By Scyld Berry

English fans in Christmas mood as rain washes out the day's play in MelbourneUNDER pressure from all sides, Alec Stewart has reverted to doing what he does best. The beneficial effects may not be immediate, as the Melbourne Cricket Ground pitch should 'juice up' nicely under its tarpaulins for Australia's seamers, but in the long term Stewart's return to opening the innings could well prove to be the silver lining to the rain clouds which wiped out the first day's play in the fourth Test.

In the 48 hours or so before the match, during a white-hot rather than white Christmas, Stewart had rightly concluded that while there is no ready solution to England's lack of first-innings runs, he and Mike Atherton have to open the innings again as England's highest and most experienced run-scorers by far.

As Graham Gooch said: ``Our opening partnership [between Mark Butcher and Mike Atherton] hasn't really fired for us, and in Test cricket it's essential to have a good start.''

It has taken only 6.5 years for the penny to drop for England's selectors. In early 1992, when first promoted to open for England, Stewart hit three brilliant hundreds and carried his bat against Pakistan, all in five Tests. He seized the initiative Michael Slater-style, a style of which England have never approved (hence the brief career of Colin Milburn), but Gooch recognised that it is the only way to defeat Australia when he said: ``We can't let them dominate us so much.''

Warren Hegg is a fine deputy for Stewart in one-day cricket. He is lucky to win a Test cap when he has not kept particularly well on this tour, contributing to England's scruffiness in the field on the demoralising fourth day in Hobart, and there are other wicketkeepers in county cricket equally suited to batting at No 7 in a Test, if not more so.

If opening with Stewart and bringing in Hegg is a move which was a long time in the germination - from the time in the Brisbane Test when Stewart was exposed at No 4 as a bad starter against spin - the replacement of Alex Tudor by Angus Fraser was sudden.

Tudor, omitted from the Adelaide Test but inked in for the grassier Melbourne pitch, developed a soft-tissue hip injury during training on Christmas Day and felt he could not guarantee lasting the match.

Yesterday morning, accordingly, Stewart came walking down the team bus on the way to the MCG to look in Fraser's plastic bag to see if he had brought any flannels (his cricket case was already at the ground). ``I suppose that was the first inkling,'' said Fraser, desperate for a chance to redeem his poor bowling at Brisbane but afraid that, at 33, his chance might not come again.

The rain set in just after Taylor had won the toss for the fourth time in this series, and England had lost it for the 10th time in their last 13 Tests (on two of the three occasions they have won the toss they have won the match too).

Stewart had intended to bat first as a similarly grassy pitch in the Victoria match had seamed little, hoping that his four seamers could bowl out Australia with increasingly uneven bounce and no spinner. But rain set in to spoil the day for 52,000 spectators and, all too probably, the conditions for England's batsmen.

Day 2: Stewart's 107 fails to revitalise England

By Christopher Martin-Jenkins

ALEC STEWART'S decision to open the batting again, made only half an hour before the toss on Saturday when Alex Tudor was declared unfit, paid him a handsome and thoroughly deserved dividend yesterday in the form of an admirable and long overdue first Test hundred against Australia.

Hitting 16 fours with the precise timing and bristling resolve which had marked each of his previous 11 centuries for England, he gave his team the positive lead they so badly needed.

If the 59 runs conceded in 10 overs by the tyro Matthew Nicholson is stripped from England's mercurial first innings of 270, you have another batting performance which gave the England bowlers no margin for error.

The feeling at the end of a grey, blustery day, when paper-bags blew about like snowflakes and leaded bails were needed to keep wickets intact, was still one of renewed frustration on England's part.

At 200 for three, with Stewart and Mark Ramprakash batting superbly, the Australians were beneath their feet for the first time in the series. But they wriggled free, mainly thanks to the wiles of Stuart MacGill and poor technique against leg-spin, which Peter Philpott's clinics seem to have done nothing to cure.

The cricket so far has been as capricious and unpredictable as Melbourne's notorious climate, which produced four seasons in 48 hours and 12 wickets in one elongated day. An extra hour has been scheduled for the last four days to make up as much as is reasonably possible of the time lost on a first day of pouring rain. There should be a result now, but more than £500,000 is the estimated loss of income, including the refund of tickets to the first day crowd.

