Atherton on 2005: fierce first hour at Lord's that left Australia bloodied

Times

6 days ago

For the then travel editor of the Telegraph group, Graham Boynton, July 2005 provided two bucket-list opportunities: a Lions tour of New Zealand and the Lord's Ashes Test. On July 21, which dawned dull and overcast, Boynton queued outside the Grace Gates from 6am, keen to ensure he could bag a favourite seat in the turret of the old Pavilion.
When the gates finally opened that morning, there was the usual unseemly rush from the MCC members — the 'Donkey Derby', as the England players called it — to make good the claims for a prize viewing spot. By that stage, both teams were already in the ground, England's having travelled from the Landmark hotel, in Marylebone, and Australia's from the Kensington Garden hotel.
Adam Gilchrist was feeling typically nauseous. Although a two-times Ashes winner, he always felt this way before the start of a series against England: would he be a part of a team that finally lost Australia's grip on the urn? It was a peculiar kind of pressure, heightened that year by the real sense of expectation among the home supporters and England's evident strength in the one-day games preceding the Test series.
A week or two earlier, Gilchrist had sent Teddy Roosevelt's 'The Man in the Arena' speech to his team-mates, with some encouraging words about how close they were to finding their best form. That he felt the need to send it at all may have also betrayed some of the worry and fear that rose again now that the Test series was close.
Australia were strengthened by the return of the great Shane Warne and Justin Langer, who had missed the one-day matches. It was Langer's first Test at Lord's and his feelings of nausea were also rising once Ricky Ponting had won the toss and elected to bat, not helped by the smells of coffee, bacon and tobacco that wafted towards the dressing room as he padded up. To calm his nerves, Langer listened to Eminem's Lose Yourself on his headphones.
'Look, if you had one shot or one opportunityTo seize everything you ever wanted in one momentWould you capture it, or just let it slip?… You can do anything you set your mind to, man'
In the England dressing room, Michael Vaughan gave some brief, final thoughts. Like Ben Stokes now, Vaughan was not one for heightening the tension or pressure, and he told his players to relax — as best they could — and enjoy themselves. Duncan Fletcher reminded them to 'get in their [the Australians'] space' and stand up to what he termed 'the schoolyard bully'.
That virtually every England player eventually made a point of recalling the noise in the Long Room as they walked out on that first morning signified the rare atmosphere, although each had their own take on it. Marcus Trescothick thought the sound like the thunder of an underground train approaching the next stop. Vaughan described it as a 'throaty growl'. Simon Jones remembered the 'roaring and the shouting'.
Steve Harmison thought the cheering of posh men did not sound much like the cheering on the terraces of his home town football club, Ashington. That they all felt the need to remark on it, however, suggests the atmosphere was far removed from the norm. Instead of looking up briefly from their morning papers as the players strolled by, the MCC members roused themselves to fever pitch.
Normally, Matthew Hoggard would take the first over, but that morning Vaughan changed tack and gave the new ball to the pumped-up Harmison from the Pavilion End. What followed was one of Harmison's fiercest spells in an England shirt, the start of what Langer called the best session of cricket he experienced in his Test career, and a marker for what was to come.
With his second ball, Harmison struck Langer a nasty blow on the right elbow, requiring treatment from Errol Alcott, the Australian physiotherapist, for an egg-sized lump that duly appeared. As he took time out to get feeling back in his hand and arm, Langer said to Matthew Hayden, his opening partner, 'These guys mean business!' In his third over, Harmison hit Hayden on the helmet with a short ball, to confirm Langer's intuition.
After Hayden was dismissed by Hoggard, Ponting became the third batsman to be hit in the opening hour, when a short ball from Harmison rattled the Australian captain's helmet with such vigour that blood was drawn from the cheekbone, resulting in a scar that Ponting still carries to this day.
Halfway through the 11th over of the morning, drinks were called as Ponting took treatment. Neither Harmison nor England's fielders inquired, as would be the custom, whether Ponting was OK at this point. This angered Langer, who shouted, at no one in particular: 'Is this what it has come to? Is it war then?'
Two things were apparent in that first hour to offer a clue as to England's eventual series victory, even though they lost the match heavily. The first, was the intensity and cutting edge of the home attack, and the second was the success of the planning and strategy to each Australian batsman.
