The Ashes Diary (15 page)

At any rate, it was all academic. The rain came down then, and despite a few breaks and moments of hope through the afternoon, we never got back on. The umpires came in and said to me, in front of most of the team, ‘Even if the rain stops right now – and the radar indicates that it won’t, there’s plenty more coming – if we get back on the field, we will only have 12 overs of play.’ In my mind, I was prepared to do anything – stay until midnight if need be – to get on the field, but I had to accept the reality the umpires were presenting. The best-case scenario was 12 overs, which was not enough. The match was abandoned, and the Ashes were retained by England, at 4.39 pm.

Everyone in the squad, from the players through to the support staff, is extremely disappointed and frustrated. Even the Doc, Peter Brukner, who’s walking around in the pink blazer for being our ‘one-percenters’ champion in this match. All in all, we lost something like 110 overs from the match to rain, and it’s hard to win a Test match when that happens on the last two days. That said, I’m happy with the position we were in and pleased that the Test match had reached the stage where only one team could have won it, and that was us. It wasn’t inevitable, and we had seven more wickets to take, but I’m convinced that if not for the rain we would be 1–2 down going to Durham, with all the momentum on our side.

But when you go 0–2 down in a series, you don’t leave yourself with any margin for things like this to happen. I don’t want to take anything away from England. They retained the Ashes by winning at Trent Bridge and Lord’s. Our first-innings batting on both occasions was our major weakness, and I can offer no excuses there. Things definitely didn’t go to plan.

Well, I certainly didn’t expect to be writing this in my diary at this stage of the tour. But credit to the boys for showing some of their best work here in Manchester. At the post-match press conference, I was asked about whether this was a turning point for us and what it meant for the Ashes series in Australia this summer. I hope it means everything! But I can’t think that far ahead. We have two hard Test matches ahead of us here. That’s what I’m focusing on. We can take this momentum from Manchester and turn it into something really special, but on the other hand, if we execute badly, we can hand the initiative back to England.

That’s the full reach of my horizon now, getting our team to perform consistently closer to its potential in the next three weeks.

The Aussie summer’s still a long, long way off.

7

THE FOURTH TEST MATCH

Tuesday 6 August.
Manchester to Durham.

Today’s a quiet travel day for us. As I write this, we’re on a five-hour bus ride from Manchester to Durham, right up in the north-east of the country. We don’t actually stay or play in the town of Durham: we stay at Gateshead, which is the southern part of Newcastle, and we play at the town of Chester-le-Street, further south of Newcastle on the way to Durham. But it’s known as the Durham Test match because Chester-le-Street is the ground of the Durham County Cricket Club. They’re the newest club in the county championship, having been around for about 20 years, and this will be the first Ashes Test match at their ground. So we’re going to be a part of history.

The boys are pretty sedate: sleeping, talking, watching movies, staring out the window. When we get there, we’ll do our normal light recovery and rehab after a solid Test match.

There’s some sunshine outside, which is nice, but the forecast for the next week up in the north-east isn’t great.

Let’s hope the weather defies the predictions, as usual!

Wednesday 7 August.
Durham.

Our training session at Chester-le-Street was optional, but almost everyone in the squad came down. Guys were able to work on particular parts of their game or their fitness. For me, that meant no batting – I didn’t pick up a cricket bat at all. With Alex, I had some treatment and did walking, running and cardio work. It’s all a matter of flushing my legs out after spending a lot of time on the field at Old Trafford, as well as getting my mind right for what is a very quick turnaround between matches.

Like everyone else, I went through my rituals of unpacking my gear and laying it all out in the changing room. I went out to the middle and took a look at the wicket. It seems to be extremely dry . . . Have I said that before? It’s very similar to what we’ve seen in all of the Test matches. There is some difference though: the cracks are fairly pronounced, and the plates of turf between the cracks are already moving about underfoot. It looks like a pitch that’s ready to play on today, so let’s see how it shapes up in a Test match lasting until a week from now. My guess, from how those plates are shifting, is that the ball will stay low. So on the batting side of it, that places an emphasis on good sound technique, playing very straight, being patient, and on the bowling side of it, attacking the stumps.

The other big story today is Hot Spot. I woke up this morning to see a ‘major breaking news’ story from Australia – that the inventor of the Hot Spot technology was planning to issue a statement alleging that England and Australian Test players were cheating, in effect, by putting silicon tape on the edges of their bats to somehow stop Hot Spot from showing up.

There have been some incidents where the technology has recorded a sound when a batsman’s playing at the ball – a sound that you’d think can only come from the bat snicking the ball – even though the ‘hot spot’ isn’t showing on the edge of the bat at all. So for some reason the technology isn’t as accurate as hoped. Therefore the founder of Hot Spot is trying to come up with some reason why. The story said that he’d spoken to the ICC’s Geoff Allardice, who was coming to England to talk to the teams and officials about it.