Tudor's was one of those late withdrawals in which England so specialise. If anyone genuinely knew exactly when his ``hip niggle'' developed, no one was saying. Graham Gooch, the manager, denied that it was during the game of football which the players enjoyed on the MCG outfield on Christmas morning, so one must presume it was during the fielding practice which followed.

His misfortune was Fraser's and Warren Hegg's good luck. Hegg, 30, has been a hard-working, companionable and unselfish member of the touring party, but he is not the answer to England's perennial problem of a proper balance between batting and bowling. His sudden promotion, ahead of John Crawley, whose career average of 50 is virtually double that of his Lancashire colleague's, cannot be more than a temporary expedient.

The two Lancastrians chosen - Michael Atherton and Hegg - fell to outside edges so thin that they might each have survived on a luckier day. The bottom line, however, in both cases was that they were playing without the intention of scoring a run at balls pitched outside their off stump.

Nothing so underlines the difference between English and Australian batting in this series than the greater ability of the Australians to judge when and when not to play a stroke.

Atherton should have left the fifth ball of Glenn McGrath's first over yesterday, but he did not and he was given out, despite the fact that the only definite sound was that of the inside edge brushing his front pad.

So England, 24 hours after losing their 10th toss out of the last 13 and, incredibly, their 10th in 11 Ashes Tests, also lost their first wicket before the Atherton-Stewart opening partnership could be properly relaunched.

There were perhaps only half of the eventual crowd of 25,099 present in the cavernous stands when McGrath followed up with Mark Butcher's wicket in his second over. The ball cut back at England's new No 3, took the inside edge and flew to the right of Justin Langer at short-leg. Out went Langer's right hand and in came Nasser Hussain, one place lower than usual but no later in the innings.

Captain and vice-captain stopped the rot. Stewart started a little streakily against Damien Fleming, with fours off first the outside then the inside edge before facing McGrath for the first time as late as the ninth over.

Hussain, starting with a smooth off-driven four off Fleming, joined in even more willingly when Nicholson came on, looking like a quicker but less controlled version of Martin Bicknell.

He was punished for failing to bowl a length as 19 runs came from his first two overs, 26 from three, and when MacGill joined him from the Southern End at 67 for two, Stewart almost immediately advanced to loft him over mid-on.

The captain's first fifty came off only 66 balls, with eight fours across an outfield a good deal quicker than expected. But the last thing Mark Taylor does in these sort of circumstances is to lose his nerve. Keeping Nicholson going when most captains would have taken him off, he was rewarded when Hussain pushed at a ball outside his off stump and edged to give Healy his 350th Test catch.

The next 29 overs, either side of lunch, raised the serious question of whether Taylor's judgment had for once been wrong when he chose to put England in. He had won 25 of his 49 tosses, and this was only the fifth time he has chosen to field first. Yet the bounce of the dry pitch was even, swing negligible and sideways movement off the seam slight.

Ramprakash was soon playing with as much confidence as Stewart, and apart from a lucky moment straight after lunch when the captain, then 78, edged a force off Nicholson and only his right boot saved him from being bowled, the partnership blossomed like a vibernum in winter. Ramprakash has himself come out of a cautious kind of hibernation in the last few weeks. He played beautifully and with enterprise.

Stewart reached his hundred with his 16th four, but six overs later he aimed a sweep at a ball from MacGill which had not yet pitched. It dipped, bit and turned back to hit his leg stump. Australian batsmen do not try to sweep leg-spinners. More culpably still, Ramprakash, trying not to lose impetus, aimed an on-drive at Steve Waugh's medium pace in the next over and, a fraction too early, lifted the ball tamely to mid-on.

Waugh followed up by claiming Hegg, and all that was left of the glory that might have been was a spirited innings by Graeme Hick and a staunch effort by Dean Headley, which roused McGrath and Healy to melodramatic ire, for which both were warned by Steve Bucknor.

Having played himself in before tea Hick played some fine shots after, including a commanding hook off McGrath and a huge swing for six off MacGill. Again the leg-spinner had his revenge, however, flighting the ball into the wind for Hick to strike, from a yard down the pitch, to deep mid-on.

