Broad's non-walk just an excuse

While taking a poorly timed bathroom break during the final session of this drama filled first ashes Test, I heard a yell from the lounge room.

My wife is no cricket fan, she was coming home from a night out and as she passed the lounge room she was sure she saw Stuart Broad ‘hit’ a ball to slip.

She called out, and I quote ‘someone in a blue helmet is out’.

How naively wrong she was.

But far from blaming the stone walliWhile taking a poorly timed bathroom break during the final session of this drama filled first Ashes Test, I heard a yell from the lounge room.

My wife is no cricket fan, she was coming home from a night out and as she passed the lounge room she was sure she saw Stuart Broad ‘hit’ a ball to slip.

She called out, and I quote ‘someone in a blue helmet is out’.

How naively wrong she was.

But far from blaming the stone walling of Stuart Broad for the seemingly dire circumstances Australia now find themselves in, there were many moments largely controlled by the visitors that had a greater bearing on the state of this fabulous first Test.

Test match days seldom come harder than the third day of this first Ashes Test.

England thought their hopes would lie with a fabled and proven pair in captain Alistair Cook and Kevin Pietersen, and when they departed early Australian tails were well and truly up.

But it was the much less heralded and indeed sometimes maligned pair of Ian Bell and Stuart Broad that blunted an Australian attack that at various stages thought they had their opponents and thus the games, measure.

A slow low wicket was not giving the pace bowlers a heap to work with, though James Pattinson was seemingly able to draw blood from a very dry stone when he forced Pietersen into a loose shot, which he duly played onto his stumps.

The discipline showed by the Australian bowlers early on day three would do even the toughest of drill sergeants proud.

They gave the English batsmen barely anything to hit, and when a relatively loose delivery manifested the risk of chopping it back onto the stumps a la KP seemed to outweigh the potential benefit of scoring a couple of runs.

But at the same time the English batsmen hung around.

Ian Bell with John Bairstow camped them selves, though it could be said in Bairstow’s case rather perilously, at either end.

Bairstow and Bell could be a dour accountancy firm plying their trade in a run down backstreet of Nottingham.

Instead they were the dour batting pair standing firm in front of an Australian attack that early on looked to have their measure.

John Bairstow may not have done the scoring damage that he nor England would have liked, but in hindsight and the context of this match his occupying of the crease at a time when scoring was nigh on impossible has proved almost as valuable as a decent score.

And what of that Stuart Broad decision (or non walk if you prefer)?

We can talk about that moment as being a turning point in the game, of it being a prime example of a devilish refusal to walk off as an ethical gentleman in this supposedly most genteel of sports.

But walking is not a rule, and cricket surrendered its genteelness some time around ‘Bodyline’.

It has always been the choice of standing batsmen to either give an inch in accepting he was defeated or take the mile by living by the one opinion that ultimately matters, that of the umpire.

Would Ian Chappell or Steve Waugh had walked in a similarly high stakes moment?

Yes being within the rules does not make Broad’s impersonation of Michelangelo’s David, all granite stillness, ethically right.

But it does not make it wrong by the laws of the game.

More importantly there are many other reasons that played just as damaging a role as Broad’s refusal to walk, and most of them Australia had some control over.

For example should we not apportion some blame to the woeful decision by Michael Clarke to use the DRS on an LBW call that was, as David Lloyd put it, ‘not going to hit the next set of stumps’.

Also Broad was on 37 when he was given not out, more than doing his job as a number 8.

Could we not consider the fact that at 6-297, the score when this ‘calamity’ occurred, the game was already beginning to drift out of the reach of the men in baggygreen.

And the painful fact remains that a poor first innings showing by the Australian top order has once again placed the side under enormous pressure coming into the fourth innings of a test match.

Ian Bell is the wicket Australia really needs.

Bell has been magnificent in this innings. Pulling back on the shots when the going was tough and putting away the lose deliveries when the going got soft.

