Ashes 2011 (24 page)

England's last five wickets were rounded up for 69, bringing on an early lunch, more or less inevitable after Prior and Bresnan fell in the first three-quarters of an hour. Amid this good Australian news, however, was sprinkled bad. Harris limped off in his fourth over, looking as though he had stepped on a starfish in a rock pool; it transpired he was feeling the effect of a stress fracture in his left ankle, which will make him an unlucky casualty of this series. Just nine days ago, the greathearted Harris was celebrating his successful campaign against a knee injury; now he begins a new battle.

Despite the total on which England was converging, progress was anything but monotonous. The pitch continued to offer the bowlers just a little, the ball beating the bat every few overs; the bounce endangered Swann's helmet more than once. When Siddle bowled Anderson to claim his sixth wicket for 75, England had stretched their lead to 415 with less than half the Test match over. It also meant that more than half the batsmen in the match had been dismissed in single figures: indicative of conditions in which early survival called for some luck.

In their second dig, Australia veritably raced to 50 in ten overs, half the time it took them on the first day, thanks to a combination of attacking fields and overeager bowling. The bat was not beaten until Bresnan came on after forty minutes, bent his back and went past Watson's surprised outside edge. Good teams create opportunities under these circumstances, and England conjured one brilliantly. In Swann's second over, Hughes was caught on his heels by Watson's late call for a single to cover; Watson's lumbering gait sometimes seems to mislead partners about his intentions.

Trott, unwearied by the 46 singles, 20 twos and 7 threes he had run in more than seven hours, moved smartly to scoop and deliver, and for the second time this summer broke an Australian opening stand. The key, though, was Prior's swiftness in meeting the throw and directing it on to the stumps – as Hilfenhaus did not yesterday, when Trott was diving for the crease to beat Ponting's return. When bad cricket meets good cricket, the result is not always foregone, and here was a matter of perhaps nine inches – but that was enough.

In the early stages of Australia's innings, Tremlett bowled finely without reward, in that way of his where there might almost not be a batsman at the other end. He walks back, runs in, lets go, follows through – and the cycle repeats, irrespective of outcome, except on the occasion of a wicket, when a shy smile is revealed. After Prior and Strauss entered into earnest discussion about calling for a review when Hughes (12) possibly grazed one down the leg side, they looked up to find Tremlett, back turned, already taking those slow, measured steps to the end of his run.

As the session progressed, it became hard, austere, patient cricket from both batsmen and bowlers, Watson guarding one of those starts he is inclined to waste, Ponting preserving the vital spark of his captaincy. In theory at this stage, Australia could still regain the Ashes. In theory, though, the referral system is also a good idea; it is in practice that it messes with one's head.

Two decisions were epistemological case studies. Ponting (2) was hit just above the knee-roll when the ball jagged back from Anderson and he was given not out by Tony Hill. On replay, the ball could be seen to be just trimming the bails. Had Hill given it and Ponting called for a referral, he would have been out, as there weren't sufficient grounds for overturning the decision; as Hill did not, it would have been not out in the event of a Strauss referral.

Shortly after tea, by contrast, Watson (52) padded up as Bresnan swerved the ball back, and Hill upheld the appeal. When Watson sought a review, the replay showed the ball to be barely grazing the top of the stumps, but he was sent on his way, again because of insufficient evidence for a change of mind. Watson, who in his
own
mind has never been dismissed lbw, vanished from the ground still sunk in thought – not, for him, a natural state.

With the ramparts breached, England plunged into the Australian citadel. Bresnan reaped the rewards for persistence, unexpected pace and expected reverse swing, enabled by an abrasive square. He obtained movement into Ponting to bowl him off an inside edge, then movement away from a fretful Hussey that drew a fatal check-drive to short cover.

The latest chapter in
Clarke Agonistes
was then hard to watch. As Swann obtained a pleasing drift, Australia's vice-captain made a painfully poor start, missed at 2 by Prior as he was drawn out of his ground. Concreted into his crease thereafter, his strokeplay grew similarly circumscribed: given one low full toss on the pads, which a year ago would have been four, Clarke could do no more than drill to mid-on. It was almost a relief when Swann floated one across his vision from round the wicket and he pushed too hard, being smartly taken by Strauss at second slip.

