Ashes 2011 (18 page)

This surface is classically hard – so hard that when Brad Haddin stabbed a ball of full length into the ground from Finn after lunch, it bounced over Bell's head at point and still had the impetus to make it to the boundary. But it required nothing to survive that wasn't within the powers of the average Test batsmen – leading one to the uncomfortable conclusion that Australia's, at least at the moment, are falling below that median.

Hughes may be the first opening batsman to arrive in Test cricket without a front-foot defensive stroke, the absence of which in England last year made his batting look like a combination of a sharkskin suit with a Hawaiian shirt. He has tightened his technique a tad since, but not as much as he should have. To a ball from Tremlett that needed a straight, dead bat, he was playing ambitiously to leg. It was an aggressive shot; it may even have been a fun shot; it wasn't the shot of a Test match opener.

Perth was where Ponting made his Test debut fifteen years ago, being unlucky to fall four short of what, had the referral system been in place, would have been a hundred. He was consoled at the time that there would be more hundreds, and there have been thirty-nine, but not one in Perth, where he has passed fifty only thrice since. It was here a year ago, in fact, that he experienced the memento mori of being clocked agonisingly on the arm by Kemar Roach as he essayed his pet pull, an episode he has admitted made him think: 'How on earth did I do that?' The question Ponting will have asked himself on failing today was:'
Why
on earth did I do that?' To the fifth ball of Anderson's third over, the bowler's stock away swinger, Ponting's stroke was a long way from compulsory; it was hard-handed, groping for the ball. It wasn't clear whether Ponting's look of dejection was a response to Collingwood's super-fine catch or his own misbegotten shot.

Again this summer, Clarke cut an anxious figure for a batsman with a Test average six months ago of 52, his only scoring shot a speculative cut just wide of gully's left hand. Again, like his captain, he seemed overeager to lay bat on ball, offering a crooked defensive bat to a ball requiring no more than a regulation leave.

Watson was happy to leave, as is his wont: he scored from only nine of his forty deliveries faced, and would have offered a shot at few more. He was caught, instead, flat-footed, by the surprise fuller delivery. Between Tests, Finn swapped his schoolboy cowlick for something a little more streamlined and spiky; although expensive today and down a little on pace, he shows parallel signs of maturing as a bowler.

From this point, the innings represented only a negotiation on the scale of the debacle. Although the lower echelons fought hard, wickets fell at intervals congenial to England, and when Australia's bowlers had a dozen overs at Strauss and Cook late in the day they were fast, aggressive and
too short
– England's captain and vice-captain left with aplomb. They already appeared comfortable, settled, grooved. It was Ponting who vanished into the shadows of the players' pavilion looking like a stranger in town.

Were Mitchell Johnson a racehorse, they would never stop swabbing him. Were he a Pakistani, his performances would be under more or less constant scrutiny. So exhilarating one day; so execrable the next. Two weeks ago, he looked to be in more pieces than Humpty Dumpty. Yet Australia have succeeded where all the king's horses and all the king's men failed, for today he bounced his country back into the Ashes of 2010–11 in two explosive spells.

In nine overs before lunch, Johnson unseated four batsmen for 20 runs; in eight after the interval, he winkled out another two for 14. You need to read both the runs
and
the wickets too. Johnson is by reputation penetrative
and
profligate – these analyses were in the Glenn McGrath or Curtly Ambrose category, taking everything, leaving nothing.

Three of the victims – Cook, Trott and Pietersen – had brought 962 series runs into the game; the fourth, Collingwood, was the player on whom England has often relied in the past to rally resistance, famously denying Australia victory at Cardiff last year. Australia's decision to field four pacemen plus Watson in this game is still to be vindicated, but mainly because so far one has almost been enough; their lead at the close was a round 200, which in a low-scoring game verges on decisive.

Logic suggests that there should be no correlation between Johnson's batting and bowling, but Johnson is not a cricketer in thrall to logic. It is not necessarily that when he fires with the bat he succeeds with the ball, but that at his worst he achieves a kind of total anonymity. He came into the Test after six noughts in his previous dozen innings, his only score of note, a 47 at Mohali, preceding his only spell of effect in that time, a five for 64.

