw appeal against Bairstow. Umpire Kumar Dharmasena gave it not out, but when he awarded runs it tempted Australia into a review because they were convinced it had struck the pad, forgetting to factor in that it was passing harmlessly down the leg side.
It was an embarrassing waste of a review. But it was doubtless not quite as embarrassing as it was for Aleem Dar several hours later.
Day 2: England 215 and 80 for 2 (Cook 37*, Pietersen 35*) lead Australia 280 (Agar 98, Hughes 81*, Anderson 5-85) by 15 runs
No last man has ever made a Test hundred. Ashton Agar came within inches of achieving it in his maiden Test innings. His eyes lit up at the opportunity to pull Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann flung himself forward to hold the catch at deep midwicket. He was denied the ultimate prize, but his extraordinary innings will remain part of cricket folklore forever.
Before Agar's fearless intervention, life was going swimmingly for England. James Anderson was producing a contented exhibition of reverse-swing bowling. Swann was finding substantial turn. Australia lost five wickets for nine runs in 32 balls and were in disarray at 117 for 9.
But if England had imagined that a decisive advantage in the first Investec Test was theirs for the taking, as Australia's first innings shrivelled on a parched Trent Bridge morning, they were mistaken.
Agar might have missed a maiden hundred but for the man dubbed 'Ashton Who?' two world records in a day was enough to be going on with. He walked off the ground with a smile and a shrug that won further admiration. His 98 had taken only 101 balls with 11 fours and two sixes. The cricketing world knows his name now.
Agar's two world records |
Agar was the unregarded teenager who told Australia that the game was not yet up.
He now holds the highest score by a No. 11 of all time, surpassing Tino Best's 95, also against England, at Edgbaston only last summer. When Best set his mark, that was explosive hitting; this was batting.
He dominated a transformational stand of 163 in 33 overs for the last wicket - another world record - with Phillip Hughes, a specialist batsman who drew strength from his example. He even gave Australia a first-innings lead of 65 and nobody expected that. The Agar family, who had travelled halfway around the world to watch him make his debut, were in jetlag heaven.
England's shock reverberated into the start of the second innings, Joe Root and Jonathan Trott dismissed by Mitchell Starc in 7.3 overs up to tea. Root got a feather on a leg-side flick - his doubts were not strong enough for his captain to agree to a review - and Australia successfully reviewed to gain an lbw against Trott, even though there was no definite proof of an inside edge that the umpire Aleem Dar had suspected.
Maintaining the threat once the new ball had softened was a different proposition. Australia's pace bowlers dried England's scoring rate but found no reverse swing. Alastair Cook was intent on circumspection and even Kevin Pietersen played with utmost sobriety. The last session dripped by. Agar's left-arm spin, although possessing stately promise, lacked threat, although he did have Pietersen dropped at the wicket - a very taxing chance for Brad Haddin - on 25.
Agar will bask forever in the memory of how he twice deposited Swann's offspin straight for six and pulled Steven Finn defiantly to the boundary in a youthful show of Australian defiance. One on-drive late in his innings off Anderson, played with perfect balance, back leg off the ground in the style of Pietersen's flamingo, was a gem.
Australia's innings might have ended on 131 when Agar, on 6, got the benefit of the doubt on Swann's appeal for a stumping from the third umpire, Marais Erasmus. He must know a good story when he sees one. Agar began tentatively but Finn's hapless attempts to browbeat him with short balls on such a somnolent surface failed miserably as the young debutant lived the dream.
Agar pulled him more and more confidently; Finn's tactics looked more and more misconceived. By the time Finn pitched the ball up, Agar had the confidence to drive him eagerly through extra cover. Finn's four overs cost 32 and he has rarely looked so impotent.
England's employment of deep fields to Hughes, a specialist batsman who was blocking, with the intention of bowling to Agar, a No. 11 dismissing the ball to all parts, looked increasingly clownish, a manual that no longer applied.
