Tour beginnings? By the end of this piece, we still haven’t left the bloody country! Read on…

I’ve set the scene for the Ashes, now to set the scene for our trip, and in this instalment, talk about the first day of the series. In 2002 of course, Sir Peter and I were at the Woolloongabba in Brisbane for the start of that series, but now we faced watching it in the dead of a dismal London Autumn night, about as far away from the heat and humidity of Queensland’s capital. There were a few pangs of regret that I wasn’t there, and some dewy eyed memories of the great holiday rose to the surface, but the prospect of setting out in three days time was always there. Of course, at that time the hopes were up. Let the story continue….

As Day One of the Ashes series loomed, so too did the prospect of the flight out to Australia and the start of the holiday. The schedule had been agreed, sort of, and it panned out thus…

Saturday 25th November – Flight to Singapore. Meet up at Sir Peter’s house, lift to Hammersmith tube via the conveyance of the Earl of Norbury, and then on to Heathrow Terminal 3.

Sunday 26th November – 5 Hour Stop Over at Changi Airport after the first leg of the flight. A chance to spend in the shops, eat in the restaurants, and drink in the bars. Last time around we had John Edrich and Paul Allott coming out on the plane with us.

Monday 27th November – Land at Adelaide Airport at around 7 am, and get through quarantine. Hire Car. Head South out of Adelaide towards the South Australia / Victoria border. Preliminary aim to set up camp in Mount Gambier.

Tuesday 28th November – Get up early and get on the Great Ocean Road, see the sights of this “legendary” coastline and then head on into Melbourne. Jet lag permitting, an evening on the ale.

Wednesday 29th November – Melbourne, including day-night Ford Ranger Cup game between Victoria and Queensland, with some beverages post game. Maybe a touch of sight-seeing if the mood took us early on.

Thursday 30th November – A day to ramble around Melbourne, or maybe drive a little further afield until our 6 pm flight to Adelaide. Once in Adelaide, meet up with Reg at hired apartment in Glenelg

Friday 1st December – Tuesday 5th December – Adelaide Test Match. All sortsof japery. Bald Eagle to show his face.

Wednesday 6th December – Flight to Perth, Hire Car. Head South. Gets a bit more hazy from here on in…

Wednesday 6th – Wednesday 13th December – Find something to do on the hoof.

Thursday 14th-Monday 18th December – Perth Test Match

Tuesday 19th December – Early hours of the morning flight out of Perth back to London via Singapore.

Everything seemed in order. Our plans were pretty much in a shape we were happy with. As we were due to land in Adelaide in the morning, around 10 a.m., we believed that we could dent 300 of the 600 miles or so to Melbourne, find somewhere to sleep and then get out to drive down the Great Ocean Road very early, arriving in Melbourne in the early evening.

All that we hoped for was that England did not embarrass themselves in the first test match, and that the Adelaide test would perhaps see us on level terms, or ahead, in this match up. How much more fun would it be if England were the dominant team, the one the Aussies had to chase rather than the dreadful mess we were four years before.

As the hype grew, I settled into my sofa late on Wednesday 22nd November to watch the opening salvo of the 2006-7 Ashes series. It seems odd now to reflect that I was on my own, laying on a sofa in the dead of night with no-one about to talk to or just be comfortable in their presence. My dear mum would have watched the opening bursts with me, and probably woken me up the following morning with the score. Mum loved cricket, because, as she said “I live in a house with men (dad, me and my brother) and it would be pointless not to get interested in what they are.” Dad would probably have gone to bed, probably telling me not to get too excited, and that England would get hammered. People wonder where my pessimism comes from, eh?

What happened next, is legendary. Even more than the long-hop Phil de Freitas bowled to Michael Slater twelve years before. Probably more legendary than Nasser Hussain bottling it at the toss four years before. Australia won the toss and decided, as most sane captains did, to bat first.

Cricinfo, in its short commentary piece, summed up the anticipation for the first ball..

