An all time epic amidst unprecedented chaos

    It was 42 years ago that the MCC members refused to clap for Sir Ian Botham in the long room when he got a pair as the England skipper against Australia. Botham gave up the captaincy and produced one of the most iconic performances at Headingley which started their juggernaut to win the Ashes. Four decades later, some MCC members have performed an act of embarrassment by abusing the visiting team members and another English captain should have been at the center of it all for the right reasons yet what has made the headlines is a very skillful piece of cricket which is doomed by some as against the spirit of cricket and the aftermath of it has been ugly. What the MCC has written in the books are laws of the game and not rules. Rules can be flexible and be flirted with. Laws have strict boundaries and if your actions are within those boundaries, what you are doing is completely legal. Therefore those that call the incident 'cheating' are pretty irrelevant in my opinion because what is within the laws of the game can not be called cheating. Both sides have been defended by experts and senior journalists in the last 48 hours. I don't think anyone who knows cricket has said that it wasn't out as it was a perfectly legal dismissal on every day of the week. The same people who were discussing the legitimacy of the dismissal on Sunday were suddenly bringing the spirit of cricket into the context on Monday. I think the two most important things missing in the conversation are the lack of game awareness from Jonny Bairstow and the cricket smarts of Alex Carey. Bairstow was regularly walking out of his crease without looking at the keeper or the umpire which was very naive for someone who is playing at this level for a decade. At the same time, it was a moment of real skill from Carey who had noticed Bairstow stroll out for a walk previously and just instinctively under-armed the throw to stump him. Nobody deserves the amount of abuse and criticism that the Aussies have received basically just for playing by the rules. It was the occasion that made it blow out of proportion and the exaggeration will have some nasty effects on the remaining tour. 

     What those 15 minutes of play overshadowed was quite staggering. The contest between bat and ball was very rich over the entirety of five days. Stokes won the toss and put Australia in under the clouds on a juicy pitch in London. English bowlers were completely anonymous in such bowling-friendly conditions and Steve Smith was outrageously good yet again in England. Australia scored well over 350 in the day and finished on 416 on the second morning. English top 3 found batting relatively easy on a sunny afternoon before throwing away three wickets for 34 runs towards the close of play. Familiar frailties resurfaced as England succumbed to another batting collapse to gift Australia a 91-run lead. After a couple of unfruitful sessions, England resorted to the short ball ploy and stayed with it for the next two entire sessions. An astonishing 98% of the deliveries were short and Aussies couldn't find a way to tackle it. A target of 371 was always going to be tough and the last thing England would have wanted was the top order to crumble. They found themselves at 47-4 thanks to a couple of crackerjack deliveries from Starc and Cummins. Though Duckett had looked good in both innings, everyone knew it all hinged on one man and that man was Benjamin Andrew Stokes. Duckett mistimed a pull and was soon followed by Jonny Bairstow which left England needing 178 runs short. The majority of the crowd was fuming and so was Ben Stokes. This was probably the best individual batting display witnessed by most of us who were present at Lord's. The control at the start was commendable, the acceleration was staggering and the ball striking was stunning. He scored 155 before finally mis-hitting one against Josh Hazlewood. It was very similar to Headingley 4 years ago. He probably would have needed to score in excess of 200 if England were to get over the line but if he had, it would have been bigger than Headingley for sure. Some of the sixes he hit at Headingley were mis-hits but not one out of the nine sixes at Lord's teased the boundary riders. He just kept doing it for more than 15 overs and put on 108 with Stuart Broad. There wasn't much left once he was gone and Australia wrapped up the innings fairly quickly to win the match by 43 runs. 

     Pat Cummins and his team have now won two close tests and buried some ghosts along the way. There is no doubt that Stokes' presence did make them nervous and Smith dropping a straightforward catch was perhaps the evidence of it. But despite of all the drama and the talk surrounding BazBall, Australia find themselves 2-0 up. It has not been comfortable by any means and England under a leader as inspirational as Ben Stokes can definitely turn up at Headingley a better team. For me, the concern for England is the pitches. Australians have not won in the UK since 2001 so England didn't need BazBall to beat Australia. More often than not the Aussies have been beaten by the movement and these flatter pitches are bringing Australia into the game more than it should. For two test matches in a row, James Anderson and Stuart Broad, 41 and 37 respectively, have been forced to bowl 20 overs in a day on dead and slow pitches. If they decide to play both of them again at Headingley on a similar pitch, they would be basically going on a hunt with blind dogs. I still think England's best chance against this extremely experienced and skilled Australian team is by producing wickets conducive to seam bowling. History tells us that when Australia gain the upper hand, they generally bury the opposition and it will be extremely difficult to stop this Australian side who just want it more than the English do. The narrative is so much in favor of Australia but if England somehow manage to win in Leeds and keep the series alive, it could end up as one of the greatest test series we have ever seen.

Pat Cummins' finest hour.