England had to abandon plans to restrict Stuart Broad to a watching brief. Broad had officially passed a fitness test before play on an injured shoulder but he had bowled gingerly in front of a posse of England backroom staff. He could barely throw the ball in. Until 10 minutes before lunch - a session extended to two-and-a-half hours - he stood there and watched, unemployed for his own protection.
It has been quite a week for Broad. He has had a cortisone injection in his shoulder, been cold shouldered for laddish remarks on Twitter about Andy Murray's girlfriend and then struck on the shoulder by a bouncer from James Pattinson. As the overs ticked by, and he was not called upon, he probably got a chip on his shoulder to complete the set.
Glorious blue skies greeted Australia at the start of play. All it required was some glorious batting to go with it. For half-an-hour, Australia prospered. Hughes punched Anderson confidently in front of point, Steve Smith met the introduction of Swann's offspin by a spritely blow over extra cover to register the first half-century of the series. Thirty-three runs came in untroubled fashion.
Then, as if by instruction, the mood changed abruptly. The ball spun markedly as early as the second morning; it reverse-swung by the 31st over. The nature of Test cricket in England is not what it once was.
England had hinted that they might contest the Ashes on dry surfaces and they have been as good as their word. Australian wickets fell in a rush. The air was rent with England appeals. The skies were still blue, but it no longer mattered.
Smith had played with adventure, but his eye let him down when he drove ambitiously at Anderson and edged to Matt Prior, beaten by just a shade of outswing. Swann, presented with the sort of parched, cracked surface he must have dreamed that his home ground would one day produce, found substantial turn to bowl Brad Haddin, second ball.
Then in the next over Anderson, cupping his hands around the ball, signalled that he felt it was already time for reverse swing, the result of a dry ground and England's wise ball management. Peter Siddle was worked over, dealt in turn a lavish inswinger and then an aggressive outswinger which he edged to Prior.
Anderson proceeded with lithe contentment. Starc was his third wicket of the morning, all to wicketkeeper catches, as he dabbed at a ball that swung away from him.
Pattinson was quickly dispensed with, thrusting forward to an offspinner which failed to turn, the batsman's review of the lbw decision failing when replays showed the ball thudding into leg stump. In walked Agar, about to deliver something quite extraordinary.
Day 1: Australia 75 for 4 (Smith 38*, Hughes 7*) trail England 215 (Trott 48, Bairstow 37, Siddle 5-50, Pattinson 3-69) by 140 runs
Frenzied. That barely begins to tell the story. The pent-up tensions at the start of an Ashes series frothed out into a memorable first day of eager and aggressive bowling, angsty batting and high excitement. When the nervous energy had subsided, and a sell-out crowd began to wend its way home, the first day of the Investec Test series had granted its favours slightly, without ever quite making eye contact, towards England.
In the build-up to the Test, it had been observed that the ball had not swung as much at Trent Bridge this season. It turned out that England's most genteel Test ground was just being bashful. On a warm, hazy day, swing bowling was in the ascendancy, 14 wickets fell and no batsman has yet made a half-century.
This is a slow, dry Nottingham surface, already markedly cracked and with the forecast of dry days ahead, England, who won the toss, will fancy that reverse swing and the spin of Graeme Swann will come to the fore as the match progresses. Those possessing tickets for the final day will already be looking for a back-up attraction.
The stand-out bowling figures on a turbulent day went to Peter Siddle, an indefatigable rouser of the troops, who specialises in making an impact at the start of an Ashes series, and who emphatically demanded an immediate reassessment of Australia's qualities as he took five wickets by tea with remorseless, good-length bowling and just enough swing to make it potent.
But the ball of the day was surely delivered, on behalf of England, by James Anderson. He produced a mesmerising delivery to bowl Australia's captain, Michael Clarke, sixth ball for nought, a late outswinger and a suitable way to go past Fred Trueman's landmark of 307 Test wickets. On the balcony, David Saker, England's bowling coach, really did lick his lips with pure delight.
