Pain of '09 near-miss spurs on Australia

In 1996, Newcastle United had played the perfect season. They led in the Premiership, and hosted Manchester United in a game that could snuff out the challenge of their nearest rival. After a first half in which the Red Devils were battered, bruised and beaten out of sight in general play, the St James' Park scoreboard read 0-0. As he addressed the players at halftime, Kevin Keegan could feel the confidence of his men draining away.

"The most difficult halftime team talk for any coach," he said some years later, "is when you've played fantastic and you've got no reward. You're saying things and you can see the players looking right through and thinking the things you're thinking in the back of your mind, like 'we can't play any better, we haven't scored, I've seen these games before, they'll get a scrappy goal'.

"You're telling them all to 'go out and do it all again lads' but even as you talk and they listen, you're all thinking 'hang on, I've seen games like this before'..." Manchester United won 1-0, and would go on to be champions.

Six years ago in Cardiff, Australia's cricketers felt a similar sinking feeing. They played what Ricky Ponting called "the perfect game" and somehow found a way not to win. Many think that it was Cardiff that changed the course of recent Ashes history, allowing England the room to find themselves, while consigning Australia to three consecutive defeats. The former coach Tim Nielsen has said of it: "I look back at 2009 and still can't get my head around Cardiff. That's the one that kills me."

This time around, there are five members of Australia's squad who were present for that match. Michael Clarke, Brad Haddin, Mitchell Johnson and Peter Siddle all played, while Shane Watson ran the drinks. Ask them about the match six years on and their reactions differ. Clarke cannot remember too much, and simply wants things to be different this time. Siddle's recollections are fuller, but he too has his eyes on the present. Johnson views the whole series as a lesson in technique and concentration. Most vivid are the recollections of Haddin, behind the stumps, and Watson, from the boundary's edge.

For Clarke, the match and series were an important step in his rise to replace Ponting as captain. He was Australia's leading batsman in the series, making two polished hundreds and another pair of sparkling innings besides - four Australians made hundreds in Cardiff, but Clarke's 83 lost little by comparison. On the final day, he was eager as ever for Ponting to hand him the ball for an over or two. But as typified an occasionally prickly relationship between captain and deputy, Marcus North was preferred.

"I remember we didn't get the last wicket," Clarke says. "It was a different wicket then, and two very different teams as well. Let's hope if it gets that close this time we can find a way to get that last wicket."

Haddin was playing his first Ashes Test, having started in Test cricket the year before. His hundred on the fourth day was a freewheeling affair as the Australians tried to build their lead, and looked a psychologically heavy blow to England when they made a poor start to their second innings. Haddin admits he thought on more than one occasion that the match was won.

"It was a painful Test match," he says. "We thought we got ourselves into a position that we deserved that win, but as you see in Ashes campaigns - they're never over. The games throw up so many curveballs and people do different things in Ashes cricket, than they normally would do. That was a wonderful Test match, it would have been great for the spectators. But the result wasn't exactly what we wanted.

"We thought we were over the line. They did well. But Ashes cricket throws up a lot of different characters and people respond differently to these big occasions. It was no surprise that England held on that time - it's different cricket and it brings out a lot of different emotions. And some odd batting talent that I didn't think Monty Panesar had."

At the critical moment on the final afternoon, Ponting declined to throw the ball to Johnson. In the context of what he had achieved in South Africa a few months before this seemed like madness, but Johnson was in the midst of a spiral that would bottom out at Lord's. Afflicted by concerns both personal and technical, his ability to focus on the stumps at the other end had been clouded by many things, and his bowling action was about as reliable as a Caribbean airline timetable. Occasionally he looks back on this match and the following Test at Lord's, as a reminder of how not to operate.

"It doesn't get me angry, it just frustrates me that stuff," he says. "It's just looking more at my bowling action, to see what the difference was from then to now. I even go back to when I first started to see my action then to what it is now, the big changes with my load up, the front foot stride, my run-up and those kinds of things. I've moved on from that and I'm really excited this time."

Instead of Johnson, it was Siddle who charged in at Panesar and James Anderson. First ball he very nearly coaxed an outside edge from Panesar, but grew increasingly frustrated as the last pair survived. On his first Ashes tour, it was a lesson in patience and poise.

"There was a lot of disappointment," he says. "Eleven overs needing one wicket and not getting it. We've got something to prove playing here and it is true, if we'd started off well there it could have been a different series. So yeah we know that. It's a nice place to play - I enjoyed that Test match other than the last hour!"

Like the 15,000-odd spectators who watched with growing anxiety as the day dragged on, Watson was in a position to see a broader tableau than the men on the field. He regards it as one of the most important, and damaging, Test matches Australia played during the period, with obvious flow-on effects like the loss of the second Test at Lord's, and wider ones like the drain of self-belief that would seep through three subsequent Ashes series defeats.

"Just knowing we'd played so well and dominated the Test match but not being able to come out 1-0 up going to Lord's, knowing that going to the next Test match we'd have to play even better to be able to win the Test match, no doubt it dampens your spirits a little bit," he says. "You're willing to go out and do all the hard work again but knowing you've done all the hard work to set the game up and not being able to close it out, it's always a challenge to be able to get yourself up and going again and unfortunately we didn't.

"That was unfortunately the start of things to come through the next two Ashes series that we played, just not being able to close out that game at that moment. It's something we are certainly much better at now closing out Test matches especially when it gets close. We've got the calibre of bowlers now and so many different options now to be able to really capitalise. Certainly it was a moment we all think turned, not just that Ashes series, but the next one or two as well."

Keegan's Newcastle never did have another chance to get as close to the Premier League title, and his era is seen as one of great excitement but also of promise unfulfilled. Clarke, Watson, Haddin, Johnson and Siddle are now in the more fortunate position of being able to atone for what happened here in 2009, to do it all again. They are intent on making Cardiff a Test cricket venue remembered for something other than a thwarted Australia.