Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Off to Trent Bridge


I think it’s fair to say that what you see depends on what you’re looking for, particularly when it comes to figuring out the significance of what’s just gone down within the line of sight.

When the Australian cricket team takes the field I’m looking for a 5-0 result from a team that’s playing at 100%. Not that I expect to see it too often when we’re playing a top rated side in their home conditions, but that’s what I’m looking for, because it probably means there’s not much that could have been done better.

On that basis, of course, Hughesy’s hardly likely to describe the 2005 Ashes series as one of the greatest ever. It’s different if you’re looking at it from a different perspective, of course, and a series that goes down to the wire will certainly keep the spectators engaged for the duration.

Closely fought series are definitely worth watching, but, unfortunately, the dialectical dynamics of sport mean they don’t occur too often.

The way I look at these things (and here I’m setting up a framework that I can use to analyse what goes down over the next six and a half weeks) fairly early on in a two team event one side gains an ascendancy and the other side responds. Sometimes they respond strongly enough to gain the ascendancy, in which case it’s up to the other side to wrest it back, and that sort of pendulum swing continues until one side is no longer capable of turning the tide, and at that point you get a blow out in the score line.

To me, the great thing about Test cricket is the fact that you’ve got five days to act out that sequence of challenge and response.

Let’s talk hypotheticals for a minute.

Based on my par score scenario (Day One, batting side on 8 for round about 300), which I see as even stevens it’s up to the bowling side to wrap things up for something in the vicinity of 350, after which they get their turn at the crease and hopefully, given a decent batting wicket and the best of the conditions, end up somewhere around 4 for 250 at the end of Day Two).

At that point we’re still level pegging at the end of the day, but you’re still going to have those pendulum swings as the batting side builds a partnership and the bowling side gets a wicket.

By the end of Day Three in this scenario, your side that batted first should be back in, attempting to reel in a deficit of around a hundred, and would hopefully have accomplished that for the loss of one or two wickets, which means they’ve got Day Four to accumulate a target and Day Five to ensure the other side doesn’t reach it.

Ideally the victory target is reached inside the last half hour of Day Five and whoever bats Eleven on the batting side is at the crease.

Things rarely fall out that way, of course, but take that scenario as a basis, repeat five times and you’re going to have a cracker of a series because even if the eventual score line reads 5-0 every game has gone the distance, and both sides have been right in it until the death.

Anyway, that’s Hughesy’s definition of a close series, and if you’re looking at a score line that reads two-all as you go into Game Five I’m willing to concede that you’re probably looking at one of the greatest series ever.

Maybe I’ve been spoiled because the first Test series I remember consciously following was that great series between Australia and the West Indies in 1960-61 that started with the Tied Test and included the nail-biting draw in Adelaide as Slasher Mackay and Lindsay Kline held out against Wes Hall and Lance Gibbs.

I don’t recall too many series over the subsequent fifty years that went close to matching it.

With back to back Ashes series kicking off tonight, somewhere during the next day or two we’ll have one side gaining the ascendancy, and, hopefully, from my point of view, it’ll be Australia.

At this point it’s time for Hughesy’s favourite metaphor when it comes to these situations. It’s like a loose set of floorboards where the nails that secure things in place keep popping their heads up, and whoever’s standing on top of them bangs them back down. Eventually the nails will either stop popping back up or they’ll all come loose and the bloke with the hammer will fall through the cracks.

When I look at 2005, I see Australia as the bloke standing on the floor after the First Test, with a whole pile of nails springing out of their nail holes on the first morning of the Second, which put England on a roll that we weren’t able to counter, though it was a very close run thing.

Given the current state of affairs you might be disinclined to make a prediction, but I think things are going to be very close, which will probably mean a 5-0 score line to the home side in six and a half weeks’ time, but I’m reasonably upbeat.

I like Lehmann as coach, and I think we’ll see a much more focussed side than we’ve seen in recent series.

I like Clarke as an innovative captain, and I suspect we’ll see something like the short midwicket Alan Border regularly set in place against Graham Gooch in 1989. That, and the suggestion that Terry Alderman bowled out-swingers, did a lot to secure a famous victory in that series.

You can see the mind games already in the decision not to announce the actual side until the morning of the game. I liked that yesterday, and I like it even more when I read articles like this one.

Back to that 1989 field placing, the short midwicket had Gooch thinking something along the lines of “What are they doing? I don’t hit the ball in the air through there. Or do I?” The uncertainty that came with Or do I? set things up so Alderman, who, remember was supposed to be swinging the ball, could regularly clean up England’s premier bat with balls that went more or less gun barrel straight.

You can expect something along these lines from Clarke through this series if comments made here are anything to go by.

I like Rogers as opener, and, according to this article he brings a little bit more than a heap of runs and current form to the side. There’s that eternal question of how the English bowler gets the Dukes ball to swing when we don’t. Rogers, interestingly, may be part of the solution to what has been a thorny problem.

And, on that basis, I like the fact that we’ve got half a dozen fully fit bowlers on tour seemingly ready to fire.

I expect Lyon to do surprisingly well, and someone out of Hughes, Khawaja, Smith and Warner to nail down a secure place in the Australian middle order for the next couple of years, and don’t dismiss Cowan or Hughes as a potential Three if either is tried in that position.

Over the next six and a half weeks there are a lot of players in the Australian side with a lot to play for and a coach who has, I think, the potential to ensure a couple of them really deliver. That might not be enough to bring back the urn after The Oval, but time will, as they say, tell.

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