Ashes 2011 (27 page)

Sydney Cricket Ground
3–7 January 2011
England won by an innings and 83 runs

The email distributed in early afternoon by Cricket Australia slightly boggled the mind. There would be a press conference at the Sydney Cricket Ground at 5.30 p.m. Present would be chief executive James Sutherland 'and two Australian cricketers'. Australia's team for the Fifth Test had not yet been announced: could it be that they were scrounging to gather an XI?

As it turned out, TBA and A.N. Other were Michael Clarke and Usman Khawaja, replacements for Ricky Ponting as captain and as batsman. And funnily enough, although Clarke has played sixty-eight Tests and Khawaja none, more questions surrounded the former than the latter.

Clarke is twenty-nine. He has made 4,697 Test runs at 46.97, with fourteen hundreds. Although he still wears the nickname he was given as a prodigy, Pup, he has been captain-in-waiting to Ponting for two years. But he is Australian cricket's Dr Fell, whom the fans do not like, why they cannot tell.

It may be his self-conscious metrosexual airs and graces. It may be his habit of appearing on billboards advertising this, that and himself. It may be the tattoos, of which Clarke has ten, including one on his right shoulder that celebrates his bikini-model ex Lara Bingle. But this I know, to sum it up: they do not like him, that man Pup. The same day of his appointment as Australia's forty-third captain, a tabloid in Clarke's Sydney home town had reported the results of a poll giving him a 15 per cent approval rating.

Of course, this is cricket, not
Australia's Got Talent.
And Cricket Australia have really invested too much in Clarke for them to back out now. Given that Ponting is still deemed the man in possession, and Clarke is depicting himself as a locum, more unrest would be sown by the latter's non-appointment.

Clarke has the confidence, having looked born to the job since his debut six years ago. Clarke has the experience, having led Australia in thirty-six short-form internationals. And whatever the ink on his arms and torso, he has kept his nose clean: since their very public bust-up in March, he has treated La Bingle as just another bit of body art.

What Clarke does not have is the necessary form, with just 322 runs at 21.46 in his last eight Tests since accepting a promotion to number four, or the fitness, suffering as he does from a long-term disc problem. His decision to persevere in all three formats of the game has made a rod for a back that does not need it. Bowlers have been hemming him in on the back foot: he does not pull with any fluidity, and has as a result been playing at deliveries wider and wider in search of scoring opportunities. Pace and bounce have worried him. He batted at Adelaide Oval wearing a chest guard, which seemed as incongruous on him as flares and a feather boa.

While Clarke led Australia to the final of the World Twenty20 earlier this year, his strike rate in the format is a slowcoach 103 per hundred balls. He shows, moreover, no deep love of the format, eschewing the Indian Premier League, perhaps because of the likelihood that his valuation there would not match his self-estimation.

Then there is the perennial conjecture about Clarke's status in his own dressing room. Will the team pull for him as they did for Punter? Given the Australians' recent record, this hardly seems relevant. If all that pulling for Punter has failed to prevent the team sustaining two innings defeats, then it's arguably time for push to come to shove. Those who purport to have the skinny on the team dynamic usually turn out to be working on second-hand or external impressions. What is said of Clarke is that he is a nervous waiter, and that he has a propensity for showering because of a tendency to perspire; apparently he also likes to clean his teeth. Sounds like a dental role model in the making at least.

Clarke is known to have had an altercation with Simon Katich after a Test at the SCG two years ago, Clarke's eagerness to get away after the game to meet Bingle irking the traditionalist Katich. But people keeping harking back to that
cherchez la femme
story because there has been so little to go on since. In fact, Clarke probably suits the team chosen for Sydney as well as he has for a while, containing as it does Phil Hughes, with whom Clarke shares a coach in Neil d'Costa, and Steve Smith, with whom Clarke shares regular mutually admiring tweets. The elevation of New South Wales's captain Haddin as Clarke's as well as his team's backstop will be a reassurance too. They have shared thirteen Test partnerships at an average of 82.5.

