By Scyld Berry
WHAT a difference the toss makes. When Alec Stewart called heads incorrectly in the Adelaide Test, England were condemned, if not to certain defeat, then to bowling first in infernal heat and to batting when the pitch and game were turning in Australia's favour.
In Hobart yesterday, on the other hand, Mike Atherton, standing in for Stewart, called tails correctly and England enjoyed as happy a day as any on their tour without a cloud in the sky. Everything, for once, was tailor-made for England, not Mark Taylor-made. The only conceivable drawback is that England's batting may startle Australia out of the complacency into which they traditionally lapse when two-nil up on England.
It was only the posterior of an Australian XI which England whipped, and the 11 were reduced to eight by the close of the opening day. Still, it was one of the more agreeable forms of schadenfreude for England's batsmen to see one Australian bowler after another limp off, to be replaced by substitutes who ranged from a Tasmanian under-17 fielder to a rather portly and waddling forty-something who was said to have represented Australia, Allan Border.
After being so rudely interrupted in Adelaide, Atherton was not going to give his wicket away in these luxurious circumstances, or retire upon reaching his 47th first-class hundred. No misjudgment could have been more complete than the one made after his resignation from the England captaincy, that he would lose his appetite for batting as well. Atherton wants nothing more than to bat, in Test matches and the World Cup for all his exclusion from the one-day tournament next month.
He reached 47 by lunch and his hundred off his first ball after tea. The bounce, like much of the man-made countryside on this island, was English-style, the ball ever softer and the bowling ever more amiable as the Australians keeled over one by one. So benign were the conditions that Mark Butcher reached 20 for the first time on the tour outside the Brisbane Test, before succumbing to spin again, and John Crawley scored 27.
The first Australian bowler to go down was the offspinner Gavin Robertson, who did not even make the start: his back was stiff after training on Friday. Yet, Robertson still had to play, or rather have his name included in the 11, since nobody was around to replace him. All the Shield sides are engaged this weekend, including the Tasmanians away in Brisbane.
Next it was Paul Reiffel, never the sturdiest specimen, who broke down with a groin strain after nine balls. Australia's pace bowling was thus left to Mike Kasprowicz, with his habit of one ball an over down the legside, and Brendon Julian, the left-armer who is never going to intimidate batsmen with his wavering accuracy and unwavering smile.
So what had been billed as 'the Sixth Test', and would have been if the Australian XI had won the toss and batted first in all their might, quickly became a help-yourself buffet laid on for Atherton and his friends. The occasion? Christmas, and his temporary return to the captaincy, knowing now what he could never have known when he was prematurely appointed at 25.
After scarcely more than an hour, Greg Blewett was dobbing his medium-pacers and Stuart Law attempting legbreaks. Butcher pulled Law's first ball neither up nor down but straight to square-leg, leaving the author of the adage about living and learning to shake his head. In Canberra on Thursday Butcher had played the same shot to the same fielder in the same position.
So out of sync is Crawley's off-driving that he must have tried the stroke a dozen times without middling. When he had scratched to 22 he was dropped off Julian by Law at second slip, driving away from his body, if you can believe it. When he was given out after driving over the top of a wide half-volley, it must have been partly on humanitarian grounds.
The Derwent River is a ball's throw from the boundary of Bellerive Oval, and Friday's seahorses had galloped away to the Tasman Sea, leaving the dark-blue waters mirror-flat. The strokeplay was equally sparkling in the stand of 139 in even time which followed between Atherton and Mark Ramprakash.
In Adelaide, Ramprakash had established himself as England's best player of spin, and here he drove Law for a straight six and tucked into Michael Bevan's all-sorts. The years of anguish and over-intensity are gone. He is no longer the classic case of someone who focussed on his goal - that of being the best batsmen in England - rather than on the journey.
Having settled in on the back foot, Atherton repeatedly drove through the covers off the front to build England's first major first innings total of the tour; by the close he looked as immovable as Mount Wellington in the background, and intent on his first double-century. The International Cricket Council are trying to popularise eight-a-side cricket, but it was a bit much for the Australians to try it in a first-class game when Kasprowicz limped off with a hamstring twinge after three deliveries with the second ball.
Although Warren Hegg is keeping wicket in this match, he is not expected to do so in the Melbourne Test. England will want five bowlers for a pitch which normally has nothing untoward apart from some initial bounce. Peter Such will remain the offspinner, and Alex Tudor will return, with Dominic Cork as the fifth bowler, if only because Cork is the only one who could masquerade as a number seven.