The whole thing caused a lot of laughter in our camp. We find it very funny. The player who seems to have been targeted by the allegations is Kevin Pietersen. One point he made was why would he try to conceal the fact of the ball hitting the edge, when it could be just such an edge that saves him from an LBW decision? Of course, he said the story was a load of rubbish.

Which I agree with. Certainly in the Australian team, I know of no player to have spoken about ways of deceiving Hot Spot, and I know of no player who has done anything to deceive Hot Spot.

People draw a long bow sometimes. For example, the finger has been pointed at Extratec protective silicone tape, which is put around cricket bats to protect them. I’ve put Extratec on my bats since the age of 12. The reason? My parents couldn’t afford new bats, so I had to do all I could to make my bat last as long as possible. Extratec costs five or ten dollars, and it protects a bat worth hundreds of dollars. For me now, putting on Extratec is just one of my lifelong habits. It’s no different from wearing inner gloves while batting. When I was a kid, batting gloves cost fifty dollars and inners cost two or three dollars, so my parents would give me one pair of batting gloves and three pairs of inners, to make the expensive items last longer. I’ve stuck with them, not because I need to conserve gloves, but simply because it’s what I feel comfortable with. Extratec is just the same. And I know I’m speaking on behalf of many players around the world.

For all the ludicrous side of the story, we were annoyed that the press ran with it and got it so wrong. Fundamentally, it’s an attack on the honesty of cricketers. Honesty and integrity have taken a few knocks in this series, and we’re all a bit peeved that this adds to the atmosphere, when it has no basis in fact. To put it very simply, if Hot Spot isn’t picking up nicks due to the presence of protective tape on the bats, then that’s a problem with the technology. The approach should be to improve the technology, not blame the tape or cast doubts on the honesty of the batsmen.

Thursday 8 August.
Durham.

We had another optional training session, where the batting group got through a fair bit of work, but some of the bowlers didn’t come down, preferring to rest.

Late last night, we announced the squad of 12 for the Test match, and this morning we narrowed it down to 11 and settled on the batting order.

There are two main changes. In the bowling, we’ve decided to go with Jackson Bird ahead of Mitchell Starc. The selectors believe the conditions will suit Jackson. He’s shown for a long time in first-class cricket that he’s very good when the wicket doesn’t offer a lot of movement. He’s done extremely well in Hobart, playing for Tasmania, where the wicket can offer some assistance, but he’s been equally effective away from home. On pitches that don’t do as much, his record is very good. I think he’ll come in and do very well. He’s been outstanding in his two Test matches for Australia, taking wickets in Melbourne against Sri Lanka, and then being man of the match in the New Year’s Test match in Sydney. He’s probably unlucky not to have figured in more Test cricket, but he sustained a back injury and had to leave the Indian tour to recover, and since then he’s been edged out by the fantastic form of Ryan Harris and Peter Siddle. This time he’ll play alongside both of those guys, and we’ll have an all right-arm attack.

In the batting line-up, we’re doing a straight swap between David Warner and Shane Watson – Davey will open, and Watto will bat at number six. I like David opening: he’s a very positive player at the top of the order and goes out there with great intent. He should combine very well with Chris Rogers. Those two at the top and Usman Khawaja at three means we’re starting with our three left-handers. I expect them all to be facing Graeme Swann, but during the series we’ve seen how Swann relishes turning the ball away from left-handers when they’re fresh at the wicket. It’s very, very hard for them to start their innings while he’s in full flight, turning the ball out of the footmarks.

I had a good chat about it with Shane at training. He’s completely fine, and excited by the opportunity. He has often said he prefers to open, but he understands my reasoning. He also agrees that we can get more overs out of him if he’s batting lower in the order. His overs are vital for the team, and he’s been bowling very well. As a genuine all-rounder, it’s hard for him to open the batting, and I look forward to being able to bowl him without having to think about resting him for his batting late in the English innings.

So here we are. We’ve tampered with this batting order a lot, but always in the interest of getting the right formula for the conditions and the attack we’re facing. I hope we’re getting closer to the right formula. We’re excited and ready to play, and looking forward to playing a similar brand of cricket to what we produced in Manchester – only this time, with a Test match win to show for it.

Friday 9 August.
Durham.

The day dawned beautiful and sunny, and as we made our way from Gateshead to Chester-le-Street, it looked like terrific weather for batting. As it turned out, we bowled, but had a fantastic day all the same. Our bowlers have done us proud yet again.

With the wicket looking very flat and dry, I would have loved to win the toss. It looks like it’s going to be a very good batting wicket today and tomorrow. But I called wrongly again, and Alastair Cook elected to bat. On the upside for us, the weather was cool, with a nice breeze blowing across the ground to assist the swing bowlers. But it was clear, from looking at the pitch, that we would have to bowl a disciplined line and length and stick to our plans.

