The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : England off to a blistering start

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Friday, Aug 05, 2005

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England off to a blistering start

Ted Corbett

BIRMINGHAM: : A collective madness overtook England and Australia at the start of the second Test; perhaps it had something to do with the nervy state of these troubled times.

Whatever the cause, the result was the most unfamiliar sight in cricket — Australian cricketers left sprawling in the wake of powerful shots, conceding five runs an over and dropping catches. Was this the team that won the first Test by 239 runs? Surely not.

First, 90 minutes before the start, Glenn McGrath, Australia's most menacing bowler, stood on a cricket ball while playing a warm-up game of Rugby and injured his ankle so badly that — although there was no break — he left hospital on crutches.

I suspect this accident contributed to the biggest mistake of the day when Ricky Ponting won the toss and sent England in to bat. He will rue this day much as Nasser Hussain lived to regret his decision at Brisbane on the last tour and Bob Willis got it wrong at Adelaide in 1982-3.

His bowlers got nothing from the pitch in a performance that a kindly critic might call poor and which led the England batsmen to collect runs more easily than a London street beggar gathers those tiny silver 5p pieces no-one else wants.

McGrath sorely missed

For the next two hours the Australian attack was so clearly in need of McGrath's help that England scored 132 off 27 overs before lunch with 23 fours almost all drive from old-fashioned half volleys.

The bowlers performed the remarkable feat of bowling repeatedly in the tiny area in which Marcus Trescothick deigns to move his feet and by the interval he had 77. Andrew Strauss, the junior partner in this stand — the biggest by an England pair against Australia at Edgbaston — was out to a turning ball from Shane Warne but do not be deceived. Warne's first ten overs cost fifty.

Trescothick and Strauss batted with much more application than they showed at Lord's but the rewards were greater too. Michael Vaughan, the England captain, began smoothly too even when Trescothick, still foot-fast on 90, edged Michael Kasprowicz and was caught behind.

Kasprowicz had been the most economical bowler before lunch but somehow he lost the plot afterwards and four overs went for 38. Three balls after he got Trescothick's wicket he had Ian Bell also caught by Adam Gilchrist so that England was 170 for three instead of having a stranglehold on the game.

When Vaughan skied a ball from Gillespie to long leg at 187, we seemed to have reached a crossroads in the game; Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff at the crease in the middle of the first afternoon and capable of both getting out very quickly or taking the game far, far away from the depleted, and frankly disheartened, Aussies.

Racy partnership

For once this partnership of strong, adventurous shot-players worked. Maybe it was their rivalry, perhaps it was the pathetic Australian bowling, and it might even have been the smell of lunacy that was at the heart of this strange day's play but in the next 50 balls, 50 runs came, with two sixes, both to Flintoff and eight fours.

Half way through the day, 238 runs had come with three sixes and 38 fours and, unnecessarily, four wickets. It was a Test played at one-day speed. No captain in a 50-over match would object to 238 in 45 overs.

I cannot remember seeing Australia so rattled — Ponting running to his bowlers repeatedly and constantly resetting widespread fields — since Hussain scored 207 as the basis for victory at Edgbaston in 1997.

Flintoff reached fifty off 48 balls while Pietersen, uncharacteristically reined in, watched his partner bring up the 100 stand off 96 balls with his sixth four to set alongside five sixes.

Tea brought 289 for four — seven sixes and 41 fours — at nearly five and a half an over and 157 off 27 overs since lunch.

Third ball after tea, Flintoff gave Gilchrist his third catch and Gillespie his 250th wicket.

The local Barmy Army, raised on West Brom, Aston Villa and Birmingham City, sang lustily. It was a good day to be an Englishman and they did not care how many Australians heard them say so.

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