The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Vaughan joins the party, others don't

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Saturday, Jul 24, 2004

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Sport - Cricket

Vaughan joins the party, others don't

By Ted Corbett

LONDON, JULY 23. We did not anticipate an England collapse at Lord's on Friday. After all, it began on 391 for two, the pitch was true, the sun shone, the West Indies attack did not improve and when only three batsmen were out for 527 we thought of a new England aggregate record beyond 903 for seven declared at The Oval in 1938 rather than seven falling for 41 in 12 overs.

In that hectic period Pedro Collins, the almost anonymous left arm quick of day one, took four for 16 in 21 balls: Geraint Jones, Ashley Giles and Michael Vaughan, the England captain, and Simon Jones in the sort of spell that happens on a green top in the first day rather than half way through the second.

Collins bowled several superb deliveries - and remember that Vaughan had been batting 231 minutes against 154 balls when he was out - but England got so careless that apart from Andrew Strauss's 137, Robert Key's 221 and Vaughan's 103, no other batsman made 20.

When West Indies began to chase 568 there was still half a chance of the most improbable outcome of all: that it would score enough in the remaining three and a half days to severely embarrass England if not win the match outright. You think I have taken leave of my senses. You may be right but the truth is that England did not occupy the crease long enough.

In a Test in Madras in 1985 India made an express 275 soon after tea on the first day and left the door open for a famous, series-clinching England victory. On the other hand runs are scored more quickly in Tests today than they were 20 years ago but West Indies also has rapid scorers. There was another at the Oval Test in 1996 when England made 445 against Sri Lanka and lost by 10 wickets.

Of course, 568 in 549 minutes or 121.4 overs is hardly a disaster. Nor is the telling fact that England had three century makers for the first time since 1990 when Graham Gooch, Michael Atherton and Robin Smith made hundreds against India at Old Trafford. That match was drawn - England had spent 160 overs over its 519 - which feeds my suspicion that this Test may yet have a strange result.

There was no sign of that in the first hour when Key and Vaughan put on 80 even though West Indies bowled only a dozen overs. More than 20 overs with the second new ball had gone when Key was caught at backward point off Dwayne Bravo.

Vaughan went on majestically but just before lunch Graham Thorpe was caught behind - again off Bravo - and Andrew Flintoff hit a six and then slashed at a wide ball and nudged it on to his stumps so that at lunch England was 534 for five.

Afterwards Collins, pitching the ball straight and inviting a careless shot or two, bowled at his best so that six batsmen were out for an aggregate of 24 runs. It was a bizarre 50 minutes, a throwback to England pre-coach Fletcher, failing against good but not great bowling and letting the opposition back into a game instead of nailing it down.

A `Gayle' storm

The demise continued when Chris Gayle and Devon Smith began West Indies' reply. Brian Lara said this week that he wondered how long Steve Harmison could continue to answer every call Vaughan made and we wrote that statement off as a piece of sporting spin. But the lanky Durham bowler's second over went for 17 and at 28 off four overs the openers had thrown down the gauntlet. Ten more runs came off the next two overs and by now Harmison was bowling round the wicket and Gayle, who scored a one-day century at Lord's, was timing every ball precisely as he took 10 off Hoggard's third over.

At tea, West Indies had chopped 83 off the 369 it needed to avoid the follow-on, Harmison and Hoggard had bowled seven overs for 44 runs, Vaughan had been forced to call up Ashley Giles to bowl defensively around leg stump and 651 runs had been scored in five sessions and Gayle gone to 50 in 44 balls. And they say Test cricket is boring. Don't you believe it.

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