Tea and Biscuits at The Ashes
By: Stephen Blackford
Tags: Sports, Cricket, Australia, Creative Writing, The Ashes

MCG, Melbourne, Day 2: Australia are in a dream world whilst England are stuck inside a Matrix. Deja Vu anyone?

Day 2 recap: Australia all out for 267 with a 1st innings lead of 82. At Stumps: England are 31–4 and staring down the barrel of a humiliating defeat inside 3 days.

Before we delve into the nitty gritty of the day’s play, can I direct you to (1) the reason why I’m sitting up through the night watching Test Match cricket, (2) my blog from Day 1 of this, the 3rd Test and (3) a shameless plug for my blog on The Matrix series of films:

Rising from my Boxing Day slumbers after a lovely day with my teenage son and turning on the Telescreen I was immediately struck by a sense of Deja Vu, a sensation that would pervade my thinking throughout the morning’s play before hitting every England fan like a freight train in the evening’s session. I searched in vain for a black cat and sadly Trinity wasn’t available to join me in her PVC for the cricketing action live and direct from Melbourne and even Morpheus refused my calls. The signs were not looking good. I may have still been asleep, half asleep maybe, but as soon as I turned on the television the Deja Vu really began to kick in and I was beginning to regret my reasoning for purposely waking myself from Morpheus’ dream world.

For the last eight hours, 3 cricketing sessions and even “Acts” if you wish, there wasn’t a black cat in sight and perhaps my sleep deprivation has me searching for answers inside a Matrix, and a Matrix seemingly curated, created as well as constructed by an Australian. Deja Vu was all around us, from ball one until that last Act, that last hour of today’s play, and one of many final nails in England’s Ashes coffin. I kept searching for that black cat all night and couldn’t find her, but if you ask England Captain Joe Root tonight about black cats he’ll swear blind he’s seen them for the entire duration of his stay in Australia. His team have suffered bad luck for sure, they’ve been kept collectively in the field toiling away in the energy sapping heat, and they’ve collapsed under the immense weight and pressure of playing an Ashes Series in Australia. They’ve “won” sessions but not days. They’ve impressed in small passages of play but not come anywhere near winning the ultimate goal, a Test Match. As you’ll read on below there have been yet more recurring sessions of back’s to the wall, dogged determination and chinks of encouraging light.

But that light has been there to blind us all from the truth: Australia are rampant and England are the rampaged. Hour after Hour. Session after Session. Day after Day. Test Match after Test Match.

Deja Vu anyone?

Marcus Harris: caught Root bowled Anderson (76). Australia 180–6. Picture courtesy of www.firstpost.com

As with the start of yesterday’s play, today’s was delayed by 30 minutes and rather than the inclement weather of yesterday, this morning was due to that pesky invisible threat we all face, and the tedium it now thoroughly induces. Deja Vu. In every respect. And as soon as play got underway at Midnight local UK time England were under the strange spell cast upon a sleepy Englishman half a world away. For good and for ill too. For both of us. The Good. The Bad. And indeed the ugly.

Traditionally, every drama, be it a play, film or magic trick come in the form of three Acts, and so does Test Match cricket. These Acts are called “Sessions” in cricket and Deja Vu enveloped them all again today. Yet again, this morning was a “back’s to the wall” performance from England and yet again there was a good, bad and ugly side to it. Again, they “won” the first hour of play and again they “won” the overall first session as they restricted a usually free scoring Australian team to just 70 runs and for the fall of three wickets too. 70 runs in a session for Australia is almost unheard of and so is losing both Marquee wickets of Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith in a single session of cricket. Again, England won an opening session in this Ashes Series but Acts 2 and 3 today were as predictable as they were eerily familiar.

Deja Vu anyone?

Labuschagne and Smith were dismissed by England’s bright bowling lights in the morning’s play and in Jimmy Anderson and Mark Wood England had a modicum of hope at Lunch on Day 2. Anderson, nearing 40 and England’s long term talismanic bowling leader was magnificent in the session prior to Lunch, bowling 6 overs 5 Maidens 1 Wicket for just 1 Run! In the afternoon Session or Act Two he grabbed 2 more deserved wickets, opener Marcus Harris who played well for his 76 runs and the Aussie Skipper Pat Cummins who crashed a quick 21 as the innings drew to a close. The bustling and brilliantly eccentric Mark Wood took two wickets (and the hugely prized wicket of Marnus Labuschagne) but was bowled too sparingly and in only two over bursts and therein lies one of the aspects of the “bad” in our three act structure and within it’s cinematic nods to both The Matrix and Sergio Leone’s Western masterpiece.

Try as I might, I couldn’t find that damn black cat but the good of England’s display were all but over as we entered today’s second Act, the afternoon session, but there were echoes of the bad and the ugly in the remainder of the morning session and way before the explosive end to today’s play too. Even with Wood and Anderson bowling so well Skipper Joe Root had a restrained attacking field and only inserted a 3rd slip 20 minutes before the Lunch break. Jack Leach, hero of Headingley and mad professorial lecturer in his batting glasses was given a couple of overs before Lunch and Deja Vu reared it’s ugly head immediately as Skipper Root scattered a defensive field to all parts and I believe Zak Crawley and one or two other fielders are still wandering around downtown Melbourne in search of a route back into the Ground. Hardly instils a high degree of confidence in your spinner when you dispatch “riders” to all parts of the ground simply to keep the score down. It’s a tired old script in a very tired screenplay and talking of tired and the flogging of dead horses, Ollie Robinson. Poor old Ollie and his face as long as a cowboy’s horse is clearly out on his feet and/or lame with an injury. He’s tried, all the bowlers are trying and they all deserve great credit for eventually bowling out their Australian hosts for a modest overall first innings total of 267. But Robinson’s woes (lack of fitness or a very definite injury) has, along with Deja Vu, been with us since the very first morning of the entire Series and despite Anderson’s and Wood’s heroics, everything, including the ever repeating pattern of a black cat induced bout of Deja Vu would herald the most magnificent of final Acts today.

