(Colin Cowdrey told a nice story about Bradman walking to the wicket at Lord’s for the first time in 1930. Up to that point, England had not seen the best of him and so treated his arrival with little of the deference that was to follow. Bill Woodfull and Bill Ponsford batted serenely through the morning session and into the middle of the afternoon, when they were interrupted by King George V, who was not prepared to wait until the official tea-break to meet the teams. After the line-up, play resumed and immediately Ponsford was well taken by Wally Hammond at slip. Thus, at first drop, out came Bradman for the first time at Thomas Lord’s magnificent ground. As the young Australian danced down the steps of the pavilion, the steward doffed his topper, opened the small white gates and, with pride but no prejudice, said, ‘Good luck, Mr Bradman.’ At the close of play three hours later, Bradman was 155 not out. The crowd rose to him. He took off his cap, raised his bat to acknowledge the applause and was about to climb the steps when the same steward again doffed his topper and said: ‘Well played, Mr Bradman!’ To which Bradman winked and replied: ‘Useful net for the morning.’ He went on to 254 and often referred to it as his best innings.)
From there I went to the pitch for the toss. Ricky Ponting won it and chose to bat. The atmosphere fizzed with electricity and the captains were nervous: Ponting betrayed by the speed at which he talked (even faster than normal); Vaughan by the angling of his head slightly away from the camera lens and by the raising and twitching of his left eyebrow. (My ten-year-old daughter blames such responses on ‘nervocitement’ and explains this further by saying that they only happen to her when she is essentially happy to be doing the activity that is making her so apprehensive. She could go far.) Vaughan was certainly looking forward to the day; you could see that in his eyes. He went off to rev up his four-man pace attack and with him went an enormous roar from the already full house, which was most unlike Lord’s.
For 25 minutes out in the middle, our pundits got stuck in: Tony Greig bullish about England; Geoffrey Boycott reckoning McGrath and Warne would sway it—‘bowlers win matches and they are the best’; Michael Slater excited for Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer walking out to bat where he made his first Test hundred before famously kissing the badge on his helmet; Michael Atherton sanguine about all things, keen for Flintoff to seize the moment but realistic about the bank of Australian talent. We all talked about Pietersen’s first Test and the fact that Warne had pushed for his inclusion. Pietersen had left Nottinghamshire to team up with ‘the King’ at Hampshire. Naturally, he had made an impression, though the day I went to Southampton to watch him bat he scored just ten subdued runs. Having said that, he looked the business—set-up, body shape in defence and attack, the straightest of bats and sharp footwork—and I was moved to agree with Warne. Boycott was in favour too. At a couple of minutes to eleven o’clock, I threw to Richie Benaud in the commentary box, who said, ‘Morning, everyone.’ Two simple words that locked it in. Benaud, the starter’s gun, had given the go-ahead and they were off.
After which, it went like this. Steve Harmison hit Langer on the elbow and Ponting on the grille of his helmet, a truly significant blow that brought a bloodthirsty audience to life. The thin red trickle down the cheek of the Australian captain was captured by a thousand lenses and transported to every corner of the cricketing firmament. Australia, it appeared, could be hurt too. (The first sign of this had come a few weeks earlier at the T20 match at the Rose Bowl, outside Southampton, when the animated crowd inspired England to an overwhelming 100-run victory. Australia was noticeably shaken by the confrontational nature of England’s play and the passion of the support.)
In response to Harmison and the out-of-character Lord’s crowd, Australia’s feisty batsmen played their strokes but wickets fell at timely moments for the home team. By the time Vaughan recalled his strike bowler—a man hewn from the mining communities of England’s north-east—to pick off the tail with 4 for 7 in 14 balls, the gauntlet had been thrown down.
There is always an Aussie happy to pick it up, it is what they do. In next to no time, Glenn McGrath removed Marcus Trescothick and Andrew Strauss to catches behind the wicket; then he castled Vaughan, Ian Bell and Flintoff. This was renaissance seam bowling and confirmed McGrath’s pre-eminence in the art form.