Australia were left with a theoretical 27 overs, but bad light at the end reduced it to 18. Darren Gough bowled at a speed scientifically measured at around 90 mph from the Northern End, showing, said Stewart later, what English bowlers could do when they had ``had a rest''.

In Gough's third over Michael Slater, stepped across his stumps to a ball of full length and was leg before; in his sixth Taylor pushed at a ball angled towards his off stump and Hick held the thick edge low to his right.

Three players from England's Test squad - Ben Hollioake, John Crawley and Robert Croft - have been sent to Brisbane to link up with other one-day players arriving for the forthcoming triangular series against Australia and Sri Lanka, which starts on Jan 10. The three are due to return to Sydney before the final Test, starting on Jan 2.

Five players - Mark Alleyne, Neil Fairbrother, Ashley Giles, Nick Knight and Mark Ealham - flew out from London yesterday. Adam Hollioake was due to join the squad from Perth and Vince Wells from club cricket in New Zealand.

Day 3: : England left in disarray as Waugh launches blistering counter-attack

By Christopher Martin-Jenkins

WHEN Steve Waugh reached his seventh hundred against England half an hour after tea at the MCG yesterday afternoon the reception was so extraordinarily rapturous that he might also have scored the winning runs. In effect, barring at least one great performance by an English batsman today, he had probably done so. Not for the first time he seems to have broken England on his steel-rimmed wheel.

Until tea, on a cool, sunny day, a crowd of 43,353 had been basking in the glow of a wonderfully even contest. Waugh, 77 not out, had batted impeccably but Gough had bowled fast and well once more, the new ball was due, Australia were eight wickets down and they were still 18 runs behind.

Gough had taken his fifth wicket on the stroke of the interval with an inswinging yorker. Now, England once again counted chickens before they were hatched, going through the motions but, deep down, believing the hard work was done. Until then the bowlers had been purposeful and only one catch had gone down, a hard one to Graeme Hick's left off Dean Headley before Damien Fleming had scored.

Waugh, hitherto playing a shrewd, careful and immaculate percentage innings, now took some chances in pursuit of his 17th Test century and in Stuart MacGill, no batsman really at this level, he found a partner with a good enough eye and the right sort of cricketing gumption to hang around. England's cricketing discipline failed them again as the counter-attack developed and, at 319, with MacGill stranded in mid-pitch as Nasser Hussain picked the ball up at midwicket, not only did his throw miss the stumps but Warren Hegg failed to get up to them to receive the ball.

Twenty-one more runs were added before the breakthrough came, leaving England with a deficit of 70 and, due partly to the extra hour's play and partly to their own disgracefully slow over-rate, with 1.5 hours' batting. Alec Stewart, quite unable to conjure anything up as a captain in the field, nevertheless batted courageously to reduce the Australian lead to five. But Michael Atherton, his technique and confidence as hopelessly lost as they were at different stages of both the last two winter tours, might have been out twice before Fleming squared him up with a leg-cutter and hit his off stump, and Mark Butcher was freakishly dismissed before the close.

Having helped his brother-in-law see off the new ball, Butcher was playing well even against MacGill's sharp turn until, going down on one knee to smite on the up and with the spin, he struck the ball straight at Michael Slater, fielding close at short leg. It could have been serious for Slater; in fact, as he ducked and turned, the ball stuck underneath arms thrust across his chest in self-protection.

When the players went off 15 minutes later they and the spectators were emotionally and physically drained. They had been at the ground for some 10 hours, watching cricket which, at nine minutes short of eight hours, had lasted almost two hours longer than scheduled.

From the start the elegance of Mark Waugh's batting had augured well for Australia but on a now almost white pitch, offering him encouraging pace and bounce, Gough kept the game in the balance with two more wickets. Angus Fraser, the fifth bowler used in the innings, gave him steady support and just before the end of the first hour Waugh walked in front of his stumps to work a good length ball to midwicket and was given out lbw. Unlucky, since he was some way forward, he had played one fierce drive through extra cover off Gough as a foretaste of his brother.