Now then, it’ll be Steve Harmison bowling to Justin Langer for the first ball of the Ashes. The roar goes up – it is unbelievably loud out there – “Langer’s wearing a sweater! He’s obviously in it for the long haul,” says Andrew Miller.

Steve Harmison was ready to bowl. Although England lost the 1st test at Lord’s by a heavy margin, one of the memories (and I was fortunate enough to be there) was to watch Harmison in his pomp pound the Aussies – hitting Langer, cutting Ponting on the cheek. The Aussies had respect for his pace and bounce, they knew he could, when the moment suited, be the man that struck fear into test cricketers around the world.

This is how Cricinfo described Harmison’s first two balls of the Ashes 2005…

0.1 Harmison to Langer, no run, just short of a good length and outside the off stump, Langer watches the ball carefully and lets it go through to the wicketkeeper, and with that the Ashes are finally under way!

0.2 Harmison to Langer, no run, just short of a good length once more,
this time on the stumps, Justin Langer takes his eyes off the ball 
and cops a nasty blow on the arm, just above the elbow Langer in a 
bit of pain there. The ball hit him just above where the forearm protector 
ends. That is a painful blow.  Errol Alcott the Australian physio has 
run on. Already the first bit of action in this series Harmison 
right on the money from the word go here

Harmison rumbled up to the crease. Justin Langer, the earnest, pugnacious left hander, aka “The Poison Gnome” was, like 2005, the man at the other end. We watched as Harmison ran up. He let go of the ball….

Harmison to Langer, 1 wide, and it’s wild and woolly, a massive wide taken by first slip. Welcome back to Australia, Steve

It just doesn’t quite capture it does it. On a late, cold, November night, coffee in hand to keep me awake, the prospect of two more days in the office clearing the decks for a three and a half week absence, this was not the start I wanted to see to get the blood pumping, raise the old spirits etc….. There I was, needing England to get my hopes up with work becoming a right royal pain in the rectum, and Harmison started off like a novice county trundler unable to control a new ball. I was under the cosh before I left work with a lawyer selection challenged by an exporter of extreme moral dubiety, and I wanted to be comforted in the knowledge I would see an England team that meant business.

I seem to recall texting Sir Peter about it being a good start, or some other type of sarcasm. Australia off the mark with a wide which nestled into the hands of Flintoff at second slip. Harmison went through the release motion again as if to indicate it was just a hiccup in his wrist position. It smacked of under-preparedness and England had that suspicion lingering with them.It can always be easy in hindsight to point at one moment that summed up the series result. As this tome will, hopefully, point out, I don’t think it was this one ball that set the tone of our horrendous defeat. Brisbane was always going to be the toughest test, because of our short preparation, it is probably the ground the Aussies have most “home advantage” in (as evidenced by their stellar record there) and because the Aussies were going to come at England hard. But it is hard to get away from this ball being the talisman of the series; a harbinger of all that was to come. It showed that England weren’t ready; it was an indicator that the pace force of 2005 wasn’t in the same shape (we suspected it before this); Harmison was to so often disappoint; that Australia weren’t in need of gifts but we would be handing them out. And the image of our captain laughing it off still strikes me. He’s a professional cricketer. He needed to be ready. He wasn’t. And our captain took him off after two overs that cost 17 runs. We may have laughed at the Aussie boot camps, but England’s lack of proper preparation, their “it’ll be all right on the night” attitude was exposed in one ball. Sure, Harmison had had a side injury prior to this test, but Old Trafford apart, he’d been bowling a load of old cack since 2005, and this was the shining example.

 Richard Williams in the Guardian seemed to capture it in the way many England fans I know, felt…

“And so it came to pass that the worst fears of the nation’s cricket lovers were amply realised. Loping in off his long run under a cloudless sky, Steve Harmison sent the first ball of the 2006-07 Ashes series – the most eagerly anticipated in history, it has been said – bouncing straight into the hands of his captain, Andrew Flintoff, at second slip.

