CMJ: England`s great chance to seize Ashes initiative (24 July 1997)

Thursday 24 July 1997

England`s great chance to seize Ashes initiative

Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

NOTHING less than the outcome of the series will be at stake when the fourth Test starts at Headingley today, and with it the destiny of the Ashes. A draw is likely at Trent Bridge next month so victory here virtually guarantees at least a share of the series.

Nothing has occurred since the Old Trafford Test ended 17 days ago in an overwhelming 268-run victory for Australia to alter the opinion that the next five days present England with their best chance to regain the initiative.

They pin their hopes mainly on a firm, green, evenly grassed pitch and a 29-year-old swing bowler who looks and sounds more like a solicitor than a professional cricketer.

Until Shane Warne turned the course of recent cricket history for the better, more and more Tests were being won by giant fast bowlers whose wickets were gained mainly by brute force. For batsmen they changed a game played largely between the feet and the waist into one played instead between the waist and the head.

But cricket evolves and it is partly because batsmen play the short-pitched, rising ball more expertly than they used to that an old-fashioned inswing bowler of relatively gentle pace is virtually certain to be given the new ball by England.

Mike Smith is old to be making his first appearance as a newball bowler and, at 5ft 9in, unfashionably small. If he plays, as he clearly should in his present form, it is likely to be at Andrew Caddick`s expense unless Dean Headley suffers any unexpected reaction from another lengthy bowl in the nets yesterday.

Smith will add necessary variety to an attack which will be led with confidence by Darren Gough on his home ground, and he will create the rough outside the right-handers` stump which would give Robert Croft the chance to create more problems for Australia`s batsmen than he was able to do in Manchester.

Time will tell if Smith lacks the pace to trouble batsmen of the class of Steve and Mark Waugh on flat pitches when the sun is shining but on this ground, with its customary humidity and, probably more relevant, its neighbouring trees, he will swing the ball dangerously, as Steve Watkin and Neil Mallender, previous horses for the Headingley course, did in simi- lar circumstances.

He deserves his first cap as a reward for his 55 wickets at 14 runs each this season on a ground where he played as a Yorkshire youth and took 10 wickets for Gloucestershire only six weeks ago.

Strangely, conversation at Headingley yesterday was not much about swing. The warm air was thick with conspiracy theories. If it was not the Australians asking, reasonably enough, why a green pitch should be covered on a sunny day, it was the owners of the ground asking why the Yorkshire committee seem so determined to move from a place steeped in history and now offered a new lease of life.

To the objective eye the -L20 million scheme to redevelop Headingley, presented at the ground yesterday, looks much less of a leap into the dark than the -L52 million move to a green-field site near Wakefield for which 75 per cent of the Yorkshire members have already voted.

This is a matter of great importance in the broad acres, and of considerable interest to all who follow cricket, but the events of the next five days are altogether more pressing.

As has been the case in both countries on a number of occasions, the visiting team are suspicious that a pitch has been prepared to suit the home side. Mark Taylor, the Australian captain, repeated yesterday that he was "disappointed".

Of course he would prefer something less well grassed for Warne, but the neighbouring pitch originally intended for this game is clearly far too thinly grassed and Harry Brind`s decision to switch the strip was straightforward.

Additionally, Taylor may reflect that Australia had the worst of the conditions in Manchester and still won easily, and also that Glenn McGrath, Paul Reiffel and Jason Gillespie will all be awkward propositions if it is cloudy.

If it is not and the sun shines, the pitch may confound those darkly predicting a three-day game. Tests played later in the season at Leeds usually suit the batsmen, not the bowlers. It is forgotten sometimes that even in 1981 Australia scored 400 in the first innings before their famous fourth-innings collapse against Bob Willis, and the square has been relaid since.

Last time, of course, Australia made 653 for four declared and won by an innings, and the last two later-season Leeds Tests have been high-scoring draws. South Africa in 1994 and England last year were both able to match high-scoring first innings by their opponents.

Pre-conceived suspicions about a pitch are, in any case, often misguided. The West Indies were unhappy before the game at Edgbaston two seasons ago but in the event the combination of greenness and uneveness played into the hands of their fast bowlers.

I can hear now the great cricketer-writer Jack Fingleton muttering darkly about the fusarium which suited Derek Underwood in 1972, and, just as clearly, the observation of John Edrich at Sydney in 1974-75 that grass seemed suddenly to be growing much thicker in Australia since Lillee and Thomson had come together.

The hostile fast bowling which they produced on that occasion has sorted out many a promising Test batsman since. That is why the gifted Ricky Ponting is restored to Australia at No 6 today in place of the no less talented Michael Bevan.

Advance ticket sales are worth -L1.25 million, the weather forecast is mixed and, as always here, the prospect is mouthwatering.

Teams

England (from)

*M A Atherton, M A Butcher, -A J Stewart, N Hussain, G P Thorpe, J P Crawley, M A Ealham, R D B Croft, D Gough, A M Smith, D W Headley, A R Caddick.

Australia

*M A Taylor, M T G Elliott, G S Blewett, M E Waugh, S R Waugh, R T Ponting, -I A Healy, S K Warne, P R Reiffel, J N Gillespie, G D McGrath.

Umpires: M J Kitchen & C J Mitchley (South Africa). Third umpire: R Julian. Match referee: C M Smith (West Indies).

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/)