Steve Waugh settled in with typically organised vigilance. By comparison, Justin Langer struggled, but he had seen the last of the shine from the ball by the time he aimed a square drive in Gough's second spell and sliced it to gully. Where Langer had been cautious, Darren Lehmann was all freedom during his eight overs at the crease. But he followed a fierce off-driven four off Gough with a top-edged carve to give Hegg his first Test catch.

England remained in the hunt throughout the afternoon session without looking like removing Waugh. Ian Healy gave the bowlers predictable trouble, working the gaps towards third man until Stewart belatedly blocked off that supply. He fell to his favourite shovel-pull.

Inspired by his safe catch at long leg, Headley bowled a long spell which should have been rewarded with Fleming's wicket. He even got a couple past Waugh and pinned him back with some hostile if ultimately ineffectual short stuff but it was Alan Mullally, firing across the bows, who finally took his first wicket since Perth with the help of Hick's well-taken catch at second slip.

Matthew Nicholson was upended as a yorker sped towards his leg stump and all was set for the 1.5-hour partnership of 88 between Waugh and MacGill which turned the game. From the first seven overs with the new ball they scored 36 as Waugh used his feet to swing his bat in a calculated assault on his way to an unbeaten 122. Gough and the others allowed him too much width to hit his trademark strokes through the covers off either foot and MacGill, having found his bearings, began to cut and drive in the same area.

When at last MacGill edged a cut at Mullally and Glenn McGrath fended a bouncer on to his stumps, the all-revealing difference between the runs scored by the second half of the Australian and England batting orders had been stretched still further. In the four first innings of the series so far Australia's last five wickets - starting with 307 at Brisbane - have added 644 runs; England's have mustered 198.

Day 4: England's bolt from the blue

By Christopher Martin-Jenkins

OF ALL the belated English victories against the trend of a series; of all the heroic fourth-innings efforts in their recent, apparently interminable years of struggle, this was the most astounding and the most emotional. At the last, it was sheer character and inspired fielding, the two ingredients which seemed to have prevented this enigmatic touring team from making the most of their abilities and opportunities, which carried them to a 12-run defeat of Australia.

Australia, needing only 175, failed on a very good batting pitch, and that was the essential point. At one stage, they were 130 for three and coasting but wins can come from the blue in cricket and this Australian side have demonstrated several times that they are vulnerable when chasing runs in the fourth innings. In an atmosphere of frenzied excitement - no longer the breathless hush of poetry - England took their last seven wickets for 32.

Only against South Africa in Port Elizabeth in 1997 have Australia successfully chased a serious fourth-innings score in their recent history. At the Oval against England in the final match of the 1997 series, they failed to get a much smaller total of 124, but that was on a surface whose top had gone.

Mark Taylor said he had fielded first after winning the toss only the fifth time in 25 that he has put an opposition in because his experience of Melbourne was that pitches tend to get easier to bat on as matches progress. There was only minimal movement and some bounce yesterday to encourage England's hero, Dean Headley, but five of his six wickets for 60 were taken for only 26 runs in a marvellously well-sustained second spell from the Southern end.

This was all the more remarkable for the fact that Mark Waugh had cut two long hops for four in an over costing 10 when Alec Stewart brought Headley back after four innocuous overs from Angus Fraser. He would have taken him off again if a catch of inspired brilliance by Mark Ramprakash at square leg had not given Alan Mullally deserved reward for an admirably controlled 10-over spell of probing swing bowling. Headley responded with a maiden over and then with four wickets for four in his next 14 balls.

He was made man of the match, though Steve Waugh, who took a fateful decision to play an extra half-hour to finish the game on the scheduled fourth day when England wanted to come off, was again undefeated. He never looked like getting out, having come to the middle with 72 needed.

Waugh actually made two misjudgments as the game reached its thrilling climax. With advice from Taylor conveyed by the 12th man, Colin Miller, he opted to stay in the middle despite the lengthening shadows which made the light difficult for batsmen coming in. Notwithstanding the contrast of sun and shadow, it was the obvious decision because the force was with Australia then, Matthew Nicholson was batting well as Waugh's eighth-wicket partner and Stewart was only too keen to get England off for a night's rest after three hours and 20 minutes in the field.

