On the lost art of playing for the draw

Writing before the start of the third day at Old Trafford, it is tempting to agree that England are now engaged merely in damage limitation, hoping to escape with a draw and arrive at the Oval with the series still to be won. Such hope may have withered by the time I finish writing, expired by the time you are reading this. But you never know.

Once upon a time – I choose the phrase because what follows may indeed seem like a fairy-tale to younger readers – facing a first innings score of just under 500 with three days to play would have been regarded as a difficult task, but not a daunting one. At this same Old Trafford in July 1964 Australia declared their first innings closed at 656 for 8, their captain Bobby Simpson having made a handy 311. Did England crumble? Certainly not. John Edrich went as quickly as Joe Denly did last night, but Geoff Boycott and his captain Ted Dexter put on more than a hundred, and then Dexter and Ken Barrington added another 250 or so. Dexter made 174, Barrington 256, and England were eventually all out for 611, and the match was drawn. It was a very dull game, a war of attrition on a slow and dead pitch, as I remember. In Australia’s innings Warwickshire’s Rom Cartwright bowled 77 over to take 2 for 118. The Australian off-spinner Tom Veivers clocked up 95 overs and one ball, as many as four or five bowlers manage in a day’s Test cricket now.

Ben Stokes may have taken command at Headingley, but this seems likely to be remembered as Steve Smith’s Ashes. There have always been Test series in which one batsman is in such magnificent form that the bowlers are brought to the point of losing hope, their supporters taken well beyond that point. Bradman obviously had that effect. Gary Sobers in 1966, Viv Richards ten years later, David Gower in 1985, all batted as if the bowlers existed only to allow them to display their genius. Smith has been like that these last weeks.

All the same it’s absurd to say you can’t get him out. He had after all two fortunate escapes yesterday. Jofra Archer dropped a hard caught-and-bowled chance when Smith was still in the sixties. Had he taken it, the headline might have been “Smith fails”. (“Bradman Fails”, cried the Worcester Evening Post when The Don was bowled for 107 in 1948, having been accustomed to make a double century in the Australians’ opening match in Worcester.)

And then of course Jack Leach did get him out, in one of the ways that has always seemed possible: caught at slip, a classic slow-left hander’s wicket. Jubilation immediately, as we know, turned to lamentation when the cameras revealed that Leach had overstepped the line and delivered a No Ball. Oh misery! It’s understandable if a fast bowler striving for pace oversteps the line, but a slow left-armer? Vic Marks explains that it was a slower ball, and sometimes when a spinner bowls that his front foot is held up longer in the air and comes down on the wrong side of the line. So Smith survived to delight, frustrate or dismay.

His redemption is surely complete, sand-paper blown away by the wind of success. But spare a thought for his companion in that misdemeanour, David Warner, back in the pavilion once again without a run to his name, his innings over while late-comers were making their way to their seats. Davey Warner has been an opener bowlers go in dread of. He has 21 Test hundreds to his name, but Stuart Broad has cast a spell on him. Either the edge of Warner’s bat is drawn to the ball or the ball nips back and raps him on the pads in front of the stumps. Seventy years ago Alec Bedser gained such dominance over another brilliant left-hander, Arthur Morris, that Morris became known as “Bedser’s Bunny”. Yet Morris, like Warner, was a wonderful batsman, and now Warner finds himself taking the long walk back to the pavilion with no runs to his name and a rueful smile on his face. One reflects how easily it might have been the other way round: Warner carving centuries, Smith shuffling across the stumps and edging the ball to keeper or slips. Such are the vagaries of form, the ironies of cricket.

Of course England had their chances to restrict Australia. If you can’t get Smith out, there’s still a man at the other end. But immediately after lunch Jason Roy dropped a sharpish chance off Tim Paine at second slip. One journalist remarked that he shouldn’t have been there because he doesn’t field in the slips for Surrey. Well, of course, he doesn’t play often for Surrey, and when he does it’s usually in white ball cricket where you seldom have slips. So the truth is  that, thanks to the ECB and their time-tabling of cricket, our fielders are rarely in the slips or at short-leg except in Test matches. No doubt they do a lot of close-catching practice, but, as with net practice for batsmen, this is no substitute for time in the middle.

Well, over to England’s batsmen now. Can any of them do a Smith? After one day’s play in the Ashes series of 1936- 37, Neville Cardus asked Bradman if he would like to have dinner with him. The Don politely declined, saying he was going to have an early night “because I really must score 200 tomorrow.” He was as good as his word. I wonder if Joe Root went early to bed with the same thought in his mind.