New Zealand v Australia, First Test, Basin Reserve, Third Day, 14 February 2016

Scorecard

If yesterday’s play was pedestrian, today’s was a pleasant saunter in the sun, fast enough to keep the scenery changing sufficiently to maintain interest. The Basin was perfect: blazing sun, the breeze no more than a rumour. There was even a bushfire on Mt Victoria to make the Australians feel at home.

Voges was last out, for 239, with Australia’s lead 379. Perhaps my judgement of Voges after the second day was a little severe. A test double century—a chanceless one too, the phantom no-ball aside—is always an achievement, even if (to borrow a phrase from Robertson-Glasgow’s Cricket Prints, purchased from the Basin bookstall) he overdid the tranquillity at times. He scored only 26 in the first hour, but once he passed 200—completed in the same way as his century, off a Craig full toss—he became more expansive and hit three sixes. Like Khawaja he could have a significant test career in the afternoon of his playing life. On the other hand, he could retire now with an average of 97 and have his name follow Bradman’s for eternity.

There were four caught-and-bowleds in the innings. I can’t establish whether this is a record, but am sure that I have not seen so many before. Anderson’s to dismiss Lyon was even better than Boult’s against Marsh yesterday. He had to change direction in mid-follow through, a move that necessitated the execution of a half somersault as he scooped up the ball fingers brushing the turf.

New Zealand had to face one over before lunch. Did they consider a lunch watchman? Of course not, but would such a thing be any less illogical than a night watchman? Steve Waugh got it right by banning this pessimistic and fearful notion during his captaincy.

After lunch, Martin Guptill hit three fours to the mid-wicket boundary off Siddle’s first over. As in the first innings, Guptill looked untroubled until he got out. Nathan Lyon gave an exhibition of how an off spinner should bowl on a flat pitch. He was accurate with variations of flight and pace. These induced false shots and running catches to dismiss both Guptill and Latham. The contrast with Craig’s performance was stark.

The fall of Latham brought in McCullum, for the last time at the Basin. We stood to applaud him all the way, the moisture in our eyes sufficient to quench the bushfire. There were a couple of chancy fours, then he was pinned on the back leg by Marsh. Umpire Kettleborough took a long time to raise the finger, apparently as keen as we were to find a loophole in the prosection’s case, but the review showed it to be a sound decision. So we rose again and McCullum acknowledged the ovation. Then he was gone.

The company on the back row of the lower tier of the RA Vance Stand was excellent. If you ever come to the Basin for a test, that’s the place to head for. I particularly enjoyed meeting two Australian visitors. There was Michelle from Sydney; the Basin and Hagley Park are her 36^th and 37^th test venues as a spectator. When I made reference to Jason Gillespie’s famous double hundred at Chittagong, she said “yes, I was there for that one”.

And there was Max from Wagga Wagga, who recently spent Aus$16,000 of his redundancy money on a copy of the rare 1916 edition of Wisden. He pretty well cleaned out the bookstall at tea time, and I was pleased to give him a lift into town at the end of the day rather than see him risk injury staggering down Kent Terrace with his haul. I was only sorry that my Khandallah correspondent was not present to gain an appreciation that I am really at the lower end of the cricket book collectors’ spectrum.

Random Thoughts on the Ashes: Trent Bridge

http://www.espncricinfo.com/the-ashes-2013/engine/current/match/566932.html

Let us peer into the mind of Alistair Cook at around midday on the second day of the opening Ashes Test with Australia 117 for nine in their first innings.

“This is easy…all over in three days…five-nil…letter from the Palace…hire a top hat…limousine down The Mall…”

Enter Ashton Agar, No 11, 19 years old, Test debut, ten first-class matches, not even selected for the touring party. To watch over the following two hours was to look over the author’s shoulder as a famous story was written, a story that will be re-told as long as cricket is played. The first session of the second day was as gripping as any I have seen.

