BOLD BELL SHOWS NO FEAR OF THE CHASE

Aggression was best way to win

WHAT, us worry? Never in doubt. Never a problem. As Joe Root clipped the winning runs off Mitchell Marsh, the third Ashes Test was secured, with eight wickets, seven full sessions and more than two days remaining.

In years to come, one glance at the scoreboard will suggest England coasted to victory here. Don’t you believe it.

With the benefit of hindsight, yes, England did win very convincingly. As the players emerged to take their bows before a jubilant Edgbaston crowd, they looked happy and relaxed, secure in their supremacy and a comeback few would have envisaged after such a harrowing defeat at Lord’s 12 days ago.

After the magnificent efforts of James Anderson and Steve Finn with the ball, Ian Bell took the game away from Australia one final time with a bold display of aggressive batting. He finished unbeaten on 65 off 90 balls, a quite superb innings. Yet that wasn’t the whole story.

It was, of course, precisely the right approach from Bell. Australia’s last hope was that England would be conservative, intimidated by the depth of failure if they did not chase down a fourth-innings total of 121 to win. With captain Alastair Cook out and only 11 on the board, it would have been easy to retreat, frightened, into a shell. If England were tentative, Australia could exploit that — yet Bell arrived with the confidence of a man chasing a mediocre total in a Sunday league game.

He raced into the 30s, outstripping opener Adam Lyth on the way and, finally, Edgbaston was calmed.

England’s course looked certain with Bell in charge. Until that point? As highly strung as Nervous Nerys, the barmaid from the Nag’s Head who Rodney takes on an ill- conceived date in an episode of Only Fools and Horses, all streaky mascara, shaking and tears.

England have had too many traumas to feel assured with 121 needed and Mitchell Johnson steaming in; thankfully, by the time Michael Clarke deigned to use him, the match was as good as over.

There were 47 runs on the board when Johnson appeared and just one wicket down. At what point does funky as in cool become funky as in stinks? Clarke’s captaincy may have jumped that particular shark.

Johnson hasn’t opened the bowling in any Test of this series so far, but there was surely a case for a change of plan yesterday. The Johnson deliveries that got Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes out on Thursday were the most devastating of the game — two truly terrifying balls that would have made every cricketer from the Test arena to the Casuals Sunday fourths wince at the thought of facing them.

With Lyth under pressure for his place, why didn’t Clarke deploy a Johnson blitzkrieg? By the time he was tossed the ball, England were cantering home and his mundane figures and rattled performance following a fearful ragging from the crowd — he completely lost the rhythm in his run-up by the end — reflected that.

It was the equivalent of leaving Tiger Woods out on the course as anchor man at the Ryder Cup. Johnson had to be in play early to make his presence count.

STRANDED on the boundary, he can have felt only frustration as Mitchell Starc leaked 13 runs off one over, before Nathan Lyon went for 11 off the next.

To make matters worse, Clarke dropped Bell off the last ball of Starc’s fourth. Did he drop the Ashes, too? Probably not — there have been too many twists and turns in this series to think one incident decides it — but with such a tiny lead to defend, mistakes were always likely to be severely punished. So it proved.

It is not often that an innings by Bell is responsible for a settling of nerves, but this has been a strange match in a great many ways. Here was its final quirk. Bell, a risk-taker and serial disappointer who has caused more nails to be bitten to the quick than the writers of 24, looked England’s safest bet — the coolest head in a match fraught with tension.

Here’s the irony. Offer 121 to win any Test match in any conditions and a captain would jump at it. Certainly, coming off the back of a 405-run defeat at Lord’s, Cook would have regarded yesterday’s run chase as a gift from above.

Yet, in the moment, it did not feel that way. Johnson had

talked of needing to set a target of 120 minimum to give Australia a puncher’s chance and here England were, faced with almost exactly that.

So there was trepidation. Veteran England followers can reel off the locations of the many fourth-innings catastrophes in recent years — Adelaide and Abu Dhabi, and that’s just the A’s — and were inwardly dreading a humiliating repeat. After all, England were skittled for just 103 at Lord’s — and needed 18 more than that for victory here.

So while, on the surface, this was mission all too possible, the emptiness of the bars and the fullness of the stands suggested a contest so compelling no-one could turn away.

There are some sporting institutions that come with a guarantee. Jonny Wilkinson in front of the posts; Usain Bolt in the starting blocks of an Olympic sprint lane; Germany in the qualifying group of a major tournament; in happier times, Tiger Woods with a lead going into the last day of a major. English cricket, not so much. English cricket has all the reliability of a bottle of Peckham Spring.

The moment Australia’s score ticked into three figures — and kudos to Peter Nevill and Starc for that — spectators began to look strangely pained. Looking back, they needn’t have fretted. England sailed home, the crowd on its feet celebrating a 2-1 lead long before the last ball of the day.

What faith; what confidence — and now on to Trent Bridge. No Jimmy Anderson there, of course, but even so — what could possibly go wrong?