Both captains said that the new International Cricket Council regulations to increase playing hours for matches when play has been lost to rain needed further revision. In this case, the long final session - it stretched in the end to just over four hours with three drinks breaks - was extended both because the England innings ended 29 minutes before the tea interval, which was therefore taken early, and because of the provision for an extra half-hour which either captain could have claimed in order to win the game.

Waugh's second error was to run a single off the first ball of what turned out to be the final over bowled by a fired-up, but still coolly accurate Darren Gough. Stuart MacGill, whose first-innings stand with Waugh seemed to have won the match, was castled by a ball fired towards his blockhole and two balls later Glenn McGrath was leg-before.

England, all out for 244 after, praise be, a last-wicket stand of 23 by Mullally and Fraser, had seemed to be 50 runs short of the target required to give Australia their notorious fourth-innings jitters, but Steve Waugh's prediction that 150 would take some getting proved prophetic. Perhaps it even sowed seeds of doubt which normally never enter Australian minds.

Events proved that England had eked out their second innings just long enough and the last-wicket runs were crucial. They were potentially expensive, also, for McGrath, who has sailed close to the disciplinary wind all series and was finally and belatedly given a suspended fine of a third of his match fee by the referee, John Reid, for crude and abusive language to Mullally. The fine of about £1,000 will only be paid if he repeats the offence in the next four months.

England's innings was always a struggle yesterday from the moment that Headley, the nightwatchman, was bowled through the gate. But Nasser Hussain and Graeme Hick both played fine, positive innings which wasted no scoring opportunities after Stewart, having reached his valuable fifty, had been caught at silly point off pad and bat.

Hussain hit eight fours, including two late cuts in succession off Damien Fleming, and Ramprakash supported him well in an excellent fourth-wicket partnership of 49 but Nicholson came to Taylor's rescue with three wickets either side of lunch. Ramprakash played round a ball on his off stump, Hussain cut hard but straight to cover point and Warren Hegg, having played one deliberate uppercut, heedlessly attempted another despite the posting of a fly slip.

Running in from that position, MacGill held the awkward catch well but Hick, meanwhile, had been playing with an air of command, driving handsomely and powerfully and punishing MacGill with fierce cuts when he dropped short. Suffering from a hamstring twinge, though it was no more apparent when he was bowling than was Ian Healy's broken finger when keeping wicket, MacGill turned the ball a good deal but he is not Shane Warne when it comes to accuracy. He soon had Gough caught at short leg but it was Fleming who bowled Hick as he hit across the line of a ball of full length in pursuit of a ninth four.

Australia set out purposefully in search of 175, but sketchily, too. Michael Slater sliced Gough over third slip's head in the first over and was perilously close to lbw to Headley in the second. Hit again by a ball which cut back and kept low - one of only two to do so all day - Slater walked before umpire Steve Bucknor, who has had two excellent games, had lifted his finger.

But Australia had 31 by now and eight overs had gone, so it was a considerable bonus for England when, 10 runs later, Taylor hooked in the air to long leg. Justin Langer was missed by Hick, low to his right at second slip, off Mullally's next ball and, switching from over to round the wicket, Mullally continued to confine both left and right-hander to careful defence.

But Langer and Mark Waugh had added 62 patient runs when Langer pulled hard to square leg where Ramprakash dived to his right and held a fabulous catch in one hand. Taylor felt this was the turning point. In fact, the Waughs had reduced the target to only 45 before Mark went back to a good-length ball and Hick took the first of two good catches at second slip.

The collapse had started. Darren Lehmann was judged to have got a thin inside edge, driving, Healy pushed firmly at a ball outside his off stump and Fleming was leg-before to a ball of full length before Nicholson helped Steve Waugh add 21. Two came from overthrows off the innocent Nicholson's back as Headley came close to running him out. And so to the denouement.

Fraser, lacking zip and therefore the weak link in England's attack, never stopped encouraging Headley and if this proves to be his last Test, as it probably will, he has gone out on a high note. Mike Atherton, too, may have only one more match left for England. Among his opponents in Sydney this weekend may be Warne: the Australian team will be named this morning.