If the plan was to manage expectations before the Waca’s final Ashes fling, it was expertly done. Not hot enough to bake the pitch, we were told by groundstaff. A bit soft, Steve Smith warned. Stories from recent years illustrated that the famous track was like Seattle’s grunge scene: once awesome, long finished.
Australia’s pace trio found otherwise. The stumps score will confirm that this was England’s best shift on tour but it will not show how hard they had to work for their considerable first-day gains. According to CricViz, only once since speed-gun records began has a group of quicks averaged a faster speed than Australia’s did on the first day of this Test.
That too is deceptive. Radar readings do not tell the degree of difficulty for batsmen under fire, especially when short bowling is involved. It is an experience that needs to be taken in with your own eyes to observe the physical and mental toll. And 22,148 spectators had themselves a post-lunch treat.
Sure, before the first break the locals had been sharp. Mitchell Starc all but blew Alastair Cook’s pad off early, before bouncing twice over Tim Paine’s head with deliveries that nearly cleared the rope on the full. The preconditions were there for something special. But the hour after was something else for romantics with long memories.
The magic happened across nine rousing overs, beginning with Josh Hazlewood in his protracted stoush with Mark Stoneman. The Englishman had reached 50 in a hurry after his sandwich. Maybe the modest wave of the bat angered the big quick? In the best traditions of the angry Australian, he bowled as though he took personal offence.
That extra yard immediately found an outside edge. Mitchell Marsh’s first act back in Test cricket was to shell a shocker at slip. Hazlewood cracked on the best way his type knows how, by going upstairs into Stoneman’s helmet. The blow was audible. Hazlewood’s next offering was fended into the gully, but not to hand. He bumped the batsman again, then beat him once more. All in one over. Breathe now, if you dare.
Did his set shape Pat Cummins’s dismissal of Joe Root four balls later? Done in by extra bounce but not much else, garroted down the legside. Bowling in partnerships, as they say. The right-armer’s second ball to new bloke Dawid Malan was a searing bouncer from central casting. Strap in.
Hazlewood’s turn again. He had unfinished business with Stoneman. Beaten. Bumped. Rinse and repeat. Every Waca mouth agape, the umpires involved too. Beaten again. “Now he’s missing straight ones,” opined ABC’s Dirk Nannes, in a lather on the radio call. Bouncer to finish, steepling so much Paine was able only to drag it down with one extended mitt.
“Mr Malan, your interrogator awaits you at the Prindiville Stand End.” The ground announcer didn’t say that, but you could surely see it in Cummins’s flamboyant delivery stride. In an effort to draw every last kilometre from his frame, he was routinely off-balance after unfurling.
Twice in three balls the batsman swayed under bouncers trained on his head. He was hit on the thigh pad. There was an appeal for caught behind. Malan’s response? A mature push for three, a sign of the ton to come.
But three off the last ball meant retaining the strike. To Starc no less, who must have ripped the ball from Hazlewood’s hands to get a go. Three balls in, Malan was now fending from his throat, just evading short leg. Who needs this when fighting for a career? Isn’t Perth placid?
To the first ball of Starc’s next over, Malan did the smart thing and got himself down the other end. But not so fast. Stoneman had yet to face the attack-leader in this fresh spell, with the ground heaving like one imagines it did for Lillee or Thommo or Snow or Curtly. Another short ball, another desperate attempt to get out of the way. But not this time. Maybe he gloved it, maybe he didn’t. No one really knows. But after all that happened, it felt the right ending.
For a time, Malan kept living la vida loca against Starc, haphazardly hooking, surviving while accumulating. But the titillation, for now, was over as the game returned to how we know it more often than not, the roar settling into calm. The scorecard will never know what came before Malan’s maiden three figures. But we do. One last time with feeling. It felt so good.