Meanwhile, just a mile or two away, there was an explosion at Shepherd’s Bush tube station. Then one at the Oval tube, then Warren Street tube. While cricketers did sporting battle, terrorists did war. In the media centre, eyes that would not usually leave the cricket were suddenly attached to the news. The juxtaposition of events was surreal. Twenty minutes into the afternoon session, another small explosion took place on a bus on the Hackney Road. Extraordinarily and thankfully, they all malfunctioned: the detonator caps fired but the bombs did not go off. Come rush hour, people travelled home with only mild disruption. The fear though was that 7/7—the dreadful attacks of two weeks earlier that cost 52 lives and left 700 people injured—had not been a one off, after all. The front pages were full of the potential of the horror, the back pages full of McGrath and company. One of that company, Jason Gillespie, said he would fly home if there was another attack. The ECB and the police came together to tighten security at all the Test grounds. Even amid the fantasy of Lord’s, there was no avoiding the reality of a disturbed world.
The match was won and lost by Kevin Pietersen catches—well, sort of. He dropped three sitters, the most important of which was in the second innings at cover off a Michael Clarke punch that deserved to have cost him his wicket. Clarke went on to bat as if the gods liked him. Overall, I think we can say they do. Turning back time a day or so, Pietersen might have finessed a first-innings lead for England had Damien Martyn not taken a superb catch running back to the grandstand. The South African born batsman had just smeared Warne over mid wicket for six and fell for the trap of trying again. It had been a sparkling debut innings, remembered for that first slog-swept maximum that echoed like a gunshot and for the towering strike over mid-off and into the pavilion off McGrath because it was so damn figjam—‘Fuck I’m good, just ask me’—and, of course, because it didn’t happen to McGrath very often. Everyone could see a star had been born; the English among us just wished he would catch a bit better.
Anyway, Pietersen’s sidebars are only a part of the story. The hard fact was that England were bowled out cheaply twice: in the second innings, the final five wickets collapsed in just 46 balls. All this felt like Groundhog Day, and there was nothing beautiful about it at all. Packer, it seemed, had got it spot on.
Back to the bombs. I couldn’t help thinking about 1981 and the way ‘Botham’s Ashes’ joined forces with the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer to lift the nation out of its depression. For cricket to have similar impact again, England had to play as it had done under Michael Vaughan for the previous eighteen months, which was bloody well. From this wreckage at Lord’s came confirmation that Pietersen was a find, and both Harmison and Flintoff were frightening attack dogs. They say that if you have to, you can write the story of the Second World War on the back of fag packet. Applying this theory to England’s hopes after the First Test of 2005, you would say: ‘Score more runs and catch your catches.’
(Postscript: Queen Elizabeth II met the teams as prearranged at the tea-break on the first day. As we watched the line-up, an Australian leant into my ear to say: ‘You know, Keith Miller briefly stepped out with her sister.’ I said I did. ‘Well,’ he continued anyway, ‘in 1953, Lindsay Hassett reminded the lads to arrive at the ground the next day with best bib and tucker because they were heading for a reception at the palace straight after play. Miller said: “Aw shit, not for the third night in a row!”’)
In the London Daily Telegraph, we had more space than a fag packet. Boycott said, ‘The result has dashed a lot of hopes. Now the players have to stop talking a good game and perform. It doesn’t do any good to be making catty comments about the opposition and going out and losing to them like that.’
During Ashes series, Australians often ask me who I support. The trouble is you can take a fellow out of England but you can’t take England out of the fellow. Some deal with it and others slag me off. I’m either a traitor, licking the nuts of all Australians (an English view), or I’m a Pommy who should piss off back home (an Australian view). The truth is, I love cricket and try to celebrate its players. It is really no more complicated than that. Except during the Ashes.
Since I am writing about the England that Vaughan captained while sitting alongside him in the commentary box, I asked him for a short summary of his feelings after the First Test.
‘Honestly, I thought we were doomed. Done for. I couldn’t tell the lads that, so I thought I’d better act up. I said it was blip, nothing more, and added that Edgbaston would reveal our strengths. Deep down, I didn’t believe it, I just thought the baggage of all the previous defeats would be too much for us to carry forward. Shows how wrong you can be!’
