The Ashes 2009: Second Test at Lord’s

Incredible!! That is the only way one can describe the way England came back into the series and won the second test at Lord’s. This test match truly belonged to Freddie Flintoff who has announced his retirement from test cricket at the end of this series. England had a great start in the first innings and although the middle order frittered away this great start, they had a decent total on the board. Mitchell Johnson who was so successful as the spearhead of the attack in South Africa seemed like he had a bottle of vodka for breakfast. Nothing landed on the proverbial penny or 3 feet on either side of it. Then when Australians came out to bat Jimmy Anderson produced a fine spell of swing bowling to rock Australia back. Once the Australians conceded a 200+ runs lead, their only hope of saving the test match was praying for rain.

But this test will be remembered for the classic British heroics of Andrew Flintoff. This was his last test match at Lord’s and therefore he had to produce some heroics. He did that in the only way he can in his own style. There are lots of articles written about his antics on the final day and some of these are really noteworthy. Peter English titled his article “Flintoff, bloody Flintoff” and Dean Jones commented that he played a great game but the pity was that he is not Australian. I think these gems like Flintoff, Kapil Dev, Botham, Tendulkar, Imran Khan, Graeme Smith have something wired differently in their brain that just gets them to behave abnormally under pressure. That is why all of them are greats. Well played Freddie!!

I thought Strauss did a wise thing by batting despite having the option to enforce the follow on. Chasing 100-150 runs in the fourth innings is not a very good prospect. Also once the target was set at 500+ runs, the Aussies must have realized they cannot win. This ‘not enforcing a follow on’ is a new trend that is emerging these days and I think the captain puts a lot of premium on his bowlers in reaching this decision. Bowling continuously to get 20 wickets on the trot is a herculean task and in a tight schedule you do not want to lose your main frontline bowlers to injuries. You have got to keep them fresh. Plus a quick fire 200 odd runs makes the job of chasing the target that much difficult.

The umpiring in this test match was very pedestrian and almost all the dubious decisions went England’s way. One can live with a few wrong decisions as long as the umpires are consistent about it but here it was a bit inconsistent. Once in a while it is good to see the Australian side on the wrong end of the stick. Be that the lbw/caught dismissal of Ricky Ponting in the first innings or the dismissals of Phil Hughes and Mike Hussey in the second innings. To their credit the Aussies took these blows on their chins and made no mention of this in the post match comments. From what Shane Warne has been telling on the commentary they have some unique methods of showing dissent in the dressing room that is. For example, he mentioned Michael Slater dumping his bat in the toilet, so that he would not use it again would you believe? Broken chairs, broken glass etc must be routine ordinary stuff. I wish there was a gallery of these pictures after some of the most controversial dismissals. Like Ganguly in Sydney.