Ashes 2011 (6 page)

It's an ill wind, Siddle might have reflected at this point. Had Cricket Australia not cajoled Doug Bollinger into representing the Chennai Super Kings in the Champions League a couple of months ago, he might have been properly prepared for Australia's Test in Mohali, might not have sustained a side strain, might not have looked rather underwhelming in the recent Sheffield Shield match at the SCG, and might as a result have squeezed Siddle out of the eventual XI, rather than becoming the squad's specialist national anthem singer.

Siddle might have thought that but he didn't. He confessed modestly afterwards that he planned simply to hit 'top of off'. What he bowled was closer to 'bottom of leg', but it was too quick for Stuart Broad, who stumbled into a 90mph yorker. For the fourth time during the day, umpire Aleem Dar's decision was challenged; for the fourth time, it was upheld. If more umpires were as competent, referrals would not be needed at all.

The obligatory scenes of man-love that ensued were perhaps more than usually heartfelt. Siddle is a popular, hardworking, blue-collar cricketer, with no airs and graces, and a dirty great Southern Cross tattoo on his back. He has been out of Test cricket since January with a stress fracture of the back, after toiling manfully much of last year. Today was his twenty-sixth birthday; he won't forget his hat-trick's anniversary.

With Australia making short work of the tail, and Shane Watson and Simon Katich breezing through the final ten overs, the opening day of the series could hardly have unfolded more deliciously for the capacity crowd. Two hundred and thirty-five runs in arrears at the close with all their wickets in hand, the hosts would have felt on their way to ratifying the Gabba's reputation as Fortress Australia.

The ghost of first overs past had been a pre-match talking point, Steve Harmison's wide in 2006 and Phil De Freitas's long-hop of 1994 being widely recalled; those with a memory for such things recollected that the second ball of the Test here in 2002 ran between Michael Vaughan's legs at gully.

The action today was again in the gully, with Andrew Strauss destined to relive the third ball of this series for years to come. From Hilfenhaus, it bounced a little, came back a tad, and was chopped rather than cut to Michael Hussey, who caught it in front of his own disbelieving eyes. Strauss reeled back, placed his hand to his head like he'd just remembered leaving the gas on at home, and returned to a dressing room where his initial instinct might well have been to stick his head in the oven. After forty minutes, he re-emerged on the players' balcony behind oversized sunglasses, as though loath to be recognised. Nobody should envy the captain cum opening batsman.

It was fourteen deliveries before the first English runs accrued, from Jonathan Trott's deadened edge to third man, a flick off the pads soon after providing the series' first healthy boundary. Trott's pedantic rituals – he marks his guard obsessively, as though fearful of the stumps moving – have clearly attracted Australian attention: Hilfenhaus charged halfway in at the beginning of the seventh over, even as Trott immersed himself in head-down fussings, and pulled up grumpily. This cat-and-mouse game could be set to last all summer long.

The Gabba was uneasily quiet throughout, as if people could not quite believe that cricket had actually begun after a month of punditry and prognostication. There were some home-town cheers when Johnson replaced Hilfenhaus at the Stanley Street end, and some pantomime boos later for the coming of Pietersen; otherwise the tension in the middle was contagious.

The match had settled into a lulling rhythm when Shane Watson came on and promptly bowled Trott through a beckoning gate. Before lunch, in fact, Australia's relief bowler looked as likely as anyone to break through. His sightscreen-broad shoulders held the promise of great velocities; in fact, he operated at the pace at which Stuart Clark was so effective here four years ago, and to a full length.

Siddle watched and learned. After lunch, rolling his fingers over the seam to good effect, he drew Pietersen and Collingwood into injudicious push-drives. But when, somewhat surprisingly, Siddle was relieved after four overs by Johnson, Alastair Cook redoubled his application, and Ian Bell settled in quickly.

Cook played the innings England needed – almost. Although he has the left-handedness, slim physique and some of the self-containment of David Gower, he is as technically busy as Gower was physically minimal. He wears his method, with its double foot movements and double backlift, like a shabby but comfortable jacket, too-long sleeves worn through at the elbows, yet imbued with pleasant associations.