Zak Crawley: caught Carey bowled Starc (5). England 7–1. Picture courtesy of www.theguardian.com

Yet again, England had one of those “tricky” sessions to negotiate in today’s final session. A final session that encompassed an hour’s play, 12 overs and over 40,000 raucous and partisan Aussies were there to witness some unbelievable cricketing magic and an England batting team crumbling and collapsing (again) into dust before their disbelieving eyes. Make no mistake, this was an incredibly difficult session (again) for England and one in which they could not win (and they didn’t) whilst the Australians were in a literal no lose situation. And they won it handsomely and spectacularly too.

It would be easy to drift into hyperbole (as well as a reverie) after watching those 72 collective deliveries from Messrs Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Scott Boland. It was an hour of incredibly intense cricket, the very best of Test Match cricket, and an hour from the Deja Vu Gods supporting Australia as yet again they had England backed into a no win corner, on home territory, a howling crowd and three very hungry bowlers in search of English victims. In an hour Starc and Boland collected two cricket victims each and could easily have secured more. England scored 31 runs in the final Act of today’s play and all but a handful were scored via deflections, edges through the slips and defensive shots that luckily rolled past a close in field. Make no mistake (again) this was a difficult period in which to bat (again), but again England collapsed as they have done so spectacularly before and on so many previous occasions. With only 7 runs on the board Zak Crawley crumbled to a beautiful delivery from Starc and one could only feel for the young kid as he passed in coming batsman Malan. Seconds later Malan was trapped LBW first ball and as well as returning from whence he came, he passed Skipper Root in the opposite direction and to face that rarest of possibilities, an Ashes hat-trick. Root survived an incredible delivery from a pumped up Mitchell Starc but here we were again, England 7–2 and their Skipper and most prized and valued wicket already at the crease.

Deja Vu anyone?

At the numerically pleasing 22–2 England had mere minutes to survive the day’s play and so enter local Melbournian hero Scott Boland. First he tempted dogged opener Haseeb Hameed and he obliged by edging to wicket keeper Carey and was out for 7 before two balls later the mad professor himself, Jack Leach, was “castled” and bowled by a roaring Boland on his home ground. Leach was a “Night Watchman” to protect his senior batsmen and has no blame and a ton of sympathy. Another England player in a no win situation. Stokes joined his Skipper and they inched their way to a limp 31 runs for 4 wickets at the end of play “Stumps” and thus ending an absorbing and thrilling day of Test Match cricket.

Haseeb Hameed: caught Carey bowled Boland (7). England 22–3. Picture courtesy of www.onmanorama.com

The beauty of Test Match cricket sometimes is that it lends itself to verbose pronouncements of “collapses” and “winning sessions” and of oppositions being ground into the dirt. And it certainly allows for amateur writers to throw a metaphorical phrase around like Deja Vu and appear vaguely clever when they aren’t. But the similarities of England’s recent Test cricket history are overwhelmingly apparent: batting collapses, vast changes in personnel, a bowling attack that needs their ageing stars of Broad and Anderson, and being too bloody defensive. England have arguably the best batsman in the world, an all rounder who wins games on his own and two of Test Cricket’s legendary bowlers of all time. As a fan I could easily criticise (again) the defensive fields, defensive bowling and the now legendarily painful batting collapses. As an observer of a mad world I could also note the points I made in my original blogs on the 1st Test, of under preparation and bio bubbles and the craziness this induces in players on both sides.

Or I could lazily point to Deja Vu and worry for my sanity and that of a black cat that I do not own but which stalks the lonely corridors of my mind.

But here’s the positivity rub: It’s all or nothing time! Either England, with their Marquee stars of Skipper Root and All Rounder Stokes dig in and set the foundations for a minor total for the Australians to chase: but chasing against a fired up Mark Wood and a Jimmy Anderson needing a final hurrah and final goodbye to the Melbourne Ground. Or they fold like a pack of cards and the Test Match is over before the Lunch break tomorrow.

But if I rise from my slumbers later to hear tales of yet more non cricketing “tests” being failed or fears for the actual cricketing “Test” itself or indeed fears for the last two actually taking place, that may well be a piece of Deja Vu too far. We need this sporting theatre, however painful, to continue. Even if England collapse again. The collective psyche needs this normalcy. Be rather nice to see England set Australia 120 to win and see the steam coming out of the ears of Mark Wood too! He might even get to ride his horse again.

His horse lives in the netherworld along with that black cat that I don’t own, as well as the fantasies of a saner world and Jimmy Anderson ripping the heart out of the Australia batting order tomorrow afternoon for a famous victory.

It’s the hope that kills. Or maybe it’s just the Deja Vu.