Whether Agar is any cop as a bowler remains to be seen. As a Test batsman he was nerveless, fluent and as replete of technique as a cordon bleu chef. In looking at once so at home, Agar put me in mind of the young David Gower on debut against Pakistan in 1978, pulling Liaquat Ali for four first ball. “Oh what a princely entry” said John Arlott on the radio.

Agar’s was proper batting, not hitting, let alone slogging. He played one late cut that was a thing of beauty, a shot beyond many established Test batsmen. That he missed a century by two runs only added to the romance. To witness a Test partnership record being broken, even on TV, is quite something.

When Agar passed Tino Best’s 96 at Edgbaston last year, Sky UK showed a list of the highest scores by No 11 batsmen in Tests. Two of these, in particular, resonated.

Of the many sessions of Test cricket that have challenged the endurance and mental fortitude of the New Zealand cricket fan, the last of 20 November 2004 and the first of the following day were among the most distressing. When Glenn McGrath joined Jason Gillespie at the Gabba, Australia were 471 for nine, 118 ahead of New Zealand’s first innings total, but not out of sight.

As McGrath and Gillespie carved, hoicked and larruped their way to a partnership of 114—McGrath’s 61 was the only half-century of his distinguished career in any form of cricket—we New Zealand fans had a sense of being in a submarine that was diving to uncharted depths; Gillespie’s bizarre celebratory imitation of a jockey whipping a horse home as he left the field seemed to signal that we had reached the ocean floor of our hopes.

But no. New Zealand were shot out for 76 in the second innings, 38 fewer than the Australian tenth-wicket pair contrived, the margin of defeat an innings and 156. That’s the effect that a last-wicket partnership can have. It’s not just the runs, it’s the stuffing that it takes out of the morale, the humiliation of a heavyweight unable to deliver the knockout blow to a featherweight.

The first time I appreciated this was during the final Test at the Oval in 1966. The first great West Indies team—Sobers, Kanhai, Hunte, Butcher, Hall, Gibbs included—had dominated England all summer, leading three-nil going into this final Test. England sacked MJK Smith as captain after the first Test, and Colin Cowdrey after the fourth. The Old Bald Blighter (as Alan Gibson called him) Brian Close was called up to bring Yorkshire obstinacy to the leadership.

At 166 for seven (103 short of a first-innings lead) damn-all difference it seemed to have made. Then Tom Graveney and wicketkeeper JT Murray both scored centuries as they put on 217 for the eighth wicket. Opening bowlers John Snow and Ken Higgs were together for the last-wicket partnership. Snow was at the start of his career as one of England’s most fluent fast bowlers. Higgs was the only Englishman to play in all five Tests of the series, an indication of the fickle approach of the selectors of that era. Higgs retired to run a boarding house in Blackpool before returning for several seasons with Leicestershire as cricket’s most rotund bowler. They put on 128, two short of the England record set by Foster and Rhodes at the SCG in 1903, and unbettered by an England partnership since.

My memories of that hot August Saturday afternoon are of listening to the commentary of Arlott, Robert Hudson and the Jamaican Roy Lawrence on a transistor radio as I accompanied my Dad as he delivered groceries to customers around Herne Bay. Arlott’s lyrical, romantic interpretation was one of the most pleasing of the many discoveries of that formative summer, the germination of a notion that cricket and words belong together.

It was perhaps the best way for a young enthusiast to follow the progress of the partnership. The scorecard reveals that this was far from the bash-crash approach of McGrath, or the more cultured urgency of Agar and Hughes. Neither Snow nor Higgs scored at much more than two an over. Yet the unfolding improbability of events at the Oval were enthralling, a window on the possibilities of cricket’s infinite variety.

Back in the present, that two different batsmen came within a whisker of stealing the Trent Bridge Test with another odds-defying tenth-wicket stand challenged credulity. For the good of the series it might have better had they made it, as there appears to be a canyon separating the batting quality of the two teams. It was a fine Test to start the Ashes marathon that stretches joyfully before us.