His rousing 62 yesterday, then, might just have been the blue touchpaper needed. In his two overs last night, he generated some suggestive shape away from the left-handers, which continued today into the right-handers, at ever-improving speeds. Many thousands of man-hours of coaching, and thus Cricket Australia dollars, have been ploughed into that shape – the investors should have been gleeful.

The day began with Australia in listless search of wickets. In the third over of the day, Andrew Strauss (16) drove flat-footed at Harris. At first slip, Shane Watson reeled back like a movie stuntman shot at the OK Corral and somehow managed not to touch the ball at all; Haddin watched transfixed as it ran away to the third-man boundary. This wasn't simply a miss; it was a mockery. In Harris's next over, Strauss tucked away three leg-side boundaries – a hook in the air, a pull along the carpet and a flick off the toes – and the chagrined bowler gave way at the Prindiville Stand End to Johnson.

His effect was immediate, drawing Cook into an airy drive that Hussey came forward to pouch in the gully – a crucial wicket given the breadth of Cook's bat in the first two Tests. Better was to come. After pushing Trott back with a well-directed bouncer, Johnson caught him on the crease, then beat Pietersen for pace as he shambled across his stumps, the referral system failing to exonerate him.

When Harris soon after got a ball to hold its line to Strauss, committed to defence, it was abruptly the turn of Australian fielders to be clustering round their bowlers, forming a well-wishing retinue as they retired for a fine-leg breather. Johnson's bouncer to Collingwood was perhaps the ball of the day, the batsman struggling to stretch his frame in order to get in harm's way, then to extract himself from same. He might have been thinking about the same ball when he was trapped lbw, hopelessly late on the downswing, his pads emitting the thud of a rug on a clothesline being struck by a carpet beater.

Thereafter, England were in retreat – it was just a matter of how organised they could make it. On the scene of his best Test score in Australia, and also the odd grade game during his season eight years ago at University of Western Australia, Bell again looked as good as any batsman in the series. As in Brisbane, though, he perished when he sought to make hay in the company of the tail – it must surely be time for him to graduate to number five or even four.

Prior played on unluckily, Swann nicked daintily, and England missed the ballast of Broad at number eight as the tail were swept away. Johnson finished with six for 38, gesturing, apparently, in the time-honoured tradition, in the direction of the press box at the Members' End atop the Lillee-Marsh Stand. Unbeknown to Johnson, his media detractors are this year square of the wicket – it was his only loss of direction all day.

In snapping at Australia's heels, England inflicted some lucky bites. Amid an otherwise inconsistent spell, Finn had Hughes caught at second slip, and Ponting given out on referral caught down the leg side, as at the Gabba, although the evidence was what you would call circumstantial rather than empirical, an observable deflection rather than a noisy nick. When Clarke played on after four rather frenzied boundaries, the last hour loomed as pivotal: Australia claimed it conclusively, Hussey's energy inspiring similar industry from Watson as they moved to a fifty partnership from 65 deliveries.

There remains a lot of cricket in this game, and some of it is bound to involve batting. Six batsmen have so far made half-centuries, suggesting that it is possible to get in and enjoy the conditions, which are fascinatingly unique: when Prior stabbed Hilfenhaus into the pitch after lunch today, the ball bounced over the bowler's head and picked up pace en route to the boundary – a phenomenon of the hardness of the wicket block and the slight convexity of the outfield. The way Hussey collared Swann late in the day suggests that Australia see him as their biggest threat; there is no ambiguity, at least now, about whom is England's.

There is a lovely story about Keith Miller playing for New South Wales in the mid-1950s and basking in the afterglow of taking seven for 12 to bowl South Australia out for 26. 'Mr Miller,' asked a reporter. 'Can you tell us why you took seven for 12 today?'

Miller paused to reflect. 'There are three reasons I took seven for 12 today, son,' he said at last. 'First, I bowled bloody well. Second …' He paused again. 'Second …' He shook his head: 'Awww, ya can forget about the other two.'