Because he can be ungainly, Cook often appears when dismissed to have been completely defeated, in veritable disarray. In this, he is a contrast to Bell, a batsman of comparable ability and record, who usually seems to get out while in nonetheless perfect position, bat straight, feet ideally spaced and balanced. Cook looks as though he's gotten himself out, Bell like he's been defeated by something special, Cook to have failed because of his method, Bell in spite of his. The contrast is seductive, and tends to shape the way they are criticised: Cook is always being enjoined to work on his technique, Bell to toughen his temperament.

For his part, Bell looked by far the most complete of England's batsmen, a far cry from the soft touch of 2005, playing with time to spare, and with far better awareness of the game unfolding around him than has been his habit. Of Bell, Australians have been inclined to reprise Shane Warne's comment regarding Monty Panesar: that he hasn't played fifty-eight Tests, but the same Test fifty-eight times. Out of Aussie sight, however, he has matured into a flourishing Test batsman, who finally overreached himself only when the circumstances compelled it.

When Cook succumbed to Siddle after almost five patient hours, the bowler charged down the pitch into the welcoming arms of the slips cordon, which joyously engulfed him. His head emerged from the huddle bearing a smile, which was as jagged as a crocodile's and broad as the Harbour Bridge. He looked like a man for whom life could simply not get better. It was a logical inference to draw. He was wrong.

Peter Siddle's first ball in Test cricket hit Gautam Gambhir on the helmet. During his recent interstate comeback, he hit Phil Jaques on the helmet too. A disciple of the blood-and-thunder school of fast bowling, he looks like he'd be happier knocking your block off than your stumps over. Yet he proved in Brisbane today that he can work both sides of the street. On a surface seemingly yellowing by the hour and that should tomorrow be ideal for batting, pitching it up was the way to go, so pitching it up was the way he went. To show for it, he had that rarest of cricket feats, a hat-trick.

Not long before he died, Donald Bradman was asked by Greg Chappell which deliveries had troubled him most in his career. After at first waving the question away, Bradman came up with an interesting and inherently authoritative answer: the full ball attacking the stumps that might go this way or might go that but at all events compelled a stroke was, even at his peak, a challenge.

What was good enough for Bradman those many years ago proved today more than enough for England. The third ball of Siddle's twelfth over was sharp and tight on off stump. When he entered Test cricket three years ago, Siddle rather struggled with left-handers, and lost knots and accuracy when bowling round the wicket. From over the wicket, this ball demanded a defensive bat from Cook, and snagged an edge as it angled away.

Siddle found the right solution for Prior too, who for a batsman with an average above 40 is bowled too often – 28 per cent of his dismissals. The ball was again full. It found bat and pad not just ajar but almost at odds.

The younger Siddle might at such a point have bowled a bouncer, into the ribs, maybe at the helmet. But it was Siddle's twenty-sixth birthday today. This is his eighteenth Test. He is in his fast-bowling prime, coming into savvy to go with the sizzle. In the nets before the game, both Tim Nielsen and Troy Cooley were entreating him to bowl a fuller length – as he did so, he was excited to find the ball swinging. So for his hat-trick ball, he aimed again to skid the ball from the otherwise disobliging surface, to take advantage of slow-moving feet and an uncalibrated eye.

Stuart Broad's preparatory rituals were as elaborate as those of a prize fighter shadow-boxing in his dressing gown: stretching, skipping, fiddling and generally farting around. His failure was almost foreordained. Siddle's yorker was rather like the jubilant sandshoe crusher with which Jeff Thomson at the Gabba thirty-six years ago upended Tony Greig; it is destined to be replayed as often. Broad legged it from the scene of the crime like an urchin spied stealing an orange, but was collared by the long arm of the lbw law, personified by Aleem Dar and ratified by Tony Hill.

Here was the delayed gratification of Test cricket at its best. In the hour before it, the Test had slipped from a restless doze into REM sleep. Alastair Cook and Ian Bell were restoring English heart, ticking over calmly enough, if not threatening at any stage to break away. The commentators were chatting. The crowd was a little listless. Marketers were busy thinking about how to squeeze in another T20 international. They were disturbed in their machinations by the sound of celebration reverberating around the concrete crucible of the Gabba, by the outbreak of cricket worth waiting for.

