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Australia's era of batting weakness: Edgbaston failure (Part 2)

Ricky Ponting was always booed by opposition fans for his batting, not his captaincy. (AAP Image/Julian Smith)
Roar Guru
27th July, 2016
8

Australia’s first communal failure came in the next Test at Edgbaston. Australia won the toss and batted.

Here is Part 1 of the series.

It won the first rain-affected day. But the next day was an English seamers day. Every Australian batsman failed.

Shane Watson’s wicket was the first one to fall on day two. He had dominated his first day of Ashes cricket, and started his union with Simon Katich in style. Katich had fallen almost accidentally to Graeme Swann on day one.

Now Watson was batting with the captain who had always believed in him, Ricky Ponting. The second day dawned bright.

Watson was on 62. But Graham Onions landed him in the poo with his very first ball. It cut back on a good length and hit him on the pad. LBW. The first LBW against England, the team that would really make his LBW weakness a problem.

That’s without even mentioning that the Australian public would discover that they didn’t want a cricketer of 62 and in the poo to replace the South African Slayer.

Edgbaston is really England’s version of the Gabba. If England’s players, particularly the bowlers, got to choose where they played the first Test of the Ashes, it would probably be at Edgbaston.

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This allowed them to meet the opposition with English hostility. Meet them with English verbals. Edgbaston has always seemed louder than any other English ground. They don’t need any invitation.

But Onions sent them into frenzy with the dismissal of Michael Hussey for a golden duck.

Australia’s comfort of yesterday was already long gone. Now the two best batsmen, Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke, needed to steady the ship.

Andrew Strauss gave the other end to Andrew Flintoff. But it wasn’t that Flintoff; it was, eh, Flintoff. However, the point was England were attacking. Yet so was Ponting.

He had spent his entire prime doing that. He was in the last series of that prime, but he was in his prime. Ponting scored 38 off 47 before Onions dismissed him with a quick bouncer as he attempted to hook. At that time, Ponting was the best hooker in the game. That’s how well Onions was bowling.

James Anderson then came on in the conditions that best suited him to replace Flintoff. He soon found the movement Onions had been bowling with all morning. Despite two scares, a dropped catch and a massive LBW shout, Clarke survived with Marcus North to outlast Onions.

But Anderson didn’t need Stuart Broad bowling well at the other end to take the wickets that he took.

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In the three overs from his end after Onions was taken out of the attack, Anderson finished off England’s session with four gorgeous swinging dismissals: Clarke, North, Johnson and Manou. Lunch ended the carnage with Australia on 8-203 after having 7-77 in the session.

After lunch, something of a comeback ensured with what was left of the Australian tail, aided by poor fielding. Nathan Hauritz, Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus ensured Australia scrambled to 263.

That would be the template for Australia’s worst day with the bat for seven years. Carnage. After carnage, sometimes there would be enough of a match left to stage a comeback. More often than not, there wouldn’t be, or there was but Australia weren’t capable of making it.

Australia saved the Edgbaston Test, and Australia’s batsmen totally dominated a Flintoff-less English attack at Headingley. Ponting launched one of the best counter attacks of his career, and Watson joined him with another aggressive half-century of his own.

On the second day, Clarke’s 93 and 110 finished off an innings of 425 at well over four runs an over. England had received another chastening reminder that more bowlers, even in Flintoff’s absence, didn’t automatically mean a better performance. It was a convincing Australian win on that most Australian of English grounds.

The Leigh Matthews formula for determining when a team is safe is when the number of goals a team is leading by is higher than the number of minutes left. Needing 546 on the final two-and-a-bit days to win the Ashes should be the cricketing equivalent of trailing in a grand final by ten goals with nine minutes and 59 seconds left on the clock.

However, it didn’t feel like that. Even when two wickets fell on the fourth day, the clock was stuck on ten minutes flat. As long as Ricky Ponting was at the crease, the clock would remain stuck.

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There was no more captaincy left for Ponting to do in the series. He could single-mindedly focus on batting. England had never felt scared about his captaincy. The boos were never because they feared his captaincy. The boos were for his batting.

They didn’t boo him at The Oval, but the English fans had booed him at every other ground.

It was a Ponting that didn’t belong to the struggling batsman of his last Test years. It was a Ponting that belonged in the 2005 Ashes. It was a Ponting that belonged with the greats that England had beaten in 2005.

The greats that could only be beaten by only one English side. It was the Ricky Ponting of 2005 Old Trafford Day Five. Everyone knew it.

It was written on the face of every English spectator at The Oval. It was in the voices of every English commentator. It was in the tension of the English players as Ponting’s partnership with Michael Hussey grew.

I had gone to bed when Clarke and Haddin were batting at Lord’s. I had felt the clock was at nine minutes and 59 seconds. Not this time. This time I felt it was stuck at ten minutes flat.

This was what Ricky Ponting’s batting in his prime could make you feel. History said Australia couldn’t make the runs. Logic said Australia couldn’t make the runs. At his best Ponting batted as though he believed he could make history and logic get stuffed, probably because he spent much of his career in a team that could do that.

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Probably because he spent much of his career as a player who could do that. He wasn’t in a team that could do that anymore, but he was still a player who could do that.

Australia was more than 300 runs behind, but everyone was still watching. That was how great Ricky Ponting was as a batsman. If he pulled this off, it would be the best ‘stuff you’ of all time.

But, Andrew Flintoff.

Flintoff had carved through that great Australian side on the fourth day of the 2005 Oval decider. But Flintoff was no longer that Flintoff. That version reappeared only occasionally in spurts.

I was certain there would be at least one last Flintoff moment. A moment that would activate the English footballer fan in every English spectator present. A moment that would make the passage of play that followed it as tough a challenge as a batsman might face in Test cricket.

I had nothing against Michael Hussey. He was playing the innings that would save his Test career. But I was desperately hoping that the Flintoff moment, if it came, would happen to him and not Ponting. Ponting was the best qualified Australian batsman to keep the clock at ten minutes as England rode the crest of the Flintoff wave.

But when Hussey called a poor run and Ponting ball-watched, the Flintoff moment claimed Ponting. The instant the out verdict came on the big screen was when the clock moved from ten minutes to nine minutes, 59 seconds. I didn’t watch another ball of the Test. Time could only move quickly now.

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I only found out the final score in the morning.

348 all out.

Ricky Ponting had been Australia’s last chance because, with all the attention on the non-selection of Nathan Hauritz, Australia’s batsmen failed on the second afternoon.

Stuart Broad, who had been ordinary at Cardiff and Lord’s, needled by Australia at Edgbaston, the best of a bad lot by a long way at Headingley, was the unlikely Ashes star.

It was the performance that said he was ready to take over the mantle as the English bowler who would bowl the spells that won Ashes matches.

Graeme Swann’s effectiveness against Australia’s left handers was shown when he dismissed an unlucky Marcus North, and removed Simon Katich at the very point when the innings was clinging onto his chest hairs for dear life.

Future Ashes series would show left-handers struggling against Swann. James Anderson’s Ashes series in which he made his name wasn’t this one, but it showed his effectiveness in seamer-friendly conditions with a Duke Ball. Both Harmison and Flintoff belonged to the past after The Oval, but a fourth bowler could be found from somewhere.

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Like Onions at Edgbaston, he would find a way to be effective.

Australia’s batsmen weren’t bad in those Ashes. But they weren’t as communally great as their predecessors were, 2005 Ashes apart. It was one of the reasons Australia left the UK in 2009 without the little urn.

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