It was supposed to have been a snorter, the sort of delivery with which Harmison sent Justin Langer sprawling only two balls into the first Test at Lord’s on that morning in July last year when England threw down the gauntlet to Australia at the start of a series which finished with a champagne shower in Trafalgar Square. But instead of rubbing a bruised elbow, as he did 16 months ago, Langer could stand back and smile to himself. Harmison the spearhead had turned into Harmison the dampest of squibs, just when it mattered most. And it got worse. Langer clipped the fourth ball of the over to the boundary behind square leg and sent the fifth to the rope through the gap between third slip and gully. After one over Australia were nine for none and their supporters were not alone in wondering if they had witnessed a portent for the entire series.

The first ball, the first over, the first hour, the first morning: the significance of the opening exchanges had been talked from all sides. And here, on a day when all England’s preparation was focused on an early impact, their principal strike weapon was proving to be unfit for purpose.”

I don’t recall staying up long to watch the proceedings. England’s start deteriorated while I remained awake, and after the first over cost 9, the third over cost 8, and then Anderson was introduced, I’d had my fill and tiredness creeped in. Sir Peter and I concluded our light discourse, and so to bed….

Here’s how a restless sleeper like me does it (without alcohol). I have a TV in my bedroom and in the middle of the night, without the glasses with which I can see, I peer through the gloom to see what is happening. In the old days this used to be a lot more fun. By old days, I mean the days when the score wasn’t permanently stationed in the top/bottom corner of the screen and you had to work out who was batting. In the really olden days it was switching on the portable radio, putting on the headphones and listening to Radio 3. Before that, it was a wake the parents up putting on of the radio in the living room and hoping mum wasn’t too mad that I woke her up. My brother could sleep through a hurricane, he wasn’t a problem.

So back to the TV. I don’t know how many times I got up to see what had happened, because, frankly, I didn’t want to know. I think I saw the 1 by the wicket column just before lunch, so at least we weren’t going to be totally embarrassed. I think I woke up later when they were three down, and then I woke at 7ish to see they were still three down and that play was wrapping up. I hoped upon hope that we would not see a repeat of that fateful day four years ago when the day finished at 364/2. As I caustically remarked at the time, when play finished at 346/3, we’d got a few runs less expensive and been able to take one more wicket – that was four years of progress.

Unlike 2002, we hadn’t had our best bowler on the day injured. However, we’d seen our main strike bowler bowl like he was on strike. He’d bowled 12 overs all day, been taken off after the 45th over and never returned. That was our main man. Rendered useless by a combination of ineffectiveness and insufficient preparation. England’s spearhead blunted.

Ponting, as he did in 2002, nabbed himself a first day ton. Unlike 2002, when batting like it was the easiest thing in the world, he did not give it away and remained undefeated at the end of the day’s play on 137. I suppose we’d got Hayden out earlier than 2002, but in such crumbs of comfort there is little else to find.

The strange thing was that I didn’t really care that much, an experience I have since encountered more often with my other sporting passions. The build up, the getting excited for an occasion now seems to mean more than the thing itself. In the intervening period between my two Ashes tours, another of my major sporting loves, the Boston Red Sox, had come from three games down to win a best of seven series against the Yankees. That had been pure sporting theatre. The 2005 Ashes was likewise, because in both those amazing contests, the evolution of the competition had made it so alluring. You can’t just paste excitement on the walls, it has to evolve. You can’t breathlessly tell me a sporting occasion is going to be great before it happens. Greatness is foisted upon it after it has evolved. For all the hype about Ashes 2006/7, the score was 0-0 and several facts had to be placed before the sporting public in advance.

Pro-England winning –

Ashes win in 205

Against England winning –

Lost away test series in Pakistan, did not win in India, drew at home to Sri Lanka

Australia had won all but one of their tests since.

Australia had not lost a test series at home since the early 1990s.