Australia had special need of Siddle under the circumstances. The attack was generally persevering rather than consistently penetrative. Shane Watson chipped in, but Ben Hilfenhaus was no better than adequate, and Xavier Doherty was rather flattered by a couple of tail-end wickets.

Debutant Doherty came on to bowl the 21st over with a slip, a bat-pad and, after his first ball bit and bounced promisingly, a short mid-on. Except that he struggled with his line to Cook, asking too little of the left-hander's cover drive and offering too much to be nurdled round the corner, a bread and butter shot that sustained the batsman when his vital signs, every so often, showed signs of failing.

The comparison was unfair but inevitable. Four years ago, Warne let Pietersen know there would be no gimmes with a waspish throw back to the keeper that struck his old mucker's bat, following up with some pantomime huff-and-puff. Doherty's response in his third over to stopping Pietersen's crisp straight drive was rather less assured: his throw bounced at the edge of the cut strip and would have vanished for four overthrows had Haddin not darted quickly to his left.

A moustache has made Mitchell Johnson look a little more like Dennis Lillee, meanwhile, but it hasn't enhanced the bowling resemblance. His arm still swings through like a roundhouse punch, leaving little margin for error with his release, and his general presence remains rather less than menacing: as he pauses at the end of his run, it still looks as though he's trying to remember the last five things Troy Cooley told him.

Bowling to Bell during the afternoon, Johnson was at one stage nudged to mid-on. When he proceeded to hare after the ball himself, it looked a little odd, like the act of an overactive boy in a backyard; it was not an action one could have expected of Glenn McGrath, who would have chuntered about bloody short leg or bloody mid-off bloody well doing what they were bloody well paid for.

Johnson was the only bowler to make a pre-match prediction, talking up the need to be aggressive, and his intent to bombard Andrew Strauss. How long ago these prophecies and prognostications already seem. As Siddle might have said: 'The only way to go is up.' The same sentiment now applies, in a somewhat different sense, to England.

In Australia's great period of ascendancy, Michael Hussey was a talisman – a symbol of Australian cricket's panache, vitality and fertility. The dwindling of his average from its zenith of 80 to a more mortal 50 has been a leading indicator of the country's cricket decline. Today he found a new role, shoring up the order of a rebuilding team with batting in some of his best vein, ending the day undefeated on 81.

Likewise unfinished, Hussey's partnership of 77 with Brad Haddin allowed Australia to feel ever so slightly ahead at the end of day two of this First Test at the Gabba. Still 40 in arrears of England, Australia will want a lead. Although Kevin Mitchell's surface will not deteriorate badly in the unseasonally mild weather, the hosts would not relish a substantial fourth-innings chase after three consecutive Test defeats.

England opened the day in search of early wickets, but with the sun out struggled even to generate appeals, let alone beat the bat. Stuart Broad's spell was like a pat-down airport search: invasive but not particularly effective and chiefly irritating. His best moment was a bouncer which Watson bore beneath the left arm, and at which the batsman, anxious to defend his stumps, issued a fresh-air kick as it fell. Otherwise there was too much to shoulder arms to and sway away from, which was nonetheless applauded monotonously in the slip cordon. A couple of clumping drives early on, including an on drive that Watson drilled down the ground from Finn's fifth ball, seemed to have the effect of discouraging the bowlers from pitching up, despite Siddle's first-day example. A run-out opportunity went begging; overthrows were conceded. This was not the New England so widely praised, but a hint of Ye Olde England during the long Australian ascendant.

Between times, nonetheless, Anderson picked up Watson with a good one, nicking to slip, and Ponting with a bad one, feathering down the leg side. Australia were glad of some stern resistance from Katich, a turtle of a batsman, who retracts his head at the first hint of danger and always has the long view in mind. His stabs, jabs and back-and-across step are not a method you'd recommend anyone emulate, but his head is still when he plays the ball and he defends right under his nose. The South Africans and Englishmen had some success bowling outside his eyeline last year – Flintoff picked him up in the gully at Lord's. For whatever reason, there seemed no such plan today. His eventual fall, bunting back a low caught-and-bowled, surprised the batsman almost as much as the bowler: it was his first such Test dismissal, as well as a useful first Ashes wicket for Finn, whose stoop to conquer involved almost all his 6ft-6 frame.