Geoff Lemon's Ashes Diary: Agar fairy tale ends, the real world intrudes

As a kid, I never trusted fairy-tale endings. After the euphoria of Ashton Agar’s Little Golden Book special, the third day at Trent Bridge has reinforced why.

My childhood objection wasn’t that fictional miracles occurred with an inherently contradictory consistency, though I did long to see the response to a Schwarzenegger movie where Arnie stormed a heavily armed compound, was immediately shot, and bled to death in the opening scene, final credits rolling before the titles had begun.

I had a sufficient feel for probability and narrative to see that unlikely triumphs were possible, and the rare occasions when they occurred made more interesting stories than the frequent times they didn’t.

No, the problem for me was the matter of where the stories ended. “Happily ever after” gave off the suspiciously earthy aroma of horse-apples, the kind of thing adults would say to fob off a question. Because I said so. Ask Mrs Blackman. Maybe when we get home.

I knew the stories didn’t have endings. The world didn’t have endings. For each person who was put in the ground, Earth kept spinning without them. For each fade to black in the cinema, each sunset drive or final bout of laughter, those characters had a next minute, a next day, a next meal.

They cracked the window for a cigarette. They changed their underwear and scraped gunk from under their fingernails. Soon the sun was gone, the night got cold. There was nothing on the radio. They stopped somewhere for petrol, ate at a roadside diner in a fluorescent glare that sucked the light from their eyes.

And those in old-school fairy tales were no more immune than those cranking up the tape deck on their long slide down an ’80s American highway. What did “happily ever after” mean, anyway? Did they have nine kids? Start a swingers night? Cruise the oceans, delightedly childless on their royal yacht?

Did the youthful fire that drew princes up towers, that excited the jealous rage of stepmothers and witches, start to burn low? (How quickly some of the bright young things of my own vintage turned to paunch and follicle recession, that same dying of the flame.)

Did love fade with looks? Did they run out of things to say? Did the silences grow awkward, the gestures colder, their nights end up turned away from one another in beds bisected by frigid corridors? Who died first?

The nature of the true world is that nothing stops. Something always had to happen next. When the story is presented in a perfect arc, from peace to trouble to triumph, then we know that it must be an excision from a greater whole.

The point of this reflection is that yesterday was one such excision. Perhaps that is as it should be. Perhaps in years to come that day will be remembered, while the shapes of the match around it will grow increasingly dim, cars disappearing at the far ends of highways as the misshapen planet of the Panavision logo ascends the sky.

When Ashton Agar’s debut innings of 98 was done, records garlanded around its neck like voodoo charms, that was all anyone cared about.

No-one noticed that it finished in the middle session, or that England had taken a two-down lead by stumps; it was Australia’s day. Fans cheered and sang the national anthem as the players walked off. The protagonist emerged from the arena, boarded the bus and drove off off into Nottingham’s attempt at a sunset.

But in the real world, especially mid-Test match, there is always a next day. Australia had done well to keep things tight over the first two. The match was beautifully balanced. It was down to who could exert greater influence.

Quickly, a day that had been all golden sunshine and the blessed touch of the near impossible passed into one of high cloud and the fiercely regular. Alistair Cook is not a man to entertain the fantastic. Kevin Pietersen can, but has also developed his dour side, as if preparing for the days of grimacing at passing children from a rocking chair.

From the first ball we were back to Test cricket’s own approximation of the arm wrestle. The pitch looked slow, the batsmen watchful. Australia’s bowlers were going to have to commit to a day of patience.

That first pair batted out 14 overs, adding 36, then Pietersen cast reticence aside with an unorthodox drive into his own stumps. Cook fell moments later, giving Agar the first of the wickets for which he’d originally been engaged before so memorably pursuing a sideline.

But it didn’t presage a second act of Agar the Incredible’s Magic Show. It was 21 overs of hard work until he got Johnny Bairstow, and 13 more until Matt Prior slapped Peter Siddle to cover.

By then the England lead had grown to 153, and however hard Australia had toiled to stay in the match, it began to slip. Anything over 200 was going to be dicey for a brittle order batting last: contingency planning for the next innings couldn’t include another Agar special.

In such a long-view game, there can be startlingly specific moments that make it clear one side has gained the ascendancy. The partnership between Agar and Phil Hughes was brilliant for Australia, but only got them back on level footing. England’s stand between Ian Bell and Stuart Broad was taking them ahead.

They were already 232 up, with Australia desperately needing to kill the innings there, when that moment of ascendancy came. Broad’s not-out to a clear slip catch was one of the most confounding moments it has been my cricketing misfortune to see. There was no appeal, only a celebration. Michael Clarke is unfailingly courteous to umpires, but this wasn’t a case that required a question.

Incredibly, it was ruled not out. Two balls later, Bell edged Siddle to be dropped by Brad Haddin. The English crowd, to that point buoyant, elevated to rampant. The mood had shifted, and Australia’s prospects in this match were all but done.

I will leave to another day the interminable revisit of the DRS debate, which will no doubt spread like fungal toenail growth through the comment boards of this site and a thousand others.

Suffice to say that the video review system was brought in to eliminate clearly wrong decisions, and clearly has not. DRS should not be used by captains to punt on line-ball LBWs. It should be used by third umpires at their own initiative to overrule instantly visible errors.

As we ponder what is to come on the fourth and possibly final day, we have been returned with little ceremony to the prosaic. The fairy tale, as my younger suspicious self had marked before his time, is not of this world.

Golden afternoon sun softens and fades. Youthful smiles grow worn. The real world, that great inexorable machine fuelled by dust and dirt and grease and blood, rolls on, as it has always done and as it will always do.

And so we move with it. But, in circular fashion, that is exactly why we do the thing that makes it easier to bear. We find a story, and mark its crucial points. Carve it out. Preserve it. Put it on display.

In its confines are everything we wish we could believe; held up against the mess around us, its shape will never look more clear.

Watch Geoff’s Ashes Diary video, an interview with Roar writer Alec Swann, brother of Graeme