Day 2: Atherton at last able to dish out punishment
By Christopher Martin-Jenkins
CAPTAINCY could be the making of him. Leading England for the first time in a first-class match since his resignation in Antigua in March, Michael Atherton scored a chanceless and commanding 210 not out, the highest score of his career, as the match against Australia's vaunted second XI really did take on the appearance of an early Christmas present, for England's batsmen at least.
At declaration he was 215 not out. A benign, true but not too slow pitch and an attack eventually reduced by injury to a single specialist bowler gave Atherton the opportunity to bat with a mastery which has eluded him in the Test matches and which can only have enhanced his chances of doing better in the last two. If this was a somewhat bloodless conquest, it was nevertheless a timely reminder of his talent and determination.
Graeme Hick made no mistake, either, despatching occasional bowlers with lordly ease to compile one of the quickest and, it must be said, also one of the easiest of his first-class hundreds. This was the 104th and soon after he had battered 75 from his last 37 balls, Atherton declared England's first innings at 469 for six to give his bowlers 11 overs with the new ball.
Rain had prevented a start before tea but the embarrassment of a powerful looking Australian XI was eased by the solid start made by Matthew Elliott and Greg Blewett against Alex Tudor and Angus Fraser.
Coached for this one-off match by Allan Border, who twice willingly took the field as a substitute, they had lost the services of the off- spinner Gavin Robertson because of back spasms before the game started. Paul Reiffel then broke down with the first new ball, having already bowled four no-balls in an over and a half, and Michael Kasprowicz did so with the second when a hamstring twanged.
Here indeed was a case of the biters being bitten. One Australian journalist suggested that the game took on the feel of a gentle county match. This was hardly surprising, perhaps, because six of the eight bowlers employed for the Australian XI are, will be or have been county players. Atherton felt that, yesterday at least, the bowling was a good deal less demanding than in most county matches.
On occasions like these, Hick can hardly win because the damning description ``flat-track bully'' always comes back to haunt him. When it is flat, however, my word he does bully. One of his four sixes, struck over long-on off the left-arm spin of Elliott, carried a huge distance.
Atherton, though he hit some magnificent strokes through the covers, scored only 65 of the 195 he added with Hick for the fourth wicket after Mark Butcher and John Crawley had got themselves out and Mark Ramprakash had made his now almost routine 65. He was beaten by Michael Bevan's flipper but, well set as he was, should have made a century.
Hick advanced on his hundred after a relatively laboured fifty off 93 balls. Thereafter he scored mainly in lofted drives over mid-off and mid-on, punishing especially the wrist spin of Stuart Law and Michael Bevan, and Elliott's occasional left-arm orthodox.
Atherton's first double hundred also came with a drive to long-on for his 25th four. His previous highest score was the 199 he made for Lancashire against Durham at Gateshead in 1992 and England's coach, David Lloyd, described the extra run as ``a barrier he had to pass''.
Atherton, captaining so that Alec Stewart could have a rest before the last two Tests in Melbourne and Sydney, had done the hard work on the first morning with encouraging fluency.
Butcher gave his innings away again, pulling a long-hop to midwicket. Crawley played some fine shots but again he was not always able to co-ordinate his feet, head and body so that they met the ball in the right place at the right time. Once more he was given out caught behind, driving outside the off stump. Ben Hollioake also failed again yesterday when Brendon Julian surprised him with the bounce of his first ball and he edged off an angled face low to Adam Gilchrist.
The relevance of all this to the Test series which resumes on Boxing Day is small, though the performance of Tudor, Fraser and Dominic Cork will be monitored closely today. It will be a hard test for the bowlers against high-class batting on a batsman's pitch in a cold wind.
Lloyd reacted with genial equanimity to a suggestion in a Sunday newspaper that he would be sacked before the tour has even reached its one-day stage. He neither will nor should be. He has been a tireless worker for the England cause and chiefly responsible for creating a much improved framework of coaches and other back-up staff for the national team.
The facile conclusion would be that his conscientiousness has not been enough and that the batting performances of the team have too often been a poor advertisement of his abilities as a coach.
Those who have followed the performance of the team closely, however, have witnessed an unmistakable improvement in organisation and morale since Lloyd was appointed in 1996. He is contracted until the end of next season in England.
