Ashes 2013
Rain Leaves the Match Delicately Poised
August 5th
[08:00 CEST]
Rain and some fighting play have left this Test match delicately poised with
both sides entering the final day thinking that they will be able to win if the
rain relents. There will surely be an overnight declaration leaving England a
minimum of 96 overs to score 332 to win: a generous 3.46 per over that England
would fancy themselves to make on this benign pitch. Australia would have
preferred to set 400, or even 450 with the best part of four sessions to bowl,
but now cannot bat in in the morning
and expect give themselves time to bowl out England.
After
some fighting batting by the tail – Matt Prior’s second top score of the series,
although a sequence of 1, 31, 6, 1* & 30 is not a sequence he will be proud
of and yet another useful knock by Stuart Broad, giving him 24, 65, 33 & 32
in the series – took England comfortably past the follow-on, Australia were
left with a difficult balance between attack and risk knowing that the weather
forecast was poor both for yesterday and today. As it was, there is a danger
that if they over-attacked and were bowled out cheaply, England could be left
with a not too challenging chase. Batting on too long would not leave his
bowlers sufficient time to dismiss England a second time, England having batted
almost 140 overs in their first innings. In the end, England took wickets with
sufficient regularity that Australia were never able to score at the sort of
pace that they would have desired to set up a really big target that would
avoid any slight risk of defeat and leave England with the sole option of
defending against defeat. The intervention of bad light and rain has made
Michael Clarke’s calculations even more difficult.
Right
now, this is the sort of nightmare scenario for Michael Clarke because the
time/run equation is not a particularly difficult one. If England bat all day,
assuming that the forecast rain relents and lets them, they will not be far
from making the target and, were they to need 140-160 runs after Tea with
plenty of wickets in hand, would fancy their chances to make the runs. However,
from Australia’s point of view, keeping England interested in a run chase may
be their best chance of winning: if the batsmen shut up shop, they should not
be dismissed in three sessions.
Some
fans have looked at the time remaining and attacked Michael Clarke for not
declaring with 260-280 lead to give his bowlers more time to win the match.
This surely cannot be a serious suggestion, because 260 to win in 4 sessions is
the sort of offer Santa Claus would make. These are the same fans who labelled
Andrew Strauss “defensive” for not setting the West Indies 180 to win in the
Caribbean in 2009: the fact that such a declaration would have handed them the
match never occurred to them.
If the
predicted rain arrives, a soggy draw will be favourite. If not, all four
results are possible, unless Michael Clarke decides that he does not like the
odds and bats on for another half hour to try to boost the lead to 360-380.
Right now though it looks as if he has to risk going 3-0 down to give him a
chance of pulling it back to 2-1.
[09:00
CEST] All that may be proved irrelevant. First word is that the rain is tipping
down in Manchester and play looks unlikely. This could lead to England
retaining the Ashes today. Only once, in 1928/29 have England ever retained the
Ashes after 3 Tests of a series of at least 4 matches. Even then, in the more
relaxed atmosphere of the time it took 36 days from the start of the series for
it to happen, as Tests were so much more spaced, with two weeks and, sometimes,
even three between them. Today is just 25 days since the series started.
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