Blood on the baggy green

Dean Jones may have it right when he says that people thought the Titanic unsinkable, the four minute mile unobtainable and that you think you can never win the lottery but there is absolutely no chance of Australia escaping the Fifth Test without defeat. Is this a sign of the pessimism within Australian minds or realism based on the fact that 546 has never before been chased down in the history of the first-class game? With Wisden on England’s side you would have thought that the odds on an Australian win would have been more generous than the 10/3 on offer. I’m sure that your local sub-continental bookmaker would give you better value on this great escape.

The star from an England perspective on the third day was the latest player off the conveyor belt marked South African talent; Jonathan Trott. The England selectors ignored the calls to resuscitate Mark Ramprakash’s international career, bring Rob Key back in from the poker table or Marcus Trescothick from the peace that he has found in Taunton. Instead they went for the next cab off the rank and have been richly rewarded. Demonstrating a level of composure and technique completely absent in the hapless Bopara’s efforts Trott should have batted both Australia out of the game and himself on to the plane for England’s tour to South Africa over the winter. It is there that he will play against the man that his game partly resembles; Jacques Kallis. If Trott can be half the player that Kallis is, and as he doesn’t bowl that’s the most he can be, then England will be happy. He has displayed the touch of a veteran in his two innings to date.

One man who didn’t enjoy the third day at the Test was Ricky Ponting. When he planned this campaign at Cricket Australia’s headquarters he did it with the singular goal of returning with the Ashes. Never in his worst nightmare would Ponting have envisaged being the only Australian captain to lose two overseas Ashes series. He stood in the outfield yesterday watching as the cafeteria bowling served up by his attack was tucked in to by the England lower order. If the mental anguish wasn’t enough then it was accompanied by physical pain too as Matt Prior drove a ball that Ponting fielded with his unguarded face only yards from the bat - http://www.cricketcrowd.com/Play_Video-23-2520-1418.html. As he left the pitch spitting blood it was another unwelcome reminder of 2005 when Steve Harmison drew blood and scarred Ponting under his right eye. A tough man, Ponting beat the count with ease and will be drawing on all his expertise to ensure that Australia make England sweat for the win.

If Trott dominated proceedings in the middle then the star of the show off the pitch was singer/song-writer Lily Allen who proved herself an occasionally knowledgeable but always entertaining guest for Jonathan Agnew to interview on TMS. Arriving without entourage, makeup or ego lunch was cancelled for the likes of Tuffers, CMJ and the rest of the crew as Allen confirmed herself as a cricketing purist. She stated a preference for Test cricket over Twenty20 and made calls for a return to the traditional cream cricket whites and even the introduction of a ‘baggy blue’ for the England players. Everyone apart from Ponting was smiling in London town.

The Seventh Day Wonder

And on the seventh day a bowling attack arrived. We’ve had to sit through four innings and six days of this series before being rewarded for our patience with a dose of quality; a team bowling effort of concerted accuracy, sustained hostility and the exemplary execution of a plan. That it came from the England attack should not be a surprise; that the Australian batsmen succumbed in the fashion that they did, five were out playing cross batted shots, was the surprise.

As a collective unit the Australians didn’t adapt to the conditions and their total of 156/8 was the most they deserved. The ball was swinging under heavy cloud cover, the pitch carried more pace and bounce and most importantly of all England were on the money. Australia batted as if they were here to participate in a beer match. Whereas Mitchell Johnson had led the Australian attack with all the unpredictability of Andrew Flintoff steering a pedalo the totemic Lancastrian bowled with maximum hostility and customary control. Flintoff’s staggering record of only three 5 wicket hauls in his first-class career is the result not just of his back of a length bowling but of the pressure that he creates at one end to enable cheap wickets to fall at the other as batsmen relax. Once again he acted as the foil for the deserving Jimmy Anderson to rip out Hughes, Ponting, Clarke and North for a sum total of seven runs. If Anderson has been under-rated by the Australians before this series then they now know that they are dealing with a bowler who in the right conditions knows his game better than most.

Dean Jones, a brilliantly talented batsman and fielder, bridged the gap between the last time Australia were this poor (in the mid 1980s if you’re wondering) to the start of their emergence as the cricketing superpower in the early 1990s. He now spends his time passing off hyperbole as punditry and can also be found on Sky’s latest contribution to wallpaper television, ‘The Poker Ashes’. From a punditry perspective Deano’s not having the best of Ashes series; “I think (this) is the flattest batting track I have seen in ten years. Now if England are going to produce these type of pitches for the rest of the series the game will be hurt. This is not the type of pitch that we’ll be happy with. I can’t see Australia being dismissed out on this flat pitch.”

The omens don’t look good for Australia; Ricky Ponting is in grumpy gnome mode, Nathan Hauritz is recovering from a dislocated finger, Peter Siddle is struggling with a virus. Brad Haddin admitted on the first day that “The occasion at Lords got to a few of us. We probably tried a bit too hard early.” You can’t imagine Adam Gilchrist or Ian Healy admitting that – not until their biography anyway. Haddin was distracted again towards the end of play allowing himself to be preoccupied by trying to persuade the umpires to abandon play for the day – shortly after another futile conversation he was out mis-timing a pull when he should have been playing for stumps.

If the eighth day goes the way of the seventh Australia may need divine intervention but with periodic rain forecast for the remainder of the match they may just get it. It will need a more resilient and focused batting effort second time around but the baggy greens will do well to heed the lesson of Lords three years ago when Sri Lanka followed-on 359 runs behind after lunch on the third day and batted out 199 overs to draw the undrawable test. For England the message is clear too: they must clean up the tail and go for the jugular before the pitch slows up.