(The morning after Lord’s, I received an email from Simon Denehy, a close mate who worked in the financial markets in the city. The email was titled ‘Dreams do come true’ and talked about the omens that were pointing to an Ashes win. Up to mid-July 2005, it said, the Dow had run pretty much in parallel to the way it had run back in 1981. In 1981, Prince Charles had married; Coronation Street’s Ken and Deirdre got married; there was a new doctor on Doctor Who; Liverpool won seventeen league games but only finished fifth; Norwich and Crystal Palace were relegated; and Liverpool won the European Cup. Up to the point of the start of the Lord’s Test in 2005, Prince Charles had remarried; Corrie’s Ken and Deirdre the same; there was another new doctor on Doctor Who; Liverpool won seventeen Premier League games and finished only fifth; Norwich and Palace were relegated; and, wait for it, Liverpool had just won the Champions League final in one of history’s greatest football comebacks. So Simon certainly wasn’t writing off England.)
SECOND TEST, EDGBASTON
First up, McGrath goes over on his ankle and is ruled out of the match. The pitch is the colour of Bondi sand. The weather is okay (it’s Birmingham, so okay is good). Australia have hungry batsmen, at least three of whom are among the greatest to wear the fabled green cap, and England are on the bones of their arse. Up goes the coin, down it comes in Ponting’s favour and he says to Vaughan, ‘We’ll have a bowl, mate.’ Of course you will, Ricky. After interviewing them both, I throw to the break with the news that Australia have won the toss and will bat first. Christ, you’d have thought I had dropped the ‘C’ bomb. It all went off. First the producer, then the director in my ear: ‘Mark, Australia will bowl first. Please confirm that to the viewers straight after the break. Please acknowledge you understand this. Australia are bowling.’ Indeed.
‘Welcome back to Edgbaston where the news is that Ricky Ponting has won the toss and the Australians will bat first.’ Next, apparently, the head of sport rang. Not happy. After which, Gary Franses, a producer who likes a dotted i, was again in my ear. ‘No, they bloody well are not, they’re batting for Christ’s sake, have you got that? The Aussies are batting, I mean bowling, the Aussies are bowling.’ Even Gary lost it. Before I fully digested this crisis, Greig and Atherton, who were out on the pitch alongside me, muscled in to say Australia were bowling.
This was an incomprehensible decision by Ponting, so unexpected that I had pre-programmed his response the split second the coin landed in his favour, and was unable to remove the copy from my thick head. Frankly, I was a mess and let Greig and Atherton carry most of that preview segment. Eventually, I threw to the next break with the right information. Duh.
Mike Denness inserted Australia at Edgbaston in 1975 and lost by an innings and plenty. This, on the back of a hammering in Australia a few months earlier. He was sent a letter addressed to ‘Mike Denness, cricketer.’ It read: ‘If this reaches you, the Post Office think more of you than I do.’ People really care about this stuff. It’s the Ashes, the bloody Ashes.
Notwithstanding my own inability to comprehend Ponting’s decision, I quickly learnt that a number of those in the away dressing room felt much the same. Given England made 400-plus in the day, rollicking along as if footloose and Ashes free, you could understand why. Here, at last, was a chink in the armour that had been unbreached since 1987. I mean, Australians bat first when the coin lands in their favour. They just do. I have studied the replay of this toss. Vaughan has a hint of a smile while listening to Ponting.
For the next couple of days, the teams played high-octane cricket, most of the highlights of which came from Andrew Flintoff. He made powerful, blacksmith-like runs in both innings, including a couple of sixes that sent this commentator into a frenzied state. Flintoff had taken Geraint Jones under his wing, defended his honour and his glove work, and then catalysed a hitherto unseen aggression in his batsmanship. (At one stage in the series, Flintoff was asked about a dropped catch off his bowling by Jones. He replied by saying something like, ‘A lot of people are questioning Geraint’s wicketkeeping but none of them are in our dressing room.’)