After an early mishook which fell just short of a diving Tremlett at fine leg, Steve Smith played some crisp and original shots, one back cut for four with the bat at forty-five degrees tucked under his chin. But with three overs of the day remaining, he dragged Anderson on while attempting an impertinent pull, rendering the game all over bar the shouting – although of that, if you are an English fan, there may be quite a lot tomorrow.

Ricky Ponting began the Fourth Test on the brink of a unique achievement: with victory in Melbourne, he would enter a club of one comprising those who have played in a hundred Test wins. He will end the game with a unique non-achievement, as thrice a losing Ashes skipper, beaten here about as badly as a Test captain can be: outplayed, outgeneraled, out twice for little, even out-earned, having forfeited 40 per cent of his match fee to the ICC exchequer.

As matters stand, in fact, Ponting's chances of another shot at his milestone are complicated by his new millstone. To lose the Ashes twice might be thought misfortune; thrice looks like carelessness. But more than that, having been deserted by luck at the toss and by his sang-froid with the umpires, he finally and irrefutably lost his batting today.

Since Brisbane, Australia's batting coach Justin Langer has maintained a nonstop, low-level patter about how well the captain is hitting them – brilliant, better than ever, ready for action. Well, yes, one might say: in the nets, he gets to face his own bowlers. In the middle, Langer can hardly have missed his old confrere's lack of balance. Anxious to cover off stump, Ponting has been jumping into, and outside of, the line of the ball; moving so far across, in fact, as to expose his leg stump, down which side he has twice nicked fatally. His downswing, never the acme of straightness, has grown as crooked as a barrel of fish-hooks. A door need only be slightly off its hinges in order to stop closing properly; likewise a defensive technique.

The heart told you to expect a big fuck-off hundred this afternoon; the head anticipated something gutsy and cussed that might go on a while but would prove to no avail. And this has been an Ashes series played very much in the head, in the meticulousness of England's preparation, and the illusions of Australia's response.

Ponting arrived today, of course, to find the MCG still subtly reverberating from the uproar of his contretemps with Aleem Dar. Among the commentariat, in the blogocracy and Twittersphere, enabled by numberless clicks on YouTube, the ICC's decision to fine Ponting an amount equivalent to a couple of his well-dressed wife's ritzy handbags was being debated.

The captain confined himself to old media, getting his 'side of the story' out on ABC radio and Channel Nine, although not exactly doing himself that many favours. While apologising and expressing his appreciation of the umpires, he also indulged in some special pleading. 'I had a chance to look at it again last night,' Ponting insisted. 'I still, in my heart and in my mind, believe that he inside-edged that ball. I think if you look at the replay properly, in the way that it needs to be looked at, I think everyone will understand that Hot Spot mark wasn't a long way away from where the ball passed the bat... but that's irrelevant now. The decision was made and I've got to get on with it now.'

These were strangely obdurate propositions. 'If you look at the replay properly'? 'The way it needs to be looked at'? 'Everyone will understand'? Says who? And given that, as Ponting acquiesced, this excuse for an argument was 'irrelevant', why bother trying to make it? The answer is that Ponting is a proud, stubborn man. It has been a great quality. One sees it in the washed-out, worn-out, saggy baggy green that he would no sooner part with than the
Légion d'honneur
; one senses it in his ever wirier frame, toughened and tautened by a training regime that would daunt a man a decade his junior. But the stubbornness has now shaded into intransigence. He has been reduced on occasions this season to a kind of doublethink. Before this Test, for example, he ventured: 'I actually look at our lack of runs as a positive going forward. We just can't keep performing this badly.' Eh?

Worse, 36-year-old Ponting has slipped into denial about his own game. He is averaging 28 in his last ten Tests. His failures and those of his vice-captain Michael Clarke have effectively ringbarked the Australian batting in each Test of this series, leaving decay to set in. At the start of the summer, Australia's selectors offered Ponting the chance to drop down the order to number four. He dismissed it. The selectors haven't gotten much right this series, but as he eked out 20 over 102 painful minutes today, Ponting was demonstrating their foresight.