There was a clue, for example, in the way Hoggard worked over Hayden, with fields set to nullify his booming off-side play. Fletcher had outlined England plans before the match and to Hayden, the bowlers were to 'look to get a nick from a fourth-stump line,' to 'bowl your bouncer on leg stump' and 'bowl dot balls' because Hayden, according to Fletcher, 'has a big ego and doesn't like being tied down'. They were told to set a catcher 'on the drive' because he could 'hit in the air through mid-off/extra cover'.
To Gilchrist, they were told to search for a 'nick behind from off stump or just outside' and 'go around the wicket and cramp him for room'. Later on that first day, Andrew Flintoff dismissed Gilchrist from round the wicket, which would be a running theme of the series, reducing Australia's wicketkeeper to a shadow of the player who had tormented England previously.
The potency of England's attack was evident to all. Throughout the series, England's bowlers would prove to be quicker and more hostile than Australia's and more skilful with the old ball, giving Vaughan an attack that had the wherewithal to take 20 wickets in a variety of conditions. Has there been a better or more rounded England pace attack ever than the quartet of Harmison, Hoggard, Flintoff and Jones?
All that was ahead, of course. As the dust settled on a spicy contest, won by Australia by 239 runs, Langer led the traditional celebration of a Test-match victory by singing the team song. There was a sting to this story though: the Australians stayed so late that England's players had left by the time the song was conducted, and they marched into the England dressing room to sing it.
In his book, Keeping My Head, Langer writes in detail about this error of judgment. He began the revelry by taking the mickey out of his team-mates, in particular Glenn McGrath, who had been given some gold boots to celebrate taking his 500th Test wicket, and then he noticed the England players' name tags were still written above the plush, leather seats where they changed. He began to take the mickey out of them, too, in their absence.
'And so I went around the England players having a laugh at their expense,' he later wrote. 'We finished with a raucous rendition of the team song and then left. Call it arrogant, call it fun — nowadays I just call it stupid. Forget 'Pidgeon' [McGrath] and his gold boots, I was the knob that night and it came back to bite me and the team on the arse.' Not that we knew it then, although the first hour of the series had offered plenty of clues.
First Ashes Test, Lord's July 21 to 24, 2005Australia won by 239 runs
Australia first inningsJ Langer c Harmison b Flintoff 40 (44 balls)M Hayden b Higgard 12 (25)R Ponting (capt) c Strauss b Harmison 9 (18)D Martyn c G Jones b S Jones 2 (4)M Clarke lbw b S Jones 11 (22)S Katich c G Jones b Harmison 27 (67)A Gilchrist (wk) c G Jones b Flintoff 26 (19)S Warne b Harmison 28 (29)B Lee c G Jones b Harmison 3 (8)J Gillespie lbw b Harmison 1 (11)G McGrath not out 10 (6)Extras (b 5, lb 4, nb 11, w 1) 21Total (40.2 overs) 190Fall of wickets: 1-35, 2-55, 3-66, 4-66, 5-87, 6-126, 7-175, 8-178, 9-178, 10-190.Bowling: Harmison 11.2-0-43-5; Hoggard 8-0-40-1; A Flintoff 11-2-50-2; S Jones 10-0-48-2.
England first inningsM Trescothick c Langer b McGrath 4 (17)A Strauss c Warne b McGrath 2 (21)M Vaughan (capt) b McGrath 3 (20)I Bell b McGrath 6 (25)K Pietersen c Martyn b Warne 57 (89)A Flintoff b McGrath 0 (4)G Jones (wk) c Gilchrist b Lee 30 (56)A Giles c Gilchrist b Lee 11 (13)M Hoggard c Hayden b Warne 0 (16)S Harmison c Maryn b Lee 11 (19)S Jones not out 20 (14)Extras (b 1, lb 5, nb 5) 11Total (48.1 overs) 155Fall of wickets 1-10, 2-11, 3-18, 4-19, 5-21, 6-79, 7-92, 8-101, 9-122, 10-155.Bowling McGrath 18-5-53-5; Lee 15.1-5-47-3; Gillespie 8-1-30-0; Warne 7-2-19-2.
Australia second inningsJ Langer run out (Pietersen) 6 (15)M Hayden b Flintoff 34 (54)R Ponting (capt) c sub (Hildreth) b Hoggard 42 (65)D Martyn lbw b Harmison 65 (138)M Clarke b Hoggard 91 (106)S Katich c S Jones b Harmison 67 (113)A Gilchrist (wk) b Flintoff 10 (14)S Warne c Giles b Harmison 2 (7)B Lee run out (Giles) 8 (16)J Gillespie b S Jones 13 (52)G McGrath not out 20 (32)Extras (b 10, lb 8, nb 8) 26Total (100.4 overs) 384Fall of wickets 1-18, 2-54, 3-100, 4-255, 5-255, 6-274, 7-279, 8-289, 9-341, 10-384.Bowling Harmison 27.4-6-54-3; Hoggard 16-1-56-2; Flintoff 27-4-123-2; S Jones 18-1-69-1; A Giles 11-1-56-0; I Bell 1-0-8-0.
England second inningsM Trescothick c Hayden b Warne 44 (103)A Strauss c & b Lee 37 (67)M Vaughan (capt) b Lee 4 (26)I Bell lbw b Warne 8 (15)K Pietersen not out 64 (79)A Flintoff c Gilchrist b Warne 3 (11)G Jones c Gillespie b McGrath 6 (27)A Giles c Hayden b McGrath 0 (2)M Hoggard lbw b McGrath 0 (15)S Harmison lbw b Warne 0 (1)S Jones c Warne b McGrath 0 (6)Extras (b 6, lb 5, nb 3) 14Total (58.1 overs) 180Fall of wickets 1-80, 2-96, 3-104, 4-112, 5-119, 6-158, 7-158, 8-164, 9-167, 10-180.Bowling McGrath 17.1-2-29-4; Lee 15-3-58-2; Gillespie 6-0-18-0; Warne 20-2-64-4.Umpires A Dar (Pk), R Koertzen (SA).