It was in 2005 that Australia almost won a test they should never have won and now 18 years later, they have ended up on the right side of the result when they never looked like having the advantage in the match until the final hour of the last day. Whether it be Bill Woodfull in the 30s or Bradman in 1948 or Bobby Simpson in 1964 or Greg Chappel in 1977 or Allan Border and Steve Waugh through the 90s or as latest as Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke in the 2000s, Australian captains have a very rich history of rising to the occasion and standing up tall against the adversity in the face of it all. For the first time since the late great Richie Benaud, Australia have a bowler captaining the side in an away Ashes series. England are never an easy side to beat at home and their newly adopted approach to test match cricket must have had the Aussie captain thinking hard considering the fact that he is the leader of a very strong bowling unit. The test match started with Zak Crawley creaming Cummins through the covers and concluded with Cummins dabbing one down to third man for a boundary to win one of the most famous test matches in recent years. But all that happened in between these two boundaries was equally as exciting and enthralling if not more. Even after having witnessed it for the last 18 months, it was hard to believe that England really 'bazballed' Australia on the first day of the Ashes. Though England have won consistently at home, they never really dared to bully Australia until this series. England came out all guns blazing and kept the advantage for the entirety of the test match until the final hour. A rampant English side scored at a rate of over four runs per over in both innings and kept Australians under tremendous pressure with attacking fields throughout the first innings. Warner, Green, and Carey all chipped in but Australia needed someone to really play through the innings if they were to get to 281. Likewise in the first innings, it was Usman Khawaja who decided to just play within himself and not commit any mistake. When Robinson had knocked over Green, it almost looked as if what stood between England and the victory was Usman Khawaja. Once he was dismissed by the English skipper, soon followed by Alex Carey, all the journalists must have started writing narratives for an English victory. Not many believed that 54 runs were gettable for Australia's number 9 and 10. One of them had had a tough couple of years with the bat in hand and the other one doesn't really think he can bat. Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon both had unfinished business with this English team and Australia had some ghosts to bury at Edgebaston. Pat Cummins was the leader of the attack 4 years ago when Australia allowed Ben Stokes to score 76 runs with Jack Leach and Nathan Lyon happened to be the person who fumbled the easiest of run-out chances at the very end of that innings. Australia went into day 5 at the same ground around 18 years back needing 105 with 2 wickets in hand and fell agonizingly short despite brave efforts by Shane Warne, Brett Lee, and Michael Kaszprowich. I guess both these results will never be forgotten but Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon have ensured that they do not have another narrow defeat on their CVs. 

When Root came in to bowl the first over in the last hour, Cummins smoked him for 2 sixes over mid-off and made it clear that he wasn't thinking about a draw. He drove Robinson through the covers and slapped Stuart Broad through cover-point on his way to an incredibly special knock. The Australian skipper showed tremendous faith in his partner and never hesitated to take singles whenever offered. He came to the middle when Australia required 72 to win and scored 44 of those to take his side home. On the other hand, Lyon never looked as comfortable as Pat but he hung in there. He seemed vulnerable to every delivery as the English bowled into his body with five fielders patrolling the leg side fence. He nearly holed one out to Stokes at square leg. But once that had happened, he put the pull shot to the bed and started to leave everything. For a puller as compulsive as him, it must have been extremely difficult to not play that shot. After negotiating the early barrage, he played two shots that I don't think he will forget in this lifetime. First he played an off-drive to Stuart Broad as soon as the second new ball was taken and then a couple of overs later he flicked one over mid-on to bring the required number of runs down to single figure. That was easily the shot of the innings for me considering the situation, the pressure, and the flair resembling a certain Viv Richards! 

The pressure was unimaginable, the theatre created by a packed edgbaston crowd was special and the way Pat Cummins played the situation was staggering. He was laughing and joking with Nathan Lyon at the change of ends. On the grandest of stages, the man in charge of his team made it look a lot easier than what it should have been. More importantly though, the emotional side of things was very gripping. Remember Pat Cummins had left the India tour midway to see his mother who unfortunately passed away shortly. He didn't play any part in the IPL and the first real cricket he played in over 3 months was against India at the Oval where he was brilliant as well. He went on a run as soon as the ball touched the fence but very soon realized that there was an equally emotional man at the other end. He went and hugged Nathan Lyon, his great friend from New South Wales, and a long-time teammate. These two go back a long way, as long as the last time Australia chased a target of more than 250 which was way back in 2011. The man hitting the winning runs was Pat Cummins and the next man in was Nathan Lyon! Cummins said he took his dad to Villa Park to watch Bruce Springsteen after the conclusion of Day 1 and his happiness was visible to have his dad and his brother with him. The picture of him having a beer with his dad and video-calling someone back home was adorable. Cummins is one of the very few Australian captains that the media likes and everyone seems to look happy to interview him. Someone described him as 'one of the nicest Australians' to have come to the English shores. He himself said that this was the best test match he has been a part of and it is probably true. This summer was always going to define the legacy of this Australian team which has been very successful both home and away. It is going to be an extremely difficult challenge for Cummins to get through all the test matches especially if the pitches are flat and he has to bowl 20 overs in a day like he did at Edgbaston. If he keeps his body intact and wins this series, the first test could go down as the defining moment in his glittering career as an Australian test captain. But irrespective of what happens in the series going forward, this was definitely one of Pat Cummins' finest hours.