Every batsman is vulnerable during their first twenty balls. It's when they bat for 73 deliveries, as Ponting did today, and still look like they've just come in, that they are truly struggling. In the first innings, Ponting fetched a good delivery; in this second, he scarcely managed an authentic stroke before dragging Bresnan on. The nick on to the stumps, moreover, is one of batting's ugliest dismissals, making a mess of everything: bat, stumps, feet, mind. Ponting fell in such a fashion three times during last year's Ashes, including in the climactic Test at the Oval – it was somehow fitting today.

It is not a backhanded compliment to say that the best part of Ponting's captaincy has been his batting. After all, batting successfully as a captain is a challenge that has defeated some great players: look at the vicissitudes of Mark Taylor's form, the sharp declines of Richie Richardson and Mahela Jayawardene. Ponting is not a hugely original tactician; nor, in later years, has he had the
materiel
at his disposal that gained Steve Waugh his great reputation. But his shadow has always been lengthened by his ability to inspire, empower, resist and rally with the bat, and his loss of that capacity diminishes him disproportionately.

It seems impertinent to be talking of successors while such a great cricketer is still in harness, like arguing about the apportionment of an estate over a still-warm body. But as the slight frame of Australia's captain withdrew into the shadows of the Ponsford Stand today, there was the possibility we were witnessing another milestone: Ponting's last Test at the MCG.

With the clock approaching noon today, England retained the Ashes with victory by an innings and 157 runs in the Fourth Test at the MCG. The situation in Australian cricket, meanwhile, approached high noon, with the possibility of some bloodshed.

England's win gave them a 2–1 lead in the series to take into next week's Fifth Test at Sydney, which it is highly likely will be played against a quite different Australian team. In his post-match remarks, Ricky Ponting, still nursing his wounded finger, was circumspect about his prospects of even playing. 'Hopefully', which along with 'to be honest' and 'execute our skill set' is among the most popular press conference idioms of the tour, was scattered through his comments with rather more force and pregnancy than usual.

On this day sixteen years ago, a crowd turned up to watch the last rites of an MCG Ashes Test and were rewarded for their faith by a Shane Warne hat-trick which Channel 9 are still replaying – at least a score of times in this game alone. There were no such dramatics today, just a little belated Australian spunk.

With the eleventh ball of the day, the deserving Chris Tremlett found his way to Johnson's stumps via pad and bat; Tremlett also had Haddin (33) dropped at the wicket as the ball died on the fourth-day pitch. There were enough Australians in to cheer boundaries by the home team, but more miscellaneous roars of Barmy Army self-amusement indicative of the day's holiday feel.

This seemed to infect England too, whose cricket grew a little demob-happy. Swann had Siddle (21) dropped at slip by Collingwood, the ball having taken a slight deflection from Prior's glove, and Haddin reached a half-century off 86 balls by bisecting them also. For the Australians, with nothing much to play for, the scenario was quite freeing, and their best partnership of the match flourished, 86 from 99 balls.

Haddin, who seems to have the peachiest bat in the Australian dressing room and the nerve to use it, hit Anderson and Swann back over their heads as though from a stationary tee, the latter into the crowd where a spectator caught it one-handed – arguably the best Australian fielding of the match.

Siddle also hit effectively, showing a penchant for the slog sweep, until Swann threw it up wider of off stump and tempted him to drive down the ground, where Pietersen took the catch. Third top scorer in both innings, taker of six wickets and two catches, the Victorian has nothing to reproach himself for in this Test – which places him in a very small Australian club.

When Haddin signalled Australian surrender by making no effort to seek the strike, Hilfenhaus completed a pair by nicking Bresnan to Prior. Australia's keeper dropped dolefully to his haunches as England flocked into a heaving huddle, joined in their ecstasy by the obligatory cameramen, who arrived hotfoot from the Ponsford Stand fence while the last appeal was still echoing around the ground.