While it has long been expected that Clarke would captain Australia, what was not expected was he would take over under these circumstances: one anticipated deep deliberation, orderly succession and elaborate ceremony, as was the case with Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh and Ponting, rather than a hurried email not even stating his name. He has in a sense been given two messages: both that the job is his, and also that it is his to lose.

New Year's Resolutions? For 2011, Australian cricket has a few. They want to retain the World Cup. They hanker to beat India here, which will be tough, and to see off Sri Lanka there, which won't be much easier. The most important resolution is one with which they began 2010 and which they are now in no position to renew: regain the Ashes. But they can make a start on it.

A little and a lot ride on the Sydney Test. The result cannot affect custody of the urn, as the Barmy Army will ensure nobody forgets over the next five days. Yet Michael Clarke's appointment as Ricky Ponting's proxy has added spice to the contest. The 29-year-old batsman comes into the job as to an ancient but decaying ancestral seat, occupying a great mansion in which all the family silver has been melted down – in a state, moreover, of what a youthful heir would describe as 'temporary embarassment' while trying to cadge a fiver from the footman. Two half-centuries in his last fifteen Test innings is a performance record as embarrassing to recount as it has been to watch.

At least things can hardly get worse. If Australia survive the Test match without anyone slipping over in the shower or scalding themselves at the tea urn, they will feel a sense of quiet vindication. Nor can Clarke complain about his charges, six of whom will be fellow New South Welshmen playing on their home ground.

Australia will nominally be weaker than in Melbourne, even if Ponting has not been his inspirational self at number three this summer. Ryan Harris, with the thrust of a muscle car but the chassis of a tenth-hand VW combi, is a grave loss. Although Bollinger took three wickets in each innings of the recent Sheffield Shield match, they were from Queensland's dysfunctional order, and the memory of his performance at Adelaide Oval, breathless for all the wrong reasons, remains fresh.

The elevation of Usman Khawaja, however, is a progressive step, and not simply because he is the first Australian Muslim cricketer and a multicultural posterchild in the making. He is one of those batsmen whose quality stands out even in the nets – strong off the back foot, prolific through point, composed against the short stuff – and should arguably have been phased in during Australia's benighted northern campaign in July and August.

What's more, Khawaja has earned his place by weight of runs: 2,068 of them at 51.7 with six hundreds from 27 first-class games. It is difficult to examine the statistics of some of the others mooted for national selection, like Callum Ferguson (first-class average of 35 with four hundreds from 47 games) and Shaun Marsh (first-class average of 36.3 and five hundreds from 56 games), without beginning to wonder if national honours haven't become rather cheap in this day and age.

Khawaja sets his captain an interesting poser. He bats number three for his state, having opened for much of his career, and is thus a like-for-like swap with Ponting. It makes sense, in fact, to separate the left-handers in Australia's top order. But an Australian batsman has not debuted at first-wicket down for eighteen years, and Clarke might feel the pressure, especially given the perception of him as rather too rapt in his personal performances, to shield Khawaja. There are risks to either approach. Uneasy is the head that wears the number one helmet.

Having spent a few days on furlough, England will want their wits about them here. They have not played at the SCG on this tour. Their Sydney record is not the worst: they took a dead Test off Australia here in 2003, had the better of draws in 1991 and 1995. It is also, nonetheless, where they lost the only big game of their 1986–87 pageant of success, and a repeat here would travesty the difference between the sides, making for the first two-all that has ever felt like a four-nil.

Andrew Strauss's climatic luck, at least, looks to be persisting. The English have been blessed this summer by unseasonally mild weather, sparing their four-man attack the heavy labour in heat that might have exhausted it sooner, and providing periods of cloud cover for the delectation of James Anderson. Rain is forecast for Sydney on all five days, and it is only a year since Australia capitulated on the first day to Pakistan in conditions conducive to swing and seam after a delayed start. England will fancy themselves in similar circumstances. For Australia, 2011 might have to get worse before it gets better.