The runs they now have to defend will buoy the English bowlers, and most of these will have come off Bell’s blade.

But similarly the Australian batsmen have a grand (if historically improbable) opportunity, admittedly on a pitch that has been as reluctant to give up runs as the sea is when giving up its secrets.

Day four looms as yet another chance for Australian batsmen like Shane Watson and Ed Cowan to silence their ever-growing number of critics and create an Agar like legend of their own.

And there will never be a better time than now. ng of Stuart Broad for the seemingly dire circumstances Australia now find themselves in, there were many moments largely controlled by the visitors that had a greater bearing on the state of this fabulous first Test.

Test match days seldom come harder than the third day of this first ashes Test.

England thought their hopes would lie with a fabled and proven pair in captain Alistair Cook and Kevin Pietersen, and when they departed early Australian tails were well and truly up.

But it was the much less heralded and indeed sometimes maligned pair of Ian Bell and Stuart Broad that blunted an Australian attack that at various stages thought they had their opponents and thus the games, measure.

A slow low wicket was not giving the pace bowlers a heap to work with, though James Pattinson was seemingly able to draw blood from a very dry stone when he forced Pietersen into a loose shot, which he duly played onto his stumps.

The discipline showed by the Australian bowlers early on day three would do even the toughest of drill sergeants proud.

They gave the English batsmen barely anything to hit, and when a relatively loose delivery manifested the risk of chopping it back onto the stumps a la KP seemed to outweigh the potential benefit of scoring a couple of runs.

But at the same time the English batsmen hung around.

Ian Bell with John Bairstow camped them selves, though it could be said in Bairstow’s case rather perilously, at either end.

Bairstow and Bell could be a dour accountancy firm plying their trade in a run down backstreet of Nottingham. Instead they were the dour batting pair standing firm in front of an Australian attack that early on looked to have their measure.

John Bairstow may not have done the scoring damage that he nor England would have liked, but in hindsight and the context of this match his occupying of the crease at a time when scoring was nigh on impossible has proved almost as valuable as a decent score.

And what of that Stuart Broad decision (or non walk if you prefer)?

We can talk about that moment as being a turning point in the game, of it being a prime example of a devilish refusal to walk off as an ethical gentleman in this supposedly most genteel of sports.

But walking is not a rule, and cricket surrendered its genteelness some time around ‘Bodyline’.

It has always been the choice of standing batsmen to either give an inch in accepting he was defeated or take the mile by living by the one opinion that ultimately matters, that of the umpire.

Would Ian Chappell or Steve Waugh had walked in a similarly high stakes moment?

Yes being within the rules does not make Broad’s impersonation of Michelangelo’s David, all granite stillness, ethically right.

But it does not make it wrong by the laws of the game.

More importantly there are many other reasons that played just as damaging a role as Broad’s refusal to walk, and most of them Australia had some control over.

For example should we not apportion some blame to the woeful decision by Michael Clarke to use the DRS on an LBW call that was, as David Lloyd put it, ‘not going to hit the next set of stumps’.

Also Broad was on 37 when he was given not out, more than doing his job as a number 8.

Could we not consider the fact that at 6-297, the score when this ‘calamity’ occurred, the game was already beginning to drift out of the reach of the men in baggygreen.

And the painful fact remains that a poor first innings showing by the Australian top order has once again placed the side under enormous pressure coming into the fourth innings of a test match.

Ian Bell is the wicket Australia really needs.

Bell has been magnificent in this innings. Pulling back on the shots when the going was tough and putting away the lose deliveries when the going got soft.

The runs they now have to defend will buoy the English bowlers, and most of these will have come off Bell’s blade.

But similarly the Australian batsmen have a grand (if historically improbable) opportunity, admittedly on a pitch that has been as reluctant to give up runs as the sea is when giving up its secrets.

Day four looms as yet another chance for Australian batsmen like Shane Watson and Ed Cowan to silence their ever-growing number of critics and create an Agar like legend of their own.

And there will never be a better time than now.