Flintoff bowled very fast in this match and, with Simon Jones, found some deadly reverse swing. One over in the second innings set England on their course—six deliveries of such ferocity and impact that even the crowd smelt blood. Probably, it was this over—and the final result of the match, of course—that moved the country to pay closer attention. In the over, this mountain of a man from Preston removed Langer with the second ball and Ponting with his last. In between, he beat Ponting as if he were a county triallist groping for a contract. The air of resignation on the face of the Australian captain as he walked from Edgbaston’s pasture told us of the progress England had made.
Other eye- and ear-catching happenings from the first three days of the match are easily recalled: the opening onslaught by Trescothick and Strauss; Flintoff’s strange shoulder injury that did anything but hamper his batting; Warne’s outrageous spinner that went past Strauss on the outside of his pads to hit leg stump, his 100th Test wicket in England; another Warne delivery, this time to Bell; Ashley Giles snaring Adam Gilchrist; Harmison’s memorable slower ball to Michael Clarke in the final over of Saturday’s play; the noise, the sheer volume of noise. The Eric Hollies Stand might have been the Kop.
To the nub of the thing, and the photograph. With just two wickets to take, the ground authority announced that if the match finished quickly, ticket holders would be welcome to have picnics on the outfield. (Best not to say anything until the fat lady has done her bit, is the moral there.) Mind you, a persuasive majority of the people who arrived at Edgbaston for the start of play on Sunday morning did expect England to wrap it up within, say, 45 minutes—if not quite the fifteen mentioned over the PA. Warne and Brett Lee were not among them. Applying the ‘blondes have more fun’ principle, they set about the 107 runs left to make. Lee took a pounding while Warne gave one. England began with an attacking field that left vast spaces for Warne to chip and carve. But the thing about Warne down the order is that he can bat like he is up the order, so he drove, pulled and cut too. Lee saw as much of the physio as of Warne, so often was he mashed on the hand and body by England’s West Indian-style attack.
In no time, the football crowd of Saturday became a snooker crowd on Sunday and the general unease was not lost on Michael Vaughan’s increasingly exasperated men. A hearty slice of luck went their way, however, when Warne trod on his wicket while trying to flip Flintoff through mid wicket—9 down now and 62 still needed. In came Michael Kasprowicz. No worries: not for Kasper and Binger anyway. They nicked and nudged and occasionally threw a punch at English hearts and minds— 40 runs c
ame in no time, or so it seemed. With 15 needed, Simon Jones dropped an awkward chance at third man—‘at that moment I thought it had gone,’ says Vaughan—and with 4 needed Lee creamed a square drive directly at the sweeper posted on the cover boundary. A single then, not the four. Phew.
In the commentary box and adjoining studio, the tension led to demented behaviour. A technician who hadn’t smoked in years drew deeply on a Marlboro Light. Another left the studio and paced along the back balcony, refusing to watch. I got up and down, went for a wander, giggled childishly, felt my hands and armpits turning sweaty, asked daft questions and answered them myself with the idea that what we were seeing could not be true. Surely our eyes were deceiving us. Benaud barely missed a beat, his vital signs remaining steady and clear. Thankfully, it was Benaud who had the microphone in his hand at the moment of truth.
The greatest skill of a sports television director is to choose the pictures that best tell the story. This sounds obvious but it is not straightforward. That summer, Channel 4 had 26 cameras, all with a different brief. Of these, up to twenty offered an angle on the immediate action. Thus, Rob Sheerlock had to make a snap choice from twenty options, along with aligning his choice to an instinctive feel for the likely route taken by the commentator. Sheerlock is without peer in this regard. He reads a commentator’s mind.
On strike now and with 3 needed, Kasprowicz hesitated over whether to play or duck a short delivery from Harmison. His hands flailed at the ball, deliberately or otherwise, and it brushed one of them on its leg-side journey through to Geraint Jones. Jones fell to his left and intercepted the dying missile inches from the closely mown grass. His gloves wrapped around that ball to hold it tight as he rolled over and then sprang from the turf in the sudden knowledge that he had won England the Second Test by 2 runs.
A Beautiful Game Page 32