Day 3: Omitted Blewett delivers riposte with classy 169
By Christopher Martin-Jenkins
THE longer a tour goes on, the more matches like the one which ends in Hobart today take on the appearance of shadow boxing.
Greg Blewett (Yorkshire's very own next summer) can be proud of the way that he made 169, his fifth and highest century in a total of 18 innings against England, but his formidable excellence was displayed in the knowledge that Darren Lehmann, not himself, had been chosen to replace Ricky Ponting in the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne.
Jason Gillespie will contest the final place with Colin Miller in an otherwise unchanged 12.
Four overs after tea yesterday Lehmann (formerly Yorkshire's very own) declared the Australian second XI's first innings closed when they were still 176 behind England after Blewett, who has signed a one-year contract to wear the white rose next season, had dominated a first wicket partnership of 206 with Matthew Elliott. They played with great assurance on a beautiful pitch, which at that stage had yielded more than 120 runs per wicket.
There was a lesson in that for all English groundsmen, because this is a pitch created in a climate at least as cold and wet as England's on which Australian Rules football is played all through the winter.
The square was relaid only six weeks before the cricket season began by the groundsman, Peter Apps, who was on the Lord's staff for a while. He believes that a natural scarifying by the studs of winter sportsmen would do tired squares much more good than harm. Still relatively early in an Australian summer, however, this particular pitch is lacking a little of the life which would have made this a closer contest between bat and ball.
Lehmann's declaration, four overs after tea, and the bowling which followed it were reminiscent of too many county championship matches in the latter days of three-day cricket.
Mark Butcher and John Crawley took full advantage of the continued absence through injury of three of the Australian bowlers to strike a rapid 118 off 21 overs before Crawley, having hit 11 elegant fours, was given out leg before, apparently as a punishment for attempting a reverse sweep.
Butcher went on to 85 not out, in effect having an enjoyable net in the middle. He hit a six and eight fours. Ben Hollioake was promoted to three, a privilege which he exploited better than he has done hitherto, but only to the extent of making 17 before becoming Matthew Elliott's ninth first-class victim, caught at slip.
It was a better day for Hollioake, however, because he also took two wickets in an over, having Elliott well caught off a miscued drive by Alex Tudor running towards mid-off from mid-on, and then trapping Corey Richards leg before fourth ball when he hit across the line.
Had he held on to a relatively staightforward caught and bowled chance off Blewett when he had scored 116, Hollioake might have made a case for himself for Melbourne.
Instead Blewett, who looks younger than 27, soon deflated the 21-year-old with four superlative fours in five balls: a pull, a drive on the up through extra cover, an off drive and another pull. He is a graceful batsman, who knows the shots he can play and sticks to them. Peter Such had a moral success against him once or twice yesterday, but he moved his feet superbly and he promises to be even more of a crowd-pleaser than Lehmann or his Australian predecessor Michael Bevan.
It is not just on yesterday's evidence that England's bowlers might feel relieved that Lehmann has been preferred to Blewett or Elliott for the fourth Test. Blewett himself spoke highly of the efforts of Such and Angus Fraser yesterday, but felt that Tudor's later spells were less demanding than his first.
There was something for all the England bowlers in this game to play for, with the Melbourne selection still undecided, but Tudor was not bowling flat out yesterday, and it is both likely and right that he should return to the Test side.
Lehmann lasted only six balls yesterday before falling to a brilliant left-handed catch by Michael Atherton at first slip as he aimed a slash at a wide ball from Dominic Cork. There ended the most serious and closely contested cricket of the day. England led by 342 by the close of the third day in the blustery Hobart weather.
Colin Miller, the off-spinner hoping to retain his place in Australia's side for the fourth Test, took three wickets to help Tasmania wrap up an eight-wicket win over Queensland in the Sheffield Shield at Brisbane.
Day 4: 'Abject' England are badly embarrassed by Blewett's glory
By Christopher Martin-Jenkins
NOW even the bowlers have failed, and with a vengeance. England could not win 'the sixth Test match' in Tasmania even after scoring 469 for six and 199 for three.
The combination of a very flat pitch, rudderless bowling and wonderfully dominating batting by 23-year-old Corey Richards and Greg Blewett, who was playing like Bradman, made a complete nonsense of what in other circumstances might have been a challenging declaration.
