The Ashes Diary Read online

  Starcy was out for 11, playing a big shot, but the first sign that the umpires were intending to move was when they asked Cook if he wanted to put his spinners on. He said no, of course. I thought this was a bit strange, as, being a batsman, I still felt no sense of danger. Then, suddenly, the umpires told me they were going to stop play.

  I made my feelings clear, as coherently and respectfully as I was capable of doing in the frame of mind I was in. The issue here was that they had given Cook the option to bowl spin, but they hadn’t given it to me. If they’d said, ‘You can declare and bowl your spinners, but not your pacemen,’ I would have seized that option – anything was preferable to stopping play. Nathan Lyon and Steve Smith would have happily taken a crack at the England openers. But as it panned out, there was consultation with the England captain and not the Australian captain, and this was what annoyed me.

  So we’ve come off, extremely frustrated. It did rain, not too long afterwards, but that wasn’t the point. When the umpires made their decision, we believed there were 32 overs remaining in the day. Now we’ve lost them, and only eight overs can be made up tomorrow.

  Still, I have to forget that and carry on. We have every chance of winning, with plenty of runs on the board and 98 overs. There is an increasing amount of up-and-down bounce and certainly some spin in the pitch. I’m certain that if we get a full day’s play, we will get ten wicket opportunities. If we can hang on to our catches and do everything right, we can win this Test match and the Ashes will be well and truly alive.

  Monday 5 August. Manchester. Morning.

  I didn’t need to open my curtains and look out this morning to know that the sun wasn’t out. There’s a particular darkness to the Manchester sky when it’s damp, and by the time I got up and had a look, it wasn’t just cloudy but raining too.

  Still, each day when I’ve looked at the local forecast on my iPhone, it has said it would be raining. And we’ve had almost four full days of cricket. It might rain this morning and then be finished by the time we start. We don’t need a full day to bowl England out. I have every confidence in our bowlers and fielders – and the extra pressure of the scoreboard – that we can do it in two sessions.

  Monday 5 August. Manchester. Evening.

  There have been many frustrations on this tour, but none bigger than this. We really did have a strong position to win this match and stay in the battle to reclaim the Ashes. It wasn’t inevitable that we’d win if we had enough time – but we thought we were good enough if we played our best. Having made such a fantastic start only sharpens the pain.

  That rain I saw this morning left some moisture on the outfield, so when we got to Old Trafford, they had the Super Soppers and other equipment out to try to dry it up. It’s amazing that in a summer when the pitches have been bone-dry to assist England’s plans, it is rain that has foiled us in the end.

  We got on an hour later than scheduled, at 11.30. We still felt that would leave us enough time if we got a good start. The game could go till 7.30 pm and we had been allocated a minimum of 98 overs.

  An unusual aspect of the morning was that we were all out on the field, having a really good warm-up fielding, catching and bowling session, while the English were nowhere to be seen. Later we found out that they had been very slow turning up from their hotel, in the belief that the rain would have delayed the restart for much longer. Apparently their first few batsmen were there, but the rest of the team only turned up a short time before play began.

  We were definitely ready. I’d declared, of course, and we started with Ryan Harris and Mitchell Starc taking the new ball. From the very beginning, the odd ball – maybe one every couple of overs – was behaving unpredictably. Some were taking off and flying through to the wicketkeeper at shoulder height, while others were keeping low from the same length. You couldn’t tell, from looking at the pitch, what was causing this variation, but there were some cracks opening up.

  Both new-ball bowlers were getting some movement in the air, too, and it wasn’t long before Rhino bent one in late to hit Cook in front. We appealed very confidently, and the onfield umpire gave him out. Thinking he’d heard two noises, Cook referred it to the DRS. The replay showed that the toe of his bat had clipped his leg or foot, causing his confusion, but he was out and walking off before the decision even came through.

  As we waited for Jonathan Trott to come out, I stood on the pitch, alone, for several minutes, thinking. I stood in the batsman’s position on the crease, trying to work out exactly where to place the short fielders on the on side. We had to keep the initiative, and to follow our plan with Trott I had to be precise with the unorthodox field placements.

