schoolboy swotting over his homework.
With the bustling Brad Haddin, Hussey constructed a record-breaking 307-run stand on sturdy foundations, taking a careful 299 balls over their first hundred runs, 158 balls over their second, and 84 over their third. England now need to bat perhaps 150 overs, about twice as long as in their first innings, to salvage a draw; it is not beyond them by any means, but nor theoretically is a political comeback by Margaret Thatcher.
What will gall them is that it could easily have been otherwise. The first hour of the third day was the Test's tensest so far. Channel Nine are introducing new batsmen and bowlers this season with quaint identification portraits: Englishmen and Australians pose uneasily in strangely washed-out colours, which lend them the exsanguinated pallor of the stars of Twilight. Just for once, James Anderson bowled as menacingly as promised on screen, hungry for blood. He bent the ball both ways, used the full width of the crease, and beat the bat almost as often in eight overs as bowlers had in the rest of the game. There will be few better spells this summer, and few better unrewarded ones ever.
Again, the referral system was on trial â and, frankly, flunked. After fifteen hesitant and nervous minutes, Hussey (82) was hit on the pads by Anderson and given out immediately by Aleem Dar. When Hussey challenged, replays suggested that the ball would have hit the stumps but had landed a micron outside leg. If you recall, the referral system was meant to counteract umpiring 'howlers'; this was the kind of fifty-fifty lbw decision that batsmen would once have accepted as their occasional lot, hoping for better luck another day. Yet it was overturned.
Worse was to follow in Anderson's next over, when he bent a ball back into Hussey and hit him on the knee roll on the line of leg stump. This time Dar shook his head slightly; so did Strauss, rather more wearily, having deployed his two referrals unsuccessfully the previous day; Anderson's head was sunk in his hands. It was hard to avoid the sense that Dar, like many an umpire before him, was erring on the side of caution, fearful of another mistake. In doing so, alas, he had perpetrated another, for replays showed the ball to be bisecting middle and leg. And so the endless quest for 'perfect' umpiring led to compound injustice, undermining an excellent official and cheating a deserving bowler. Strauss had previously come out agin the referral system. 'Cricket is about the umpires making decisions,' he observed last year, 'and players living and dying by those decisions.' Nothing occurred here to change his mind.
England did a reasonable job of keeping their cool under the circumstances, although some chagrined and martyred looks were exchanged, and a few words escaped the normally taciturn Anderson and the never knowingly outtalked Broad. The match at this stage was still finely poised. But as the sun emerged, the ball lost its shine, the fielders' legs grew heavy, and Australia began to pull away.
Hussey greeted Swann with dancing feet, launched him down the ground for four to go to 96, then drilled a hole in the covers with a well-timed jab at Broad to attain his twelfth Test century, second in consecutive first-class innings and second in consecutive Ashes innings â heavens, fans were wondering by now, what had all that fuss over his position been about? There was more to it, of course, and none knew better than Hussey, who celebrated with unusual abandon, including a fist-pump from the Lleyton Hewitt playbook. In doing so, he probably infringed all manner of trademarks â a cease and desist order from Hewitt's intellectual property lawyers is probably in the post.
What was perhaps just as interesting was that Haddin was very nearly as animated, giving his own punch of the fist as he ran through, and joining Hussey in a husky embrace. Cricketers enjoy a redemption story even more than fans; it's how they dream
With the bustling Brad Haddin, Hussey constructed a record-breaking 307-run stand on sturdy foundations, taking a careful 299 balls over their first hundred runs, 158 balls over their second, and 84 over their third. England now need to bat perhaps 150 overs, about twice as long as in their first innings, to salvage a draw; it is not beyond them by any means, but nor theoretically is a political comeback by Margaret Thatcher.
What will gall them is that it could easily have been otherwise. The first hour of the third day was the Test's tensest so far. Channel Nine are introducing new batsmen and bowlers this season with quaint identification portraits: Englishmen and Australians pose uneasily in strangely washed-out colours, which lend them the exsanguinated pallor of the stars of Twilight. Just for once, James Anderson bowled as menacingly as promised on screen, hungry for blood. He bent the ball both ways, used the full width of the crease, and beat the bat almost as often in eight overs as bowlers had in the rest of the game. There will be few better spells this summer, and few better unrewarded ones ever.
Again, the referral system was on trial â and, frankly, flunked. After fifteen hesitant and nervous minutes, Hussey (82) was hit on the pads by Anderson and given out immediately by Aleem Dar. When Hussey challenged, replays suggested that the ball would have hit the stumps but had landed a micron outside leg. If you recall, the referral system was meant to counteract umpiring 'howlers'; this was the kind of fifty-fifty lbw decision that batsmen would once have accepted as their occasional lot, hoping for better luck another day. Yet it was overturned.
Worse was to follow in Anderson's next over, when he bent a ball back into Hussey and hit him on the knee roll on the line of leg stump. This time Dar shook his head slightly; so did Strauss, rather more wearily, having deployed his two referrals unsuccessfully the previous day; Anderson's head was sunk in his hands. It was hard to avoid the sense that Dar, like many an umpire before him, was erring on the side of caution, fearful of another mistake. In doing so, alas, he had perpetrated another, for replays showed the ball to be bisecting middle and leg. And so the endless quest for 'perfect' umpiring led to compound injustice, undermining an excellent official and cheating a deserving bowler. Strauss had previously come out agin the referral system. 'Cricket is about the umpires making decisions,' he observed last year, 'and players living and dying by those decisions.' Nothing occurred here to change his mind.
England did a reasonable job of keeping their cool under the circumstances, although some chagrined and martyred looks were exchanged, and a few words escaped the normally taciturn Anderson and the never knowingly outtalked Broad. The match at this stage was still finely poised. But as the sun emerged, the ball lost its shine, the fielders' legs grew heavy, and Australia began to pull away.
Hussey greeted Swann with dancing feet, launched him down the ground for four to go to 96, then drilled a hole in the covers with a well-timed jab at Broad to attain his twelfth Test century, second in consecutive first-class innings and second in consecutive Ashes innings â heavens, fans were wondering by now, what had all that fuss over his position been about? There was more to it, of course, and none knew better than Hussey, who celebrated with unusual abandon, including a fist-pump from the Lleyton Hewitt playbook. In doing so, he probably infringed all manner of trademarks â a cease and desist order from Hewitt's intellectual property lawyers is probably in the post.
What was perhaps just as interesting was that Haddin was very nearly as animated, giving his own punch of the fist as he ran through, and joining Hussey in a husky embrace. Cricketers enjoy a redemption story even more than fans; it's how they dream
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