Before then, Steven Finn had made inroads by dismissing Shane Watson and Ed Cowan in successive balls. Watson's desire to dominate brought an edge to second slip; Cowan, who had been off the field with nausea for much of the day, added to the indiscretions by carving at a wide one; and Finn came within a whisker of a hat-trick by beating Clarke's outside edge.
Finn was preferred by England to Tim Bresnan and then took the new ball as Stuart Broad remained off the field for ice treatment on his right shoulder - which required a cortisone injection less than a week ago - after he was struck by a bouncer from James Pattinson. Australia will not be wishing him well.
Chris Rogers was Australia's stabilising element, just the man to provide an additional neutron or two, but he got too far across his stumps to Anderson in an effort to cover the outswing and was picked off lbw, his call for a review narrowly failing.
Siddle was Australia's inspiration. His hat-trick in Brisbane two years ago, and Test-best 6 for 54, proved to be a false dawn for Australia as England went on to win three Tests by an innings.
When he leaked 27 runs in four overs in a first, unrewarded spell, it was symptomatic of Australia's anxious start, but his switch to the Radcliffe Road end for a one-over spell before lunch brought immediate dividends when he found some late outswing to bowl Joe Root.
Clarke unsurprisingly turned to him once more immediately after lunch. Kevin Pietersen fell to a typically flamboyant drive, whereas Jonathan Trott's booming drive at a wide one left the batsman so appalled as he dragged on that he made as if to demolish the stumps in self-admonishment. Until then, he had played with great certainty for 48, milking Australia's attack through the leg side with regularity, but even he was struck by Ashes fever.
A fourth spell accounted for Ian Bell, who was defeated by an excellent outswinger. At 178 for 4, Bell and Bairstow had been close to confirming England's superiority. Instead, Bell left with a quizzical nose scrunching, recognition that for England, overwhelming favourites for the series, things were not exactly going to plan.
They went even more awry in Siddle's next over when Matt Prior, with only a single to his name, departed ten minutes before tea. Siddle banged one in short and wide and Prior's suitably belligerent response merely presented a catch to cover.
Australia's first wicket had been the one they most desired: Alastair Cook: Cook, a remorseless compiler of 766 runs in his last Ashes series, a series which he reflected ahead of this rubber "changed me as a cricketer". This time Australia removed him for 13 and they will pray that the number is a harbinger of ill luck all summer long.
The successful bowler was Pattinson. The ball was not particularly potent, pushed wide across Cook, but he edged a loose drive to wicketkeeper Brad Haddin. Cook sat on the balcony, alone, and no doubt pondered on the demands of captaincy at the start of an Ashes series. Clarke, several hours later, went through the same thought process.
Pattinson had expressed his desire to avenge England's ridiculing of his older brother, Darren, when his sole England Test cap went awry against South Africa in 2005.
On the ground where Darren made his name, James launched the series nervously with a wide and a bye - a loopy bouncer followed by a ball that swung down the leg side. But he does not lack for on-field aggression. His snarl was soon evident against Root, returned with a cheeky chappie smile that might have come straight out of an old-time English music hall. He might also have picked up Pietersen's wicket when Haddin narrowly failed to intercept a glance down the leg side.
Ashton Agar, a 19-year-old left-arm spinner on Test debut, had cause to be even more jittery. An Australian spinner on debut in an Ashes series cannot bowl a ball without being aware of Shane Warne's arrival into Ashes folklore. He began with the Ball of the Century; some act to follow. Agar, gum chewing furiously, delivered a low full toss which Trott gratefully punched to the cover boundary. But his tall, springy approach and stately action promised good things to come.
England, 185 for 6 at tea, succumbed rapidly at the start of the final session, losing their last four wickets for two runs in 14 balls.
Broad's fallibility against the hook shot was underlined when he unwisely tried to attack Pattinson; Bairstow, who had played enterprisingly for 37, considering that he has spent much of the past year as a drinks waiter, was bowled hitting across a full-length ball from Mitchell Starc; Finn gave Starc two in two, reviewing a catch at the wicket to no avail; and there was no late flourish from Swann who offered only a tame prod to cover.
No comments:
Post a Comment