  Starcy was bowling some excellent balls, as usual, including one skidder that very nearly trapped Joe Root in front. But he was also a trifle loose, allowing the Englishmen to leave too many balls. Feeling that we had to keep them playing as often as possible, I brought Watto on from the Pavilion end for a couple of overs. He’s been an invaluable bowler to have when we need to dry up the scoring, and I also think he’s been very unlucky not to have taken more than one wicket in the series.

  England were finding it extremely hard to score, and were 1/13 in the 11th over when we thought we had Trott. He shuffled forward to Ryan Harris and was hit on the pad. The umpire gave him not out, but I asked for a referral. This was a classic case of the benefit of the doubt going to the onfield umpire: to all eyes it looked like the ball was hitting the stumps, and Hawk-Eye had it hitting Trott’s leg stump, but because there wasn’t enough of the ball hitting enough of the stump, the third umpire ruled it umpire’s call. That meant that if Tony Hill had given it out initially, his decision would have stood. And on top of that, Hawk-Eye itself has an acknowledged margin for error. We definitely felt that Trott was out, but the DRS ruling was quite consistent with the way it’s been all series.

  It didn’t have too much of an effect on the game in the immediate sense. In Rhino’s next over, Trott tickled one down the leg side for Hadds to take another good catch in what’s been an outstanding match for him.

  This brought Pietersen to the wicket, and I thought we might produce an error with spin, so I brought on Nathan Lyon from the Pavilion end to replace Watto. But Pietersen was starting off in a more assured way than he had on Saturday. I also brought on Sidds to replace Rhino, who needed a rest after seven overs.

  Sidds got the nick immediately, with the last ball of his first over. He got a beautiful delivery to rise on Joe Root and take the outside edge. The ball had remarkably good carry, not only to fly to my right at second slip, but to deceive me with how fast it was going. I got my hands out of position and the ball hit me on the wrist – and went down. I couldn’t believe it. Again, I make no excuses. It was an unforgivable error at this stage of the game. As captain, I have to lead by example in catching as much as in batting. I was down on myself, and felt gutted for Sidds. I crossed paths with him at the end of the over and said, ‘Sorry, mate.’ There can’t be many worse feelings on the cricket field than dropping a catch when the bowler works as hard for his wickets as Peter Siddle does.

  At this stage, though, chances to take wickets were coming up regularly. Pietersen charged at Nathan Lyon, missed, and was lucky the ball turned into his pads. Next over, he played and nicked one off Sidds. There was a loud woody noise, and Hadds went straight up, though the bowler himself didn’t react for a moment or two. Tony Hill gave Pietersen out. The batsman referred it, and lost. We had them three down, and they had no referrals left. The boys were getting very excited. It was typical of Sidds to bounce back so quickly after the disappointment of my dropped catch. He was all smiles, which made me feel a little better.

  For the last over before lunch, I decided to have a bowl myself. The wicket was turning a bit, and that up-and-down bounce was continuing. As they hadn’t seen me bowl all series, I hoped Root and Bell might be tempted into a mistake. I warmed up for several minutes, and felt confident that my back would stand up to it. As i
t turned out, nothing much happened in my over. Ian Bell slightly miscued a drive that went in the air close to Steve Smith at short cover, but nothing else of note. I was pleased to see I’m not completely past it as a bowler!

  The weather, up to lunch, didn’t look bad at all. The clouds were high and not looking too dark. But the forecasts were still gloomy, so it was disappointing to be going off for lunch when the weather was dry and the light was good. But the playing conditions are what they are, and they stipulated that lunch had to be taken at 1.00 pm, even though we had only bowled 20 overs in the first session.

  During the break, a shower passed through. It left some moisture on the ground, delaying the restart by 20 minutes. When we got on again, Sidds was dangerous, sliding the first ball past Ian Bell’s edge and then getting one to jump, hitting him on the thumb. Bell called for a trainer, and a few of England’s support staff came out. Some of the boys thought this was overkill, but it was a sign of what we had to expect through the afternoon.

