The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Martyn and Clarke prop up Australia

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Wednesday, Sep 22, 2004

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Sport - Cricket

Martyn and Clarke prop up Australia

BIRMINGHAM, SEPT. 21. Michael Vaughan, the England captain, said before the ICC Champions Trophy semifinal against Australia, that "one-day cricket is a funny game" but he could not have imagined this one would be so funny that he would bowl ten overs for 42 runs and wreck the Australian innings with two wickets and a run-out as they seemed set for a score above 300. His innings too was a vast improvement on his recent efforts.

What caused this transformation from a one-day wretch to a one-day wonder? Could it be a phone call from Geoff Boycott? In one newspaper this morning Boycott suggested that Vaughan was such a disappointment that he would not be in the team if he were not captain. Yorkshiremen in general and Boycott in particular are known for their bluntness and although Vaughan is a Lancastrian by birth he has lived and played in Yorkshire long enough to appreciate the value of straight talking. It appears to have done the trick.

After Vikram Solanki was out, you could tell from the imperious way Vaughan walked to the wicket as England set off in pursuit of 260 that he thought this must be his day. Vaughan began his own innings belligerently as he has in his recent run of failures but when he saw how easily Marcus Trescothick coped with the Australian attack on a passive pitch he began to compose a knock in the Test manner.

That is always his best bet since he is a complete batsman and certainly not a one-day hitter. They soon had fifty on the board for the second wicket and the boundaries began to flow and the second fifty came in 49 balls.

The small crowd — being a working day and tickets are £40 — responded loudly.

English crowds have always treated the old enemy with abuse, and this one cheered and booed and rose to greet this new England attitude.

By the 15th over England was 89 for one — compared with 79 for two by the Australians — as 30 came from three overs and Ricky Ponting began to look around desperately as if he did not know what to do. How that miserable glance gladdened English hearts as they remembered 15 years without the Ashes and 14 matches without a one-day victory against the Aussies.

Typical start

On a cold, gusty, completely autumnal day, Vaughan began by winning the toss, a rare enough event in his reign of little more than a year, used the classical device of sending Australia in to bat and saw Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist opening in typically flamboyant style with 31 runs off the first six overs and 44 when Hayden was caught at fourth slip off Harmison. Gilchrist continued to attack — Australians cannot help themselves, can they? — and by the time he was out 69 had been scored in 14 overs. Vaughan went on to bowl in the 23rd over with an imposing score of 105 for two with Ricky Ponting and Martyn in full flow. His fourth over cost eight runs and it looked as if the Australians would milk his apparently naïve off-spin at will.

Instead they found it increasingly difficult to get away and in three overs he had single-handedly stopped any talk of 300. First he bowled his Yorkshire team-mate Darren Lehmann as he carelessly tried to swing the ball to leg, in the following over he ran out an anxious Andrew Symonds and then, just 12 balls after his personal breakthrough had begun, he had Martyn caught by Trescothick.

Part of the defeat of Martyn lay in the fearsome bouncer Harmison unleashed to knock him off his feet in the previous over; how the crowd cheered his distress. Martyn had played efficiently for 65 yet it is difficult to enjoy his batting, worthy though it may be.

Both Harmison and Flintoff risked the consequences of bouncing Brett Lee late in the innings before Gough bowled Lee and Jason Gillespie with successive balls and rubbed the lesson home by taking his time over the — failed — hat-trick ball. Gough, the epitome of British bulldog, finished with three for 48 in seven overs, the sort of triumph he relishes and Australia had 259, thanks to a dashing 42 off 34 balls by Michael Clarke.

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