Ashes 2013
Another bad day, but 3-1 is clearly in
sight
December 28th 2013
In
Spain, December 28th is “the Day of the Innocent Saints” – the children
slaughtered by Herod – and has become the Spanish April Fools Day. The Spanish
tend to get taken in rather easily by news stories in European media on April 1st,
never realising the tradition of trying to fool viewers, listeners and readers
as plausibly as possible, but go to town themselves on December 28th.
Yesterday,
the joke was on England.
If
you went to bed at lunch in the Test, as many surely do, despite a rather poor
bowling effort that allowed the last pair to score far more than they should,
you would have gone with England’s lead past 100, with Michael Carberry at his
most obdurate and with Alistair Cook stroking the ball like the Cook of
2010/11. You would have believed in Father Christmas, the tooth fairy and a
seemingly inevitable England victory.
Despite
a horrible post-lunch collapse from 65-0 and 86-1 to 87-4, KP, Ben Stokes and
Jonny Bairstow seemed to be righting the ship. It was 173-5 and a lead of 300
seemed likely. Bairstow was counter-attacking, his short, but violent innings
including four boundaries, two of them maximums (should that not be maxima,
declining our Latin correctly???) KP was playing sublimely. It made what
followed, with the lower middle order and tail making Nathan Lyon look like a
combination of the best of Shane Warne. Muttiah Muralitharan and Jim Laker bowling
on a minefield. Panic set in and players who know how to bat and can bat well,
surrendered.
Australia
need 231 to win. In a low-scoring match they have to significantly better their
first innings performance. Even though they have knocked off 30 of them, they
are not very much better placed than in the equivalent stage of the first
innings.
England
should still win from here. However, there is still that phantom in the
wardrobe of Australia showing that this is actually a good batting pitch and
sailing to their target by Tea tomorrow with only one or two wickets down.
Victory
in a dead rubber seems to split opinion: some say that it would just convince
England that everything is right after all (you can turn this around and say
that winning 4-0 or 5-0 would convince Australians that all is right with their
cricket when it is most clearly not and this series win may be simply a one-off);
others feel that to turn things round and get to 3-1, or even a 3-2 result
would be a major statement of intent. There are plenty who are joking that it
is a ten-match series and delicately poised at 3-3, provoking serious sense of
humour failure in at least one cricket writer who has taken these claims
seriously and aimed a major social media outburst at it. Winning a dead rubber
is like kissing your sister: it is a comfort, but nothing like as good as the
real thing. I stick by that. It will make England feel better. It will show
them that they can compete. However, it will not hide the fact that they have
been seriously second best when the chips were down.
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