Ashes 2011 by Gideon Haigh

Author:Gideon Haigh
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978 1 84513 688 8
Publisher: Aurum Press
Published: 2011-02-07T16:00:00+00:00

16 DECEMBER 2010

Day 1

Close of play: England 1st innings 29–0

(AJ Strauss 12*, AN Cook 17*, 12 overs)

The most-discussed twenty-two yards of turf in Australia and the country's most-debated home line-up in years today both promised more than they delivered in the Third Test at Perth: on both counts, Australia was the loser.

Loaded to the gunwales with pace bowling in the expectation of a pitch in the old WACA tradition, Australia were sent in and scuttled by an England team that made up for what the pitch did not actually provide by disciplined line and smart catching.

As in the Second Test, Australia's middle and lower order did its best. Having accumulated 243 through its last seven wickets at Adelaide, the team found 232 among its last six here. The trouble was that the starting point was barely improved. Two for three at Adelaide was 36 for four here. At the close of the first day in Adelaide, England were 244 in arrears with all their wickets intact; here the difference is 239. Good teams can recover from such early misadventures; this is not a good team, or at least is not playing like one at present.

'The finest, most fragile area of grass known to sports,' says Joseph O'Neill of cricket pitches in his acclaimed novel Netherland. 'For all its apparent artificiality,' he notes, 'cricket is a game in nature.' Studying this pitch and the reactions to it in the prelude to the Third Test has, indeed, been a little like watching a wildlife documentary.

Phil Hughes summed up initial responses when he asked if curator Cam Sutherland would be giving it another cut; West Australian coach Mickey Arthur countered that visitors should not approach it through green-tinted spectacles. From day to day, according to watering, weather, fancy and folklore, the surface seemed to be greening and yellowing before onlookers' eyes.

It certainly had some eye-catching qualities. Although the pitch is the same as was used for the Test against the West Indies last year, the grass is of a finer quality than usual. But recent heatwave conditions have baked it hard, and the promise of bounce was hard to resist. The additional consideration was that, with their high clay content, pitches here are inclined to crack, sometimes dramatically, like crazy paving. During a 194-over fiasco here in 1993, the cracks were so wide that batsmen seemed to disappear down them; a pitch earlier this season in a state Second XI game looked like the junction of tectonic plates. Yet they caused no concern whatever when South Africa successfully overhauled 414 in the fourth innings two years ago.

Both teams invested accordingly. Australia became the Team With No Beer by excluding their specialist left-arm spinner; England picked Chris Tremlett ahead of Tim Bresnan for his additional 8 inches of height and 5mph of speed, then committed themselves by inserting their opponents. It paid off quickly.

The last ball of Anderson's first over glanced Watson's thigh pad on the way to fine leg, only for Prior to

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