Weather maps were studied as avidly as pitch maps at the Sydney Cricket Ground today, as rain loomed and finally fell in copious quantities at 5 p.m., by which stage Australia were glad of it. They made a useful start to this Fifth Test and ushered in a promising debutant, but England kept them on a tight leash: twice they choked and gagged as wickets fell on the brink of interruptions.

It was always going to be one of those days, and stand-in skipper Michael Clarke took the initiative of batting when Andrew Strauss called incorrectly in what England's Tim Bresnan called 'very English conditions'. Clarke's enthusiasm was palpable: he arrived at the toss nine minutes early, and pored over England's team sheet as though he wanted to catch a spelling error. The visitors were happy to go along with it: Strauss would also have offered Australia first innings.

Still, there was more to the atmosphere than cumulus. There were also two Australian debutants, welcomed to the fold with a restoration of the ritual that had fallen into disuse under Ricky Ponting, with two past masters doing the honours. Mark Taylor presented a baggy green to Usman Khawaja and none other than Shane Warne anointed Michael Beer. So, no pressure there, then …

Australia's openers also took up the cudgels with some conviction. Watson got moving with a lazy overthrow, Hughes with a feisty punch down the ground in Chris Tremlett's second over. But generally this was a morning for patience and self-denial. The default position was bat to the sky, front pad thrust out – a pose which would have been handy in Melbourne, and here had an edge of atonement to it. A superior short leg to the
faute de mieux
Alastair Cook might have caught Watson (6) off Tremlett; otherwise, the bowlers fell somewhat short, of length and expectations.

When Anderson came off after five overs with a pedantic warning from Billy Bowden for running on the wicket, Hughes hit his replacement Bresnan through mid-off and cover for consecutive boundaries to round the hour out cheerfully, at 31 for nought. Swann came on just before noon from the Randwick End, and Hughes cut his second ball for four to raise the fifty partnership in a painstaking 123 balls.

Hughes came into Test cricket with a back foot that edged towards square leg, locking himself up and limiting his access to the ball. He has reduced this, very gradually, to a twitch of his left foot, but still comes forward reluctantly, as though being asked to volunteer for a dangerous mission in occupied territory, and is apt to jab at the ball away from his body – as today. With lunch looming, England blocked the game up, bowling twenty-eight deliveries without conceding a run off the bat, whereupon a short delivery from Tremlett drew from Hughes a fatal defensive spasm.

This stuck Khawaja with an anxious wait through lunch, part of which he apparently filled by napping for twenty minutes. Certainly he betrayed no nerves as he tucked Tremlett's loosener away for two, then nailed a pull shot that crossed the square leg boundary before most had an opportunity to look around. In Tremlett's next over, he clipped crisply to the same boundary. The camera located his parents Tariq and Fozia in the crowd, his mother's hands clasped as though in prayer, although he hardly looked in need of that sort of help. For those who had not seen him previously, he cut a strikingly serene figure; for those who had, it was confirmation of their high opinions.

Just when Australia might have been considering theirs a good day's work, Watson lunged at Bresnan to squander another start: this time a rather anonymous 45 in just over three hours, and 127 balls. At the moment he is like the self-improving reader who makes an annual promise to get through
War and Peace,
only to lose track of all the Rostovs and give up at about page 100 each time. The light, too, was now so poor as to make Clarke's pink bat grip look luminous, and when rain sent the players from the field for the second time, only the ground's impressive drainage kept the break as short as an hour and a half.

After resumption at 4.05 p.m., the crowd of 43,561 was lucky to see another hour's play – Australia were not. Clarke wafted to gully, and Khawaja top-edged a sweep at Swann, when he was just a ball away from a tidy overnight not-out. It made for a faintly bedraggled scoreline after the earlier possibilities, even if batting does not look like it will ever be easy here – always assuming there will be all that much of it. The ground presented an unpromising sight in the gloaming, and there will be more weather-map watching tomorrow.