Ashes 2011 (10 page)

Adelaide Oval
3–7 December 2010
England won by an innings and 71 runs

An old joke runs that it is harder to get out of the Australian cricket team than into it. The word in Adelaide today was that it is ripe for reconsideration.

Due for makeover in the Second Test is Australia's four-member specialist attack, which toiled fruitlessly for the better part of two days of the First as three English batsmen broke three figures. Andrew Hilditch's selection panel looks set to drop Mitchell Johnson for the first time in his three-year career. Ben Hilfenhaus, who is said to have twinged a hamstring in Brisbane, may also make way.

That entails Test recalls for Doug Bollinger and Ryan Harris, who were added to the squad in the aftermath of the draw at the Gabba. It is not an altogether easy fit, with Johnson, a Test centurion, probably giving way at number eight to Xavier Doherty, who has two first-class half-centuries in 59 innings and an average of 13.7. But teams generally find themselves shorter of wickets than runs at Adelaide, and it is the kind of bold selection many have called for, showing what Shane Warne now describes as 'cojones'. In long-term prognostications, in fact, most pundits deemed Adelaide Oval the likeliest venue for a draw in the Ashes summer. But then, they also deemed the Gabba the likeliest place for a result, and the sides took eleven wickets each.

This result has confounded most everyone. An hour after stumps at the Gabba when I checked
The Times
website, the headline read 'England Triumphant'. Steady on, I thought, and so did someone else, because an hour later it had been scaled back to 'England escape with draw'. Hmmm, still not quite right. By now curious, I returned in another hour to find the report of my esteemed colleague Mike Atherton bearing the headline 'England's ascendancy'. Probably a little closer to the mark – the last two days, anyway. 'Australia's descendancy' would also have fitted the circumstances.

Quite what the result means in the balance of the series may not actually be much. Australia had much the better of the first draw of last year's Ashes then were soundly beaten at Lord's; England held a decided edge for much of the second draw at Edgbaston, then were utterly monstered at Headingley. Players are rather more practical than onlookers. They are apt to draw lines beneath games and start afresh, leaving it to the likes of us to speculate about 'momentum'.

In truth, the slowness of the pitch at the Gabba tended to obscure the shortcomings of both teams. The majority of players in both sides had modest to poor Tests. Cook, Strauss, Trott and Bell impressed, but Anderson looked the business only for an hour and a half, and the rest of the attack was inconsistent. When Pietersen donated a lazy four overthrows in Australia's second innings, it looked like someone a little frustrated by a lack of attention.

Apart from their star turns, Hussey, Haddin and Siddle, the Australians performed humbly, struggling to get into the game. Although it is Johnson's psychology that is presently being pulled apart as if he were an episode of
Oprah,
Hilfenhaus was perhaps as much a let-down, with a wicket after three deliveries, no more from the remaining 303, dropping generally a yard and a half short, and exhibiting little variety. An opening bowler need not be the fastest, Glenn McGrath being a classic instance of making up in nous what he lacked in knots. But he needs to have a presence, disturbing to opponents and reassuring to his captain, and this, in Brisbane, Hilfenhaus conspicuously lacked.

The other player to arrive in Adelaide on seemingly borrowed time is Marcus North, still to find a neap tide in his batting after the flood of five hundreds and the ebb of seventeen single-figure scores in his first twenty Tests. 'I'm a big fan of loyalty,' said his captain of North during the preliminaries to the Gabba Test, as though the only alternative was disloyalty. But if we're to use such emotive phraseology, what sort of loyalty is being shown Usman Khawaja, Callum Ferguson or even Cameron White when their way is barred by a batsman with a home Test average of 20.8?

Hilditch and his colleagues may also be missing a trick. In the last few years, perhaps because of a general decline in overall quality, perhaps because the incessancy of international cricket is depreciating its assets faster, debutant players have had disproportionate impacts. Consider the current England team. Andrew Strauss, Alastair Cook, Jonathan Trott and Matt Prior all made hundreds in their first Tests; Kevin Pietersen top-scored in both innings of his; Ian Bell made 70 in his. Likewise did Australia's one real experiment of the last two years, Phil Hughes, have an immediately rejuvenating effect on Australia's top order, even if the bush telegraph soon spread the word about his technical shortcomings.

Such case studies argue not for continuity, but turnover, against a 'loyalty' that phases into obstinacy, and in favour of choosing hungry cricketers whose methods have not been heavily scrutinised by opponents and whose physiques have not been ravaged by nonstop competition. To be fair, Australia's selectors did introduce a new cap at the Gabba in Doherty, even if the theory Hilditch espoused that a left-arm orthodox bowler would be a 'better option' against 'a predominantly right-handed English middle order' remained untested when 156 of his 210 second-innings deliveries were to left-handers Cook and Strauss.

Rain fell in Adelaide yesterday and thunderstorms are predicted today, but the expectation for the next five days is congenial to uninterrupted play, with the probability that the two teams will need every minute in which to conjure a result from new curator Damian Hough's pitch. The batsmen who had no impact in Brisbane will be eyeing it covetously, particularly Michael Clarke, who averages 102.4 here, and Paul Collingwood, who averages 228, albeit from one Test. The bowlers? Two already look like they will be otherwise engaged.

It was the battle of the losers in Adelaide today, between the two countries who would not be hosting the football World Cup for the foreseeable future. Misery loves company, and there is something consoling about tradition too: no matter how many brown paper bags change hands at FIFA, Australia and England will always have each other. So there was something rather warming and reassuring about the preparatory rites of the Second Test: all rise for the national anthem, and let's salute the red, white, blue and green, the last provided by the Milo munchkins, lined up to mix their corporate message with the patriotic ones.
¹

There had, however, to be a winner from between the losers, and on this first day that was emphatically, irrefutably and astonishingly England, despite them losing what looked like a handy toss, despite their middling-to-poor record at this ground, and despite it being not ten days since they were dumped on their backsides at the Gabba by a marauding Peter Siddle – an event that now seems almost like it occurred in a previous series.

Such are Adelaide's genteel customs and its reputation for flat pitches that it hosts the kind of Test you might be tempted to wander into a little late. If you did this morning, you never will again: the first ten minutes were electric, involving more wickets than fell on the last two days at the Gabba.

From Anderson's fourth ball, Watson set off for a nervous single on the on side, catching Katich slightly unawares, but not Trott, who darted quickly to his right, and threw the stumps down from side-on with the Australian not even in the frame. In front of Chappell Stands solid with St George Crosses, English fielders piled on like footballers celebrating a World Cup hat-trick.