The English openers were not able to rotate the strike early, so Ryan Harris found himself bowling pretty much exclusively at Cook. Rhino really had his plans dialled in, and it was the fifth over of the game before Cook laid bat on ball. Up to then, Ryan had been probing and probing on that fifth-stump line, and Cook left a lot and played at a few.

At the other end, Jackson Bird slipped right back into the nice rhythm he has had in all of his games for Australia. He bowled at good pace to Joe Root and gave nothing away. We were probably a little bit too wide of the stumps for my liking, though. It looks like a new-ball wicket to me, so making the top-order batsmen play as often as possible is imperative. We weren’t bad this morning, but could have tested them out just a bit more.

It was a slow start for England, and a relatively good one for us. I brought Watto on to replace Birdy, and eventually Root played forward to a good-length ball. We all heard a nick, but the umpire gave him not out. I wouldn’t necessarily choose to risk losing a DRS referral so early in an innings, but Hadds was very confident and so was I, and sure enough the third umpire gave him out. It was Watto’s second wicket for the series, which is a bit of a surprise given how well he has bowled for us.

Trott came in – a danger man for us, as we’ve found in the past, but he hasn’t been making big scores in this series, despite looking in good touch. We placed a heavy leg-side field, sometimes with attacking catchers in unorthodox positions at short mid-wicket and leg slip, to dry up his strength in that area. When so much attention is focused on the on side, sometimes it’s the other one that can be the surprise ball, and Rhino nearly got him when an outside edge flew towards the slips but landed just short of me at second. Then he chipped one off his pads, neatly – and frustratingly – bisecting the two short mid-wickets. It was a tense time.

Not long before lunch, I brought on Nathan Lyon from the Finchale end. The wicket didn’t look like turning that early in the game, and it didn’t, so Nathan had to adjust his line for very different conditions to those he bowled in just a few days ago in Manchester. He put in some tight balls to Trott, and then forced the error – Trott inside-edged one onto his pads, and it popped up square of the wicket. Usman Khawaja moved around and dived full-length to take a good catch.

It was great for ‘Gazza’ Lyon’s confidence to take a wicket. As well as he bowled at Old Trafford, in the end it’s wickets that bowlers are judged by, and judge themselves by. To remove such a key top-order batsman as Trott was a real shot in the arm for Nathan.

Kevin Pietersen came in, and made his intentions known straight-up. First ball, he charged Nathan and mis-hit a lofted on-drive. It lobbed just over wide mid-on. He kept coming at Nathan, and a couple of overs later I took him off, as much to disrupt Pietersen’s plans and dry him up as anything else.

Watto played that role, and all the seamers were chiming in. Cook, at the other end, was surviving and accumulating, but that was about it. He played one nice cover drive for four off Watto, but the boundaries were few and far between. Pietersen called a very sharp run, and if Davey Warner’s throw had hit the stumps Cook would have been out by several metres. The run rate was at or just below two an over. So even as the middle of the day approached, England were not really moving forward. We felt that if we took a couple of wickets, we could suddenly reverse the pressure and put it all on them, as a result of the small number of runs they had put on the board.

Pietersen was the one batsman who was going along fairly confidently, and after about half an hour I brought Nathan back on. England were 2/149, and we had to knuckle down to stop them turning a solid start into a big total.

Self-belief is everything in cricket, and Nathan has come back into the team with much more of it. Fifth ball, he slid one across Pietersen and drew the nick, which Hadds took safely. It was a big psychological breakthrough for Nathan to dismiss the guy who has tried so openly to dominate him – and it was a classic off-spinner’s dismissal.

We had some momentum now, and Jackson Bird capitalised by bowling an absolute beauty at Cook. The left-hander had been leaving ball after ball – and we’d allowed him to – but now Birdy brought one back in and had him plumb LBW, not playing a shot. Great bowling. England would have been disappointed at tea, and even more so in the first over after the break, when Ian Bell also went after Nathan, charging down the wicket and only succeeding in lifting it straight of mid-off. Ryan Harris ran around to take a very good catch.

Nathan continued around the wicket, bowling an outstanding spell – nine overs, eleven runs, and two wickets. It was also good to see a bit of planning come off. We thought going around the wicket would be a good route of attack, given the ball wasn’t spinning much. The angle brought into play the right-handers’ outside edge if the ball didn’t spin, and a potential catch in slips or behind. But if he could get the ball to straighten, he might get an LBW or a catch at bat-pad. That’s all very well to say, but Nathan had to execute it, which he did. He’s been working really hard in the nets, so it’s good to see him get a result in line with that effort.