Ashes Poetry

Odd test match, this. Were it not the Australians, nor being one-nil up in the series, nor the memory of 2005, most people would say it was a pretty dull affair, more or less ruined by the weather. Which would be more or less true, certainly from half-an-hour prior tea on the last day, when it was clear Australia didn’t need the rain to save them, and the rest of the cricket was like watching paint dry – inside the tin.

With the MCC World Cricket Committee mooting a Test Match Championship, maybe it’s time to think about not measuring test match durations in days but in overs. In other words, 450 overs must be bowled before the game’s a draw, however many days it takes. It might seem a screwball idea at first but reasons against it aren’t cricketing. Think about it….. 

Working backwards, within the paint tin, Michael Clarke made damned sure Graham Swann got the message loud and clear that his final day dismissal at Lord’s was a fluke, a lucky fluke at that. He kept off-driving the offie for four more or less at will, in preparation for Headingley and the Oval. Why on earth didn’t Strauss stop the flogging earlier? We also learnt Bopara isn’t a test match bowler, and on this evidence his 44 first class victims must still be wondering what they did to get out.

Hussey’s gone a decent way to reinstating himself. He chose the riskier strategy of going for the drive, with plenty of playing and missing. Rightly so. It put very necessary runs on the board, and had he edged it would have flown hard and high. Interesting when he was out two balls before lunch he seemed to pull out of the shot. Watson’s become a decent make-shift opener. Plays straight and gets into line. Overall the Australians saved the game without too much fuss, just as England should have at a belter of a track at Cardiff. Well-played test cricket doesn’t necessarily mean gripping thrills.

Why didn’t England bowl out Australia? Exactly the same at Edgbaston, Vaughan’s last game, against South Africa last year. In India and two tests in the West Indies this winter, not to mention Lord’s when Australia recovered from one-hundred odd for five to over four hundred all out. England don’t seem to have the necessary hardness, gumf, guile, call-it-what-you-will to kill off sides from a winning position in the final innings. Overall England’s attack need helpful conditions to oust the Australian top-order, plus some suicide – the pulls and hooks first innings at Lord’s, or uncertainty how to play swing in the first innings here. Equally Australia don’t seem to have the bowlers for English conditions, Hilfenhaus the exception. However they must be learning, both batsmen and bowlers, whereas there are still question marks dangling against Bopara and Prior at least with the bat, and Broad with the ball. In deed the best English batsman was Flintoff who played a Pietersen innings, 74 from 79 balls, before getting the one unplayable ball from Horitz so far in the series. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. His knee is a desperate worry.

Captain watch. Strauss still remains curious. Why no Anderson from the off on the last day? Ponting seems lonely, not having someone to talk to, leading to micro-management field changes rather than sweeps of strategy. He must be thinking micro-management thoughts all the time, which may explain his lack of runs since Cardiff.

Australia may feel they left Birmingham ahead on points, but the second morning when six wickets fell in double-quick time will haunt.

For me, watching Manou was a joy. Not perfect, but a proper wicket-keeper, not just a bat who happens to keep. Not quite so, Ref Rudi Koertzen. Having written a poem about his 100th test http://www.ashespoetry.net/2009/07/16/koertzen/ detailing the travails of the job, I’m none too critical of him refuting a stone-wall lb against Belly which according to Hawkeye splatted the middle of the middle stump (it may’ve been different were it Punter….) How can anyone tell an umpire’s losing it until he starts to – even himself. You might start singing The Specials’ ‘Message for you, Rudi’ but he’s not nearly as bad as the umpire in Drink Less Miss Less www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbR2HivqRoM starring glamour-puss Jimmy Anderson. My beef was at the end of the fourth day. Play kicked off at lunch and stopped at 7.30 with four overs to go. It should have been three, but Rudi walked so slowly from square leg (maybe that’s why, he’s got them, square legs) that the clock had clunked past the witching hour. In days of yore umpires used to run, or in David Shepherd’s case at England on 111,  hop like an overweight Zebedee, to make sure we got the overs in. It was as bad a piece of delaying play as the batting gloves at Cardiff. Financially Mr Koertzen owes the Edgbaston faithful £20,000 according the calculations made on the back of my £60 ticket (£1 an over, 20,000 crowd = ) Personally the problem with umpires today is that they lack gravitas. Billy Bowden’s crook-fingered sixes are all well and good, but I remember Sid Buller who made Marlon Brando in The Godfather or Apocalypse Now! seem like Mr Bean. You’d never dare question Sid, especially when both of you knew he was wrong.