Would that Mitchell Johnson could approach bowling with such ease and insouciance: Australian cricket's number one management challenge would then be a regular world-beater. On the other hand, one would then be deprived of the almost numinous air that surrounds him when everything combines in his favour. As Australia veered back into the Ashes of 2010–11, the difference was Johnson, who afterwards answered questions in that coy, shy country-kid kind of way of his.

Rather a lot were about sledging. Both teams have been more visibly garrulous in this match, in England's case somewhat pointlessly. But it was Johnson's bowling that really did the talking, and it is of disproportionate significance to his team. That intensity, that athleticism, that elastic snap of his elongated arm swing and explosive turn of speed – they stand out proud in an attack of solid triers.

Over the past couple of years, swing has been Johnson's faithful frenemy. When he developed it in South Africa last year, he looked like he could take on the world; when it deserted him in England, he seemed bereft. It is easy to forget that in his formative years, he seldom saw the new ball for Queensland, where it was shared among the likes of Andy Bichel, Michael Kasprowicz and Ashley Noffke.

Instead, Johnson became a cricketer of angles: an angled approach, an angled arm, an angled delivery across the right-hander and into the left-hander. These angles are both benefit and curse, making him unpredictable, but also unreliable, and requiring constant maintenance, which in the middle of a Test series must be like changing a tyre on a moving car.

If anything was different here to the Johnson of Brisbane, it was that after a week with bowling coach Troy Cooley and conditioning coach Stuart Karppinen, Johnson appeared to be running in both slower and straighter – for him, almost hugging the stumps. His arm came through perhaps a tad higher, and his swing into the right-hander returned – even though with characteristic modesty he later admitted he hadn't actually tried to swing it. Happy the man who swings it when he doesn't mean to.

The other effect was on Johnson's control, the impact points on his pitch map fitting snugly into a corridor on the stumps and outside off, rather than, as in Brisbane, resembling the result of a particularly wild game of paintball. He probed defences more or less constantly, when he did not punch his way straight through them.

But who really knows which technical advice did the trick, or whether it did at all? Certainly no Australian bowler is so used to having his ears dinned, by experts and non-experts alike. Some mornings this summer he must have woken and questioned everything. Was his front arm in the right position as he poured his cereal? Was his wrist behind the knife as he buttered his toast? The other day, a newspaper ran an interview with the Toowoomba plumber for whom Johnson briefly worked in 2004 while sidelined by injury. Not unkindly, the plumber suggested that Johnson's hips weren't coming through straight. Maybe this is a technique used in plumbing to avoid undue bum crack.

Perhaps it was the sight of Perth, where Johnson has prospered before; perhaps it was his first-innings runs; perhaps it was the helpful easterly breeze; perhaps it was getting the better of minor skirmishes with Kevin Pietersen and Jimmy Anderson. Johnson is assuredly a confidence cricketer. His problem as far as fans are concerned is that this tends to turn those around him into confidence tricksters, as they go through contortions trying to cover for him when he is bad.

After his none for 170 in Brisbane, for example, there was a chorus of Australian denials that he had underperformed. 'He didn't have his best game,' said coach Tim Nielsen. 'He didn't bowl as well as he would have liked.' Greg Chappell said that he and his fellow selectors recognised he was 'not in the peak of form'.

At Adelaide, Johnson was wheeled into a press conference to discuss his omission from the XI accompanied almost by a funeral dirge, only to then remain in the squad. Just before this Test, the story had changed again, Greg Chappell insisting that Johnson had not actually been dropped at all but rested after the Gabba – resting, it seemed, in the same way as a Norwegian Blue parrot is apt to rest. Where Johnson is concerned, Australian cricket surmounts its reputed aversity to cant.

On days like today, you are compelled to admit that there may be method to such handling of Johnson, because he is the bowler in Australian ranks with the greatest potential to turn matches. His pace is such that batsmen are loath to commit to the front foot against him, and for a bowler with such a tendency to spray it around, he takes a high proportion of unassisted wickets: almost 30 per cent.