Ashes 2011 (32 page)

Jonathan Trott began the Ashes of 2010–11 as the only member of England's top six without prior Australian experience. On the odd occasion, too, he looked overeager to play the pull shot, which thrice cost him his wicket on tour. Otherwise, he was the complete number three, despite having first been drafted into the position for the want of something better. He and Cook were the kind of batting combination that bring to a camp calm and order. The middle order could relax, bowlers put their feet up.

His outward phlegmatism notwithstanding, a passion seems to lurk deep in Trott. When he was left out of the Headingley Test of 2009, Andrew Strauss described his look as that of someone 'genuinely distraught'. He was the one England player who gave a hint of his team's latent rage at home last year by having a crack at Wahab Riaz. But in the main, that passion smoulders, summed up somehow in his technique: with his trigger movement forward, he always seems in danger of launching at the ball, yet somehow ends up playing exquisitely late, right beneath his nose. It is force under control. During his critical 168 not out at Melbourne, he never lost momentum despite the acutest self-denial.

What England's successes this summer have in common is that they were not players Australia would have spent much time worrying about in advance. Cook had had no impact on two prior Ashes series; Trott had struggled on bouncy wickets a year earlier. James Anderson? Before the tour, Australians remembered him mostly as the cannon fodder of four years ago, and a threat in the Ashes of 2009 only when clouds rolled in. Under cloudless Australian skies, Shane Watson and his top-order colleagues quite fancied their chances against him. Ahead of the series, Watson talked up Anderson's down-under record as a point in his team's favour: 'If he doesn't start out the way he wants to, those wounds can open up straight away.'

Watson's punditry proved as speculative as his calling. One of the most impressive features of Anderson's bowling in 2010–11 was his willingness to be struck for early boundaries in search of swing – he was like the proverbial spinner prepared to keep tossing it up even under attack. Anderson had some expensive opening spells among his successful ones, but he never lost faith in his ability to beat the bat with sideways movement, or his stomach for the contest. Even when Watson had another piece of him after Perth, chirping that Anderson's failure there as night watchman to protect Paul Collingwood had been 'one of my best moments on a cricket field', England's number one quick never stopped coming. Anderson's contribution as straight man to Graeme Swann's video diaries also made them among the tour's most successful partnerships. His deadpan retort to Swann in Adelaide – 'Excuse me, there's nothing wrong with being both informative
and
interesting, Graeme' – was perhaps the best line of the trip.

On preparing to face Chris Tremlett, meanwhile, Australia appeared to spend no time at all: indeed, the one aspect of Australia's preparation that Michael Clarke was later prepared to concede was deficient was the failure to train against 'tall fast bowlers', and they come no taller than Tremlett.

The reason, one fancies, was Tremlett's prior reputation for reticence, for temperament and body language that Shane Warne described as 'just a bit soft' and 'awful' respectively. Here, perhaps, we learned more about Warne than Tremlett, the Australian's deportment ideal being David Hasselhoff. From his first ball in Perth, Tremlett looked the part as a bowler, while remaining utterly impassive, even placid, between times.

Tremlett, in fact, might have been devised with batsmen accustomed to propping on the front foot and hitting happily through the line in mind. His ball to begin Australia's rout in Melbourne, forcing a skittish Watson on to the back foot and taking the shoulder of the bat, was the kind that sends a tremor through the dressing room – the hunters of Perth, it said, were now the hunted. Mind you, it was almost comical to contrast the consternation Tremlett induced in his own slips cordon with the total equanimity he exhibited himself, and the physical difference he opened up between the visitors and hosts. When 6ft 7in Tremlett walked past 5ft 7in Phil Hughes at the non-striker's end in Melbourne and Sydney, they seemed involved in different games, not just different teams.

England came to Australia shadowed by doubts about the efficacy of a four-man attack. They got a little lucky. Thanks to the unseasonally mild summer, fast bowling was not so physically extentuating as usual; the speed with which the tourists grew accustomed to rolling Australia over helped too, of course. Above all, though, it was thanks to Tremlett and also to Tim Bresnan that England were able to absorb the loss to attrition of Stuart Broad and Steve Finn: statistically at least, they were actually almost twice as effective, turning over 28 wickets at 21, versus 16 wickets at 39.

Yet in concentrating on the four statistical standouts of this England team, one is at risk of ignoring their most impressive quality, which was their strength-through-joy unity. After a rocky start at the Gabba, they caught superbly. Their ground fielding was electric, inflicting four damaging run-outs, while their own running between wickets was judicious, incurring not a single casualty themselves. Above all, they radiated confidence and pleasure in the contest.

This is not something for which England has been known down under. In a memorable passage in his autobiography, Adam Gilchrist described the air around Alec Stewart's team twelve years ago as 'the epitome of everything wrong with English professionalism', resembling 'office workers turning up for a dreary day behind the desk'. Thus it was not a spacefilling sound bite when Flower said on England's departure that there was 'nothing to be afraid of in Australia', that it was 'one of the best places to go' and 'should be a lot of fun'. It meant also that when the Australians tried something similar before the Third Test, with Steve Smith describing his mission as being to 'come into the side and be fun', 'making sure I'm having fun and making sure everyone else around is having fun', it sounded as if the locals had simply exhausted other possibilities. A winning team will always be the happier one, but in this case happiness also seemed to beget success. For this, England deserve most credit of all.

FIFTH TEST
 
 
Sydney Cricket Ground 3-7 January 2011

Toss
 
 
Australia
 
 
England
 
 
won by an innings and 83 runs