  At any rate, it was all academic. The rain came down then, and despite a few breaks and moments of hope through the afternoon, we never got back on. The umpires came in and said to me, in front of most of the team, ‘Even if the rain stops right now – and the radar indicates that it won’t, there’s plenty more coming – if we get back on the field, we will only have 12 overs of play.’ In my mind, I was prepared to do anything – stay until midnight if need be – to get on the field, but I had to accept the reality the umpires were presenting. The best-case scenario was 12 overs, which was not enough. The match was abandoned, and the Ashes were retained by England, at 4.39 pm.

  Everyone in the squad, from the players through to the support staff, is extremely disappointed and frustrated. Even the Doc, Peter Brukner, who’s walking around in the pink blazer for being our ‘one-percenters’ champion in this match. All in all, we lost something like 110 overs from the match to rain, and it’s hard to win a Test match when that happens on the last two days. That said, I’m happy with the position we were in and pleased that the Test match had reached the stage where only one team could have won it, and that was us. It wasn’t inevitable, and we had seven more wickets to take, but I’m convinced that if not for the rain we would be 1–2 down going to Durham, with all the momentum on our side.

  But when you go 0–2 down in a series, you don’t leave yourself with any margin for things like this to happen. I don’t want to take anything away from England. They retained the Ashes by winning at Trent Bridge and Lord’s. Our first-innings batting on both occasions was our major weakness, and I can offer no excuses there. Things definitely didn’t go to plan.

  Well, I certainly didn’t expect to be writing this in my diary at this stage of the tour. But credit to the boys for showing some of their best work here in Manchester. At the post-match press conference, I was asked about whether this was a turning point for us and what it meant for the Ashes series in Australia this summer. I hope it means everything! But I can’t think that far ahead. We have two hard Test matches ahead of us here. That’s what I’m focusing on. We can take this momentum from Manchester and turn it into something really special, but on the other hand, if we execute badly, we can hand the initiative back to England.

  That’s the full reach of my horizon now, getting our team to perform consistently closer to its potential in the next three weeks.

  The Aussie summer’s still a long, long way off.

  7

  THE FOURTH TEST MATCH

  Tuesday 6 August. Manchester to Durham.

  Today’s a quiet travel day for us. As I write this, we’re on a five-hour bus ride from Manchester to Durham, right up in the north-east of the country. We don’t actually stay or play in the town of Durham: we stay at Gateshead, which is the southern part of Newcastle, and we play at the town of Chester-le-Street, further south of Newcastle on the way to Durham. But it’s known as the Durham Test match because Chester-le-Street is the ground of the Durham County Cricket Club. They’re the newest club in the county championship, having been around for about 20 years, and this will be the first Ashes Test match at their ground. So we’re going to be a part of history.

  The boys are pretty sedate: sleeping, talking, watching movies, staring out the window. When we get there, we’ll do our normal light recovery and rehab after a solid Test match.

  There’s some sunshine outside, which is nice, but the forecast for the next week up in the north-east isn’t great.

  Let’s hope the weather defies the predictions, as usual!

  Wednesday 7 August. Durham.

  Our training session at Chester-le-Street was optional, but almost everyone in the squad came down. Guys were able to work on particular parts of their game or their fitness. For me, that meant no batting – I didn’t pick up a cricket bat at all. With Alex, I had some treatment and did walking, running and cardio work. It’s all a matter of flushing my legs out after spending a lot of time on the field at Old Trafford, as well as getting my mind right for what is a very quick turnaround between matches.

  Like everyone else, I went through my rituals of unpacking my gear and laying it all out in the changing room. I went out to the middle and took a look at the wicket. It seems to be extremely dry . . . Have I said that before? It’s very similar to what we’ve seen in all of the Test matches. There is some difference though: the cracks are fairly pronounced, and the plates of turf between the cracks are already moving about underfoot. It looks like a pitch that’s ready to play on today, so let’s see how it shapes up in a Test match lasting until a week from now. My guess, from how those plates are shifting, is that the ball will stay low. So on the batting side of it, that places an emphasis on good sound technique, playing very straight, being patient, and on the bowling side of it, attacking the stumps.

