Swing when you're winning: England bowler Graham Onions reacts after dismissing Australia captain Ricky Ponting
By so doing, they increased the chances of there being a definite result at Edgbaston, either way, and decreased the prospects of a draw, which would preserve England’s lead.
Still, it was worth the increase in tension. To see England’s two swing bowlers – although you might prefer to classify Graham Onions as a wicket-to-wicket seam-cum-swing bowler – run through Australia in the morning was worth – well, worth waiting through a rained-off Thursday for.
The transformation was astonishing, defying scientific explanation, and the likes of it make cricket in Britain unique. One day the ball does not swing an inch; the next day, on the same ground, it goes round corners. And on the second day of the third Test the Australian batsmen were as startled as an old lady who sees a gang of hoodies coming around a corner.
Both Anderson and Onions were on a hat-trick. Neither achieved one but they still took the honours and opened up the possibility of a definite result here – good for England, or bad – after Thursday’s flatness had suggested a stalemate.
Onions set the tone for England’s surge by taking wickets with his first two balls of the day. If only Andrew Strauss had not started with Stuart Broad after lunch – Broad, out of sorts, setting the wrong tone for the afternoon – Australia’s last two wickets could not have added 60 and given the tourists a working total.
Onions generates surprising pace from a frail physique – not that the souped-up speeds which have been recorded in this series should be believed for a moment. But then Glenn McGrath was slim to the point of thin too.
Anderson is more familiar to the Edgbaston crowd and regularly raised the chant of ‘Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy Anderson’. Yes, he needed the assistance of umpire Rudi Koertzen in a couple of his five dismissals, but it was still the work of a strike bowler, an attack-leader, no longer a novice.
In the 20 Tests since Anderson was recalled in New Zealand, he has averaged 29 per wicket: a goodly price in this day and age of bland pitches. If he was privileged to have a go at a demoralised West Indies at home in May, he had to slog through a long old Test series on sedated Caribbean strips.
It was a shame for England that they could not quite ram their advantage home and demoralise the tourists completely by rolling them over for less than 210 or 220. That would have knocked some wind out of their sails, or shattered the remains of their ‘aura’.
Instead, as usual, they refused to lie down and their tail-enders added those 60 runs which gave Australia a working total.
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