Blewett, slim and fit as a whippet, batted quite brilliantly for his 213 not out, and however poor the bowling it is a pity that Graham Gooch dwelt upon what he called the the ``totally abject'' performance of England rather than on the stroke play of two batsmen who were not considered for the fourth Test in Melbourne later this week.
The Australian XI won by nine wickets with absurd ease. They had 22 overs and four balls in hand after scoring the required 376 at a rate of almost seven runs an over. This against an international attack which failed in every bowler's case to maintain the consistent line and length which alone would have put exerted some pressure and thereby, perhaps, obliged the Australians to lose wickets by chasing against the clock.
Gooch was blunt and upset in the aftermath of a defeat, which left England exposed to ridicule again, three days before Christmas and four before the fourth Test which threatened further embarrassment or, worse still, humiliation.
``It was,'' said the manager, ``a very poor performance. I don't like to see England lose in this manner. They bowled both sides of the wicket and their performance was not up the standards we'd expect.
``Credit to their two guys; they played really well, and it was a very flat wicket, but you would have expected a national side to make them work much harder.''
He might have added that the bowlers had such a poor day collectively - although to some extent they bowled only as well as the conditions and the coolly assertive Blewett allowed - that there were no clues as to who should join Darren Gough and Alan Mullally in the attack at Melbourne. Dean Headley and Robert Croft did well, perhaps, to miss this game.
Blewett took his average against England in three innings to 525. When he reached 38, he became only the sixth batsman to make more than 1,000 runs before the end of December in an Australian season, joining Bill Ponsford, Bobby Simpson (twice), David Hookes, Graham Yallop and Allan Border. Strange indeed that this is one list on which the name Bradman does not appear.
Blewett has now scored 1,175 runs in eight innings, including six hundreds, the last three of which have exceeded 150. His was an astonishing tour de force on a relaid pitch, which is slower than the usual Hobart belters and as heavily loaded in favour of the batsmen as the ratio of 1,337 runs in the game to 14 wickets suggests.
It should not be overlooked that England lost after two declarations, as many sides have before. But their batting success in this game had to be seen in the light of the injuries to three of the Australian XI's four specialist bowlers.
By contrast the home side's domination underlined the quite extraordinary strength of contemporary Australian batting. Has any country at any time had so many batsmen of Test class?
Mark Butcher was given time to complete perhaps the easiest hundred he has ever made, losing Dominic Cork to a run-out at the first attempt on his 100th run before Mike Atherton declared half an hour into what turned out to be an unnecessarily extended day's play. As events transpired England could have batted another 45 minutes and set the Australians 430.
Blewett set out at once with the assurance of an evangelist. The path ahead of him at the moment seems both straight and broad, except the one which leads to the Australian dressing-room. He drove on the up and pulled with level-headed ease, his weight staying on the front foot, such was his trust in a pitch of evenly covered black clay and completely reliable bounce.
Many a past county game has demonstrated how games of this nature can be hard for any fielding side to pull back when two batsmen get set.
Blewett and Richards were soon in control once Alex Tudor had bowled Matthew Elliott off his body as he missed a pull at a short ball. Anything short thereafter from Tudor was comfortably and correcly defended by the impressively orthodox Richards and pulled away with disdain by Blewett.
It was the experienced bowlers who deserved the greater censure, however, and there was no excuse for Angus Fraser, Dominic Cork and Peter Such. Richards took an instant liking to Such's off-spin. Fraser, when all was lost, proved that it was not an impossible task to contain batsmen on this pitch by beating Richards twice in succession after tea with balls which left the right-hander off a good length. But by then Richards had completed his first hundred against England and his fourth in six matches.
Richards was picked for this game partly because the national selectors, rating him highly, suspected that with Taylor, Slater and the Waugh twins back in the New South Wales side, Richards might not have been picked for the Sheffield Shield game against Victoria. Slater and Mark Waugh both duly scored hundreds. Blewett's scores this season have been 175, 47, 31, 36, 143, 51, 158, 152, 169 not out and 213 not out.
Only four other batsmen have scored a double hundred and a 150 in the same game - Arthur Fagg, Warwick Armstrong, Maurice Hallam, who almost did it twice, and Zaheer Abbas, who actually did it twice.
The England team flew to Melbourne last night and, with wives and families now gathered there, they have a day off to ponder their plight.
Tomorrow it is back to the nets and on Saturday the chosen team will be playing for a nation's wounded pride, as well as for their own in the fourth Test.