The only teams to draw series in the past 10 years had much of the series ruined by rain (New Zealand) or faced a weakened Australia without McGrath and Warne (India)

Not one of the England batting line-up had a test ton in Australia to their name.

Key cogs in the 2005 Ashes line-up were not there. Michael Vaughan, Marcus Trescothick and Simon Jones were replaced by Paul Collingwood, Alastair Cook and Jimmy Anderson. That is not an upgrade.

Key injuries, as always, afflicted England (Jones, Vaughan, Giles) rather than Australia (Watson).

 

I saw no evidence, even now sitting in hindsight, to suggest that that we would win. Rather there was slightly more hope. The suspicion, since proved with bells and whistles on, was that 2005 was the zenith of that team’s powers, the summit they felt they needed to reach, and that they could not haul themselves back up to those heights again.

Again, I might be saying this now, after I’ve written the briefest of pieces on day one of the Ashes, but it was as if the fears and dreads I had in my head had all come out on one day of the match. In truth this team looked like 2002’s more than 2005’s and all real evidence pointed to that. I remember sitting in my Brisbane lodgings in 2002 on the eve of the series and the late David Hookes saying “England can’t win a test because I can’t see them taking 20 Australian wickets”. After a day toiling in Brisbane, that was the thought here.

Enough of the misery, I’ve dredged up a few e-mails from the old archives from the day before and the early knockings in the test….

Sir Peter, in his Churchillian manner, sounded the bugles…

“Think of Compton in 1947 – a glorious summer!
Botham in 1981
JOD live at the Conq 2006
No quarter in Brisbane – bring on the beer wh**es”

An amazing load of old cobblers. I’ve no idea why he got Compton six years early and us English have lived off Botham for years. No comment on JOD. No Lino neither.

Dmitri invoked the spirit of the New Jersey legends so loved by Sir Peter..

“May you be half way there. May we be living on a prayer. May you take my hand. We’ll Make It. I swear…… or at least POD will…..”

This did not elicit a written response.

Reg, of course, was in the advance party, and his report back on day 1 was subdued.

“Not a good day today guys- Harmison’s first delivery will be talked about for years!
 
Good seats in the shade all day – no rucksacks allowed although my camera was okay (I didn’t bother with the camcorder)
 
still, onwards and upwards – there’s always tomorrow/Adelaide/Perth etc etc”

Even the rallying cry seemed hollow. He’s certainly correct about the first delivery though. I’m sure Harmison has never really recovered from it, because this gave the real first vision of the prima donna who didn’t like to tour, and the man who could not rely on talent alone. He also seemed to capture Brisbane in a nutshell – the ground sounded like it had been policed by the Gestapo. More on this later on.

Having just purchased a small rucksack (due to new limited hand baggage rules enforced due to terrorist threats) I wondered how you carried into the ground those essentials needed for a day of test cricket in the blazing heat…

“No rucksacks?

 

So where do you keep the sun cream, hat, bottled water etc?”

Reg returned in forthright style…

“sun cream on your skin, hat on your head & the rest in a carrier bag
 
but we’re in the shade so haven’t bothered with any slip slap slop – although by the performance of some of our boys I’d quite like to “slip slap slop” them around a bit
 
Here’s to rain
 
and drinking with bow-legged women”

Ah yes, the rain. Rule One in Australia. Brisbane 1994 apart, if you need it to rain in Australia, it won’t. Their forecasting from the “Bureau of Meteorology” is atrocious. They hire a witch doctor or a water diviner to do it, I swear. I don’t pretend to understand the last bit. Perhaps Reg could let us know what he meant.

 

This brought the later party another day nearer the tour, with just the prospect of watching Day 2 through a drunken haze, and Day 3 through a nervous pre-travelling frenzy. Day 4 would be played while we were in the air from Heathrow to Singapore, and Day 5 would start just as we would be in our hire car on the way out of Adelaide.