Off The Bat mischievously rakes the coals off the First Ashes test to identify the heroes, villains and complete liabilities from a thrilling four days of cricket in Cardiff.
Had that ball gone to glove on Wednesday morning, England would have been 43 for 4 before lunch on the first day and the highly sought-after cremated wicket bail dust may have been but a distant dream. Had it happened for Brad Haddin, not only would the home side have found themselves up a famously unsanitised creek without a paddle, they would have been without any life jackets, any knowledge of Bear Grylls box-sets and any hope of escaping an impending sporting precipice of Niagra Falls proportions. Alas, the ball didn’t stick, England didn’t sink as expected and with that we may be assured one of the closest Ashes series in a decade.
HAS HADDIN HAD HIS DAY?
In 2005, Shane Warne dropped the Ashes. Will 2015 mark the year that Brad Haddin fumbled the tiny urn? He dropped Joe Root on a big fat 0 – a clumsy error that further exposed the 37-year-old as being longer in the tooth than a heavily tusked elephant. It was the kind of regulation catch most wicketkeepers would catch in their sleep, so much so that Australia captain Michael Clarke has now ordered team medics to induce Haddin into a snoozy coma for the remainder of the series to avoid such costly bloopers.
.@GeoffreyBoycott gives Brad Haddin some advice after dropping easy catch http://t.co/9zBUqFkLG4 #ENGvAUS #Ashes2015 pic.twitter.com/P5gu9QHWsc
— Stuff.co.nz Sport (@NZStuffSport) July 9, 2015
Root of course rubbed the contents of a salt mine into Haddin’s wound by going on to hit a lustrous 134 runs. The Yorkshire Batsman certainly ran his luck on his way to a match-winning batting display – he had more edges than a decagon. Things got even better for England’s golden boy having clonked another 50 and snaffled two wickets in the second innings. Root couldn’t have ingratiated himself any more to England fans unless he had staged a show-stopping officially sanctioned rematch with David Warner for the now vacant WBO welterweight title. Pound for pound the best batsmen in the Ashes line-ups? Quite possibly.
CAPTAIN COOK LETS LOOSE
A more subtle, but equally crucial, England performance came from Alastair Cook. Remarkably, Cook out-captained Michael Clarke, which at the start of the Test was as likely as a piece of steak outmanoeuvring a famished Lion. Inning after inning he chose a fluid, flexible and bespoke fielding options for each batsmen and made unorthodox but inspired bowling changes. There were shapes, angles and mind-bending ideas here that even Picasso would have been bashful to attempt. All achieved whilst recovering from a colossal clomp to the crown jewels.
QUALITY: Joe Root’s reaction to Alistair Cook taking one for the team. pic.twitter.com/dZKaboJYAa
— BBC Sporf (@BBCSporf) July 9, 2015
This was not the straight-laced Cook we know. The England skipper’s approach to tactics is normally as rigid as the Lords members’ enclosure dress code. It would be fascinating to know what new head coach Trevor Bayliss has done to precipitate such seismic change. Did he raid the ECB coffers to perform a ‘Face Off’ style operation that saw Cook’s head surgically attached to a 2005 spec Michael Vaughan brain and body? Until there is an official denial of that rumour, we’ll have to accept that as the only reasonable explanation.
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LEG BEFORE WATSON
Our pendulum swing from heroes to villains now looms heavy over Shane Watson. You know you are in bad form when #WattoLotto is trending on Twitter in Australia – a cathartic game that Australian cricket fans play to predict when (not if) Watson will get out and exactly how. Apparently it makes watching the batsman’s metronomic moments of idiocy less frustrating. And boy is he frustrating. Indeed, a recent study showed that 75 percent of baldness in Australian men is caused by fans tearing their hair out watching Watson.
It’s his truly abysmal lbw record that really dislocates the follicles. He couldn’t be more of a walking wicket unless he sellotaped bails over his eyebrows. In 35 innings he has played against England, has been bowled lbw on 14 occasions – including two this Test. That’s a 40 percent lbw rate – a stat more eye-watering than using a vindaloo curry sauce as contact lens solution. There’s a decent chance Watson will be dropped for the Lords Test. And that will offer up some valuable free time for him, a chance to experience life without shinning 90mph missiles relentlessly and also an opportunity to build a defence against an impending lawsuit from umpires blaming him for repetitive strain disorder in their index fingers.
No wonder Watson keeps getting LBW…. #Ashes2015 pic.twitter.com/EfNq57YnzR
— Michael Vaughan (@MichaelVaughan) July 11, 2015
WONKY WICKET
The major protagonist who made the biggest journey from villain to hero was the Cardiff wicket. In the end, it was praised for delivering over 1000 runs, 40 wickets and tremendously entertaining cricket in a cacophonous atmosphere. The vibes weren’t quite as positive on Day One though, when the pitch received more of a chiselling than the construction of the Egyptian pyramids. From the first ball, both sets of players and fans chose the wonky wicket as a chance to unite their immense sledging prowess (a combined force of energy equivalent to 10 hydrogen bombs).
Starting off treacly, stodgy and spongy, the groundsman had seemingly made an almighty mix up — laying down a 22 metre cake in the middle of the field whilst simultaneously baking a Test-standard pitch in the middle of his oven. Easily done. An unfortunate Australia bore the brunt of the error. Getting the ball to bounce off the Battenberg-based crust and through to Haddin was a task that could not be feasibly achieved without modifying a rocket-propelled grenade to accept a Dukes cricket ball. In the end, Stuart Broad’s rip-roaring back-to-back spells, including 20 consecutive dot balls on Saturday morning, was evidence enough that the groundsman hadn’t made a real pudding of the pitch afterall.
England so happy with the Cardiff pitch they’re doing homage to it. #ashes2015 pic.twitter.com/it59IjgD80
— Greg Baum (@GregBaum) July 7, 2015
