Third Test, day three (close): England (116-2) trail Australia (263) by 147 runs at Edgbaston.
If England win the fourth Test starting on Friday at Headingley, the Ashes will be theirs. The possibilities have been reduced by the rain. The greatest prize is within the reach of Andrew Strauss’s team.
To clinch the deal, assuming a draw here, England need the ball to swing in Leeds, exposing the Australians’ weakness. When England’s selectors nominate their fourth Test squad, they have to include Ryan Sidebottom as well as Steve Harmison, to allow for three swing bowlers in the final eleven.
As a former Yorkshire player, Sidebottom used his local knowledge to fine effect in the Headingley Test of 2007 against West Indies, swinging the ball late and far on a full length. Together with James Anderson and Graham Onions, Sidebottom could exploit the biggest development which this series has seen: when, having lost six wickets in the whole of the Cardiff Test, the Australians lost six wickets in a truncated session at Lord’s, and seven on Friday morning at Edgbaston, shattering their own aura with their technical inexpertise.
Local knowledge counts for more at Headingley than at most grounds, largely because of the slope. When Australia’s pace bowlers have to run down it from the Kirkstall Lane end and avoid over-stepping, or run ‘up the cellar steps’, the fact that Ben Hilfenhaus, Peter Siddle and Mitchell Johnson are in alien territory could prove the tipping-point in a series which is still balanced on a tight-rope.
To make the ball swing at Headingley, England’s pace bowlers need cloud-cover. So it was no use England’s supporters lamenting the rain yesterday which caused play to be abandoned as early as 2.30 in the afternoon.
It is destined to be a very English summer, whatever the forecasters said, and this is helping England more than hindering them. Without cloud-cover, Headingley offers batting conditions, the environment in which the tourists are stronger.
This does not add up to be the most glorious of England campaigns. But then most of England’s Ashes wins at home through the ages have been hacked out of rain and mud, draws and doggedness, low scores and the narrowest of margins.
The dazzling double-hundreds, huge totals, brilliant spin and forthright pace: they have been the stuff of Australia's Ashes triumphs in Australia.
Australia, as we all recollect, have won an Ashes series by a five-match margin. But England, in England, have never won more than three Tests in any series - and twice, in 1981 and 1985, they needed a six-Test series to get that far.
If there is any parallel to this current series, then so far it has resembled 1926 and 1953 when England scrapped between the showers and hung on by their fingernails to win 1-0.
But then this was always going to be a series decided by narrow margins, so well-matched are the two countries in English conditions. A few minutes in Cardiff, a few umpiring decisions one day at Lord’s, an hour of cloud-cover here or there: the urn itself is fragile, having fallen from a mantelpiece and been reassembled before it was presented to MCC, and this summer the ultimate prize is hanging by threads.
It is highly desirable that it should be the cricketers who fashion the final outcome, not the umpires who decide it. Since Aleem Dar gave an exemplary display in the opening Test - he could have been the man of the match in Cardiff - the standard has slipped below the level that an Ashes series is entitled to expect.
Rudi Koertzen has had a fine career but his 100th and 101st Tests have not been part of this portfolio. His mistakes at Lord’s and Edgbaston have worked in England’s favour, and even if they have not affected the 1-0 scoreline they have given the impression that England have the upper hand, which is illusory. And the standard might not improve: standing in the last two Tests with Billy Bowden, commendably calm in 2005, is Asad Rauf.
The ICC have given each of the five umpires in this series two Tests each, an arrangement which appears to have the merit of fairness - but fairness to whom? Surely the prime objective is to have the best neutral umpires available, while not expecting one umpire to stand in all five Tests. Therefore Dar should be standing in more than two Tests, Koertzen and Rauf in not so many.
Rauf could have some crucial decisions to make at the Oval if Brett Lee proves his fitness in the Australians’ game between the fourth and fifth Test: a two-day game against the less-than-full-strength England Lions in Canterbury.
Steady as Hilfenhaus has been, the one penetrative spell of bowling which the Australians have come up with all tour was Lee’s spell of reverse-swing at Worcester: and if England go to the Oval only 1-0 up, Lee could upset their apple-cart and level the series, especially if he receives the same questionable support as Anderson received from Koertzen in his five-wicket spell here, when Michael Clarke and Johnson were found guilty rather than innocent.
England are more likely to defeat Australia at Headingley than at the Oval. The beauty of a five-Test series is that it tests the depth of each country’s resources, but England will not see it as beauty at present. Their collective batting is fraying at the edges, and there is nobody - but nobody - to replace Ravi Bopara if he has another bad game at Headingley.
This is a feature of the modern game of the one-day era: the absence of veterans with Test experience in reserve. England sorely need an old pro to steady their middle-order, but none exists in county cricket: no Vaughan, no Thorpe, no Hussain, to steel young nerves.
The most discouraging sign for England supporters - more so than his uncommitted defensive stroke and inside edge - was the simple catch that Bopara dropped when the ball came over his head and he had time to reach it with soft hands, but tension forbade. The pressure will be removed if England win at Headingley. If England draw or lose there, it will be nothing compared to what prevails at the Oval.
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