  The other big story today is Hot Spot. I woke up this morning to see a ‘major breaking news’ story from Australia – that the inventor of the Hot Spot technology was planning to issue a statement alleging that England and Australian Test players were cheating, in effect, by putting silicon tape on the edges of their bats to somehow stop Hot Spot from showing up.

  There have been some incidents where the technology has recorded a sound when a batsman’s playing at the ball – a sound that you’d think can only come from the bat snicking the ball – even though the ‘hot spot’ isn’t showing on the edge of the bat at all. So for some reason the technology isn’t as accurate as hoped. Therefore the founder of Hot Spot is trying to come up with some reason why. The story said that he’d spoken to the ICC’s Geoff Allardice, who was coming to England to talk to the teams and officials about it.

  The whole thing caused a lot of laughter in our camp. We find it very funny. The player who seems to have been targeted by the allegations is Kevin Pietersen. One point he made was why would he try to conceal the fact of the ball hitting the edge, when it could be just such an edge that saves him from an LBW decision? Of course, he said the story was a load of rubbish.

  Which I agree with. Certainly in the Australian team, I know of no player to have spoken about ways of deceiving Hot Spot, and I know of no player who has done anything to deceive Hot Spot.

  People draw a long bow sometimes. For example, the finger has been pointed at Extratec protective silicone tape, which is put around cricket bats to protect them. I’ve put Extratec on my bats since the age of 12. The reason? My parents couldn’t afford new bats, so I had to do all I could to make my bat last as long as possible. Extratec costs five or ten dollars, and it protects a bat worth hundreds of dollars. For me now, putting on Extratec is just one of my lifelong habits. It’s no different from wearing inner gloves while batting. When I was a kid, batting gloves cost fifty dollars and inners cost two or three dollars, so my parents would give me one pair of batting gloves and three pairs of inners, to make the expensive items last longer. I’ve stuck with them, not because I need to conserve gloves, but simply because it’s what I feel comfortable with. Extratec is just the same.
And I know I’m speaking on behalf of many players around the world.

  For all the ludicrous side of the story, we were annoyed that the press ran with it and got it so wrong. Fundamentally, it’s an attack on the honesty of cricketers. Honesty and integrity have taken a few knocks in this series, and we’re all a bit peeved that this adds to the atmosphere, when it has no basis in fact. To put it very simply, if Hot Spot isn’t picking up nicks due to the presence of protective tape on the bats, then that’s a problem with the technology. The approach should be to improve the technology, not blame the tape or cast doubts on the honesty of the batsmen.

  Thursday 8 August. Durham.

  We had another optional training session, where the batting group got through a fair bit of work, but some of the bowlers didn’t come down, preferring to rest.

  Late last night, we announced the squad of 12 for the Test match, and this morning we narrowed it down to 11 and settled on the batting order.

  There are two main changes. In the bowling, we’ve decided to go with Jackson Bird ahead of Mitchell Starc. The selectors believe the conditions will suit Jackson. He’s shown for a long time in first-class cricket that he’s very good when the wicket doesn’t offer a lot of movement. He’s done extremely well in Hobart, playing for Tasmania, where the wicket can offer some assistance, but he’s been equally effective away from home. On pitches that don’t do as much, his record is very good. I think he’ll come in and do very well. He’s been outstanding in his two Test matches for Australia, taking wickets in Melbourne against Sri Lanka, and then being man of the match in the New Year’s Test match in Sydney. He’s probably unlucky not to have figured in more Test cricket, but he sustained a back injury and had to leave the Indian tour to recover, and since then he’s been edged out by the fantastic form of Ryan Harris and Peter Siddle. This time he’ll play alongside both of those guys, and we’ll have an all right-arm attack.