Beer sales were just a little brisker than typical on the 7.43 out of Euston on Friday morning, but then it wasn’t carrying your usual commuter crowd. There were a few hundred expat cricket fans on board, making the early run up to Birmingham for the Trans-Tasman derby between Australia and New Zealand at Edgbaston. As the train left Coventry the announcer reassured them all that, if they were quick, they had time for one more round before they reached New Street. Which set the day up perfectly. Because in between all the longueurs while the showers blew over, carrying fat cold raindrops, everything in the match happened in a hurry. It was all about time, who had it, and how they used it. With so many quick bowlers playing, there was precious little of it to go around.
It’s a hard road, Edgbaston, for Australia’s fast bowlers. It’s been 16 years since the team last won a game here, back in the 2001 Ashes. Since then, a lot of quick men have taken a lot of hard knocks at the ground. In the 2004 Champions Trophy, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee were rattled by Marcus Trescothick and Michael Vaughan, the first little inkling that the 2005 Ashes was going to be a very different sort of series to the ones just before it.
In 2010 Australia played a couple of T20s against Pakistan, and Dirk Nannes, Mitchell Johnson, and Shaun Tait were thrashed around by Umar Akmal. And then, in 2013, Mitchell Starc had one of the worst days of his career here, giving up 75 runs in 10 overs against Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott.
Starc is the only member of that particular attack who is back again this time – senior man, now, in a gang of four, along with James Pattinson, Pat Cummins, and Josh Hazlewood. In theory, the finest, fastest, and most exciting bowling attack in the sport at the moment. Though like their predecessors, they struggled here.
Australia haven’t actually managed to get them all into the same team, largely because Cummins and Pattinson have both had so many injuries over the years. And we’re still waiting for them to make their debut as a supergroup now, since Pattinson was left out against New Zealand, to make room for burly, bald John Hastings, the Pete Best of the band.
Not that Pattinson’s omission was all that reassuring for the rest of us. He has taken 20 wickets at 11 runs each in the county championship so far this season, another 11 at 28 in the Royal London Cup, and he still cannot get in the team. All cricket is improved by quick bowling. But, fun as the spectacle was for the neutrals at the ground, they wouldn’t have had to think too far ahead to start fretting about what those four fast bowlers might do to England if they stay fit, in their group match here next Saturday, and, of course, in the Ashes series beyond it, looming into view at the far end of the year.
“You can prepare for the storm by latching the windows and sandbagging the doors,” Jacques Kallis once said when he was talking about what it was like to face Mitchell Johnson, “but when the rain comes, it’s still a surprise.” New Zealand weren’t looking to lay down defences. Their openers, Luke Ronchi and Martin Guptill, decided the best thing to do was counterattack. Starc started fast, and full and straight, while Hazlewood opened at the other end. Only, the white ball just wouldn’t swing for either of them. Guptill went straight into business, hit five glorious fours before he misjudged a shot, and was too early on a delivery from Hazlewood and hit a leading edge to point.
Ronchi decided to heave his bat at everything in reach. He would hit an exquisite shot one minute, and a ridiculous one the next. He took a shine to Cummings, who came on as first change in the seventh over.
A six over cover, struck with what seemed to be the slightest tap of the bat, was the shot of the day. One moment he was stepping back to leg to uppercut a six over point, the next coming across inside the line to steer four over the keeper’s head. When he was dropped at mid-on off Starc, he followed up by hitting the same shot again, only this time a little harder and higher, for a four. Cummins gave up 52 runs in his first five overs.
Meanwhile, Kane Williamson was easing into a masterly innings, one which would end, two hours later, with a score of exactly 100. Guptill and Ronchi were in a rush, playing at the limit of their capabilities. But Williamson, like all great batsmen, all great athletes, simply seemed to have more time to play with than everyone else, as if he experienced everything in slower motion than his team-mates, and had, somehow, a different perception of time, one that allowed him to wait ever-so-late to play his cuts, or stride forward to pull off his front foot. When he went, everything snapped back into real time again, and you were reminded just how quick these Australians are. Hazlewood swept through the New Zealand team, and finished with six for 52.
