Captain’s log: Smith has final say
OPINION: In a peculiar departure, great slabs of the ad lib history of this test match were written not by the winners, but by losers whose defeat was not even particularly honourable in the end.
Turn, for instance, to the end of day four. With England improbably back in the contest, sledging - the Australian contagion in Brisbane - had morphed into Jimmy Anderson’s and Stuart Broad’s tactically sophisticated examination of Steve Smith’s falibilities, and he had failed it.
Anderson was happy to say so, and the camp followers to take it from there. The charge sheet against Smith was long: Smith was bumbling at DRS, fumbling in the field, anxious and petulant, in short a right prat and an emerging liability in Australia’s Ashes cause.
So here’s a little revisionist history, written not on the winner’s account, but as might be apprehended by them. I say might, because winning needs no explanation, and Smith said so in as many words in the post-match formalities.
Re his decision not to enforce the follow-on on day three: Australia almost always decline.This time, they were caught by an event as random as the lightning. The movement that night startled even Anderson and Broad, and was not nearly so evident at any other time in the match. There were some who wondered if Smith would regret his choice - including, as it happened, Smith himself - but noone who was adamant that it would cost four wickets and can say with pious hand on heart I told you so.
Anderson was proud that in the face of England’s aggravation, Smith had made only a mortal’s scores. Yes - and no. In the second innings, he was caught in the landslide, but his first innings of 40 was bettered in the match only by two Englishmen, one a bowler who made 41. What England would give for a batsman as rattled and rotten as Smith. It was a bowler’s match, and why Shaun Marsh for his stoic’s 141 not out was properly the man of the match.
Then there were the dramatic ephemera in the field on the fourth night as England rose from its deathbed. Yes, Smith blew two two referrals, but before that, he had succeeded with another, braver than both, on Nathan Lyon’s account to dislodge Alastair Cook. This was glossed over because it didn’t fit the template. Yes, he dropped a catch, but only in an armchair was it a sitter.
This must all be set against astute bowling changes that kept all three seamers fresh and three times produced wickets in the next over, acts formerly known as masterstrokes, and an otherwise firm command of the game. Most of all, it must be set against the fact that Australia again won by a wide margin, and leads an Ashes series
To the winner, the spoils: Smith has no more explaining to do, for at least a fortnight.
2-0, and can expect to win again, and that England had always thought this would be their best chance, and it is gone.
So here’s an alternate way of framing the second test, rather than as the balance of trade between the two captains.Turn not to the end of the fourth day, and its residual heat, but to the dawn of the fifth and remember it: the picture perfect setting, the anticipation, the nervous excitement, the speculation about which of two less-than-perfect teams would keep their nerve best, the thrill and the dread, even the Barmy Army going through its scales. The way a game feels on such a threshold is unique to test cricket, the very best of good things worth waiting for.
Then remember the way Australia played so masterfully to their strength, their one certain advantage over England, four brilliant bowlers who each took the tune in his turn and together consummated in less than 90 minutes a victory that only the night before they might have feared would not be theirs at all, let alone so decisively.
Joe Root, dismissed in the third over, kicked at the boundary rope as he left. It might have been the cat. He knew. England have good bowlers, but Australia have more. It is the edge that is scoring the series. To the winner, the spoils: Smith has no more explaining to do, for at least a fortnight.
Root has no alibis. In the spirit of the occasion, we will accept that his decision to bowl first on day one - more counter-intuitive even than Smith’s choice not to followon - was flexing, not flinching. Nonetheless, he goes to Perth with the weight of the world on his shoulders, which is neither historically nor geographically surprising down under. That chapter does not need rewriting.