THE ASHES: Squandered chances
Ricky Ponting and Simon Katich today made England’s bowlers look bad, and England’s batsmen look even worse. On the first day, each of England’s top six got in, looked around, had a dash, and squandered their chances of a big score. There were no heroics in Australia’s reply, but constant application and mutuality in a 189-run partnership from 337 deliveries that culminated in centuries for both – centuries that showed no sign of abating at stumps.
This was decidedly old-fashioned Test match batting, the stand containing only 60 runs in boundaries but 53 singles, forcing bowlers into constant changes of line. Australia still trailed on first innings by 186 at stumps, although there will be fourteen overs tomorrow with this rather soft and ragged old ball to settle in before England are eligible for the replacement they clearly hanker for.
Ponting has been quietly out of sorts this last year, with only a single century in his previous twenty-one Test innings – not a truly obtrusive form lapse, but a definite tailing off in such a hundred glutton. He has looked overeager to assert himself early in that time; there was no haste or hurry today, and hard as it was at day’s end to remember a dashing stroke, it was almost impossible to recall a false one.
For Katich, this was the continuation of what now amounts to a purple patch: his sixth hundred in his last sixteen Tests, a period in which Australian runs have been scarcer than in earlier years of plenty. John Howard’s face in the crowd today recalled his comment before one of many political comebacks that the times would suit him, thinking of the drift to conservatism in periods of economic anxiety. The cricket times have suited Katich, with his perseverance and plain virtues.
England began the day expansively, its tailenders making hay against an attack looking a tad weary from earlier exertions. Graeme Swann made batting look as easy as anyone, stating afterwards that England’s plan was to wrest the ‘momentum’ of the game. Except perhaps in the giant slalom, is there any more overestimated sporting fancy than ‘momentum’? If anything, England bowled before lunch as if they had too much.
Having carefully prepared not to bowl short and wide to Phil Hughes, Anderson and Broad bowled…short and wide, denying themselves the opportunity to swing the ball without denying Hughes the opportunity to play his pet square slash. The intent was doubtless to rough Hughes up a little, after his overthrow by Steve Harmison at Worcester, but England’s openers were far less precise, and their trajectory did not present the same challenges.
Taller, stronger, Flintoff’s first over to Hughes almost justified his selection on its own, five deliveries from round the wicket bouncing sternum-high, a sixth veering past the outside edge, bowler following through down the pitch with his jolly jacktar’s swagger. The ball hit Prior’s gloves with a satisfying whack rather than the clang that sometimes emanates from them. Hughes was in Year 10 when Flintoff made the Ashes of 2005 his own: this must have been like living out a still-fresh schoolboy fantasy.
Hughes’ technique is such that he makes Katich, no apostle of the MCC Coaching Manual, look like the acme of orthodoxy. Offering the bowler a lingering look at middle-and-off, he is capable of cutting deliveries more conventional batsmen would leave, and his timing is seductively sweet; apparently defensive pushes rushed boundarywards today, belying the slow outfield. But his footwork is a complicated minuet that, with Flintoff clocking 93mph, soon began to look hurried; the eventual under edge did not ultimately surprise. Both this match’s batting prodigies have now found hidden complications in a hitherto-straightforward game, Ravi Bopara having battled inconclusively on the first day.
Thereafter, it was all care and plenty of responsibility. In his pomp, Ponting would never have allowed a finger spinner to bowl a spell of 7-5-7-0 as he did Graeme Swann after lunch today, but he was a man intent, overhauling 11,000 Test runs like a Murdoch racking up millions – enjoying the sensation, but never losing sight of the purpose.
The pitch was slow, and Australia not exactly allegro either, each 50 taking slightly longer: 81, 85, 89 and 93 balls. But apart from an alarm when Katich was 56, when a less assiduous umpire than Billy Doctrove might have judged him lbw to Swann, and a false start or two when Ponting was 99, the game became one-way traffic.
In the Australian dressing room during the last half hour, a padded-up but disarmingly animated Peter Siddle could be observed preparing to mount the nightwatch, chatting away to his comrades as though he couldn’t wait to be out there. He had to settle for knowing that his two late wickets on the first day now look to have been a vital contribution, and at the present rate he might not enjoy his turn with the bat until Sunday afternoon.
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