Scyld Berry

Scyld Berry senses the buzz created by Gough's hair-raising hat-trick at the SCG theatre of dreams

NOBODY was murdered in the lunch interval at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Nobody was found guilty of match-fixing - that should come in Pakistan any day now. Otherwise, the opening act of the final Test match had everything except the Ashes at stake.

Never since Bodyline can a crowd have been so passionate from the very start of a Test. Never have an England team been so passionate from the start either, not in modern times. In the later stages of several recent games, not least in Melbourne, they have roused themselves and played their best, but here they gave it everything from the moment Alec Stewart lost the toss yet again - five out of five and 10 of the last 11 lost by England against Australia - until Darren Gough tumbled out the Australian tail with his first Test hat-trick.

The hat-trick may have come too late to save England from the web which will be spun by Australia's three spiders, but it was still a magnificent coup de theatre which summed up England's new spirit. If a side can dismiss Australia in a day when the pitch is favourable to batting, it must be a very decent mid-table side who will defeat most countries, provided the zeal is maintained.

But if England's hearts were admirable, the heads of England's selectors did not match up. To turn up for a Sydney Test without anything but off-spin is such a culpable mistake that the present selection panel do not deserve to survive in their current form. Australia chose three specialist spinners, including Shane Warne for his first Test in nine months; England could only choose one where there had to be two.

The partnership of 190 between Mark and Steve Waugh was largely made up of the runs which were there to be plundered from Mark Ramprakash's occasional off-spin and Peter Such. England tried to camouflage their lack of spin by selecting three attacking pace bowlers, and they did wonders with the first and second new balls; but the ground lost in between times will not be easily recovered.

The crowd of 42,000 was the first sell-out for a Test in Sydney for 25 years. About a quarter of them supported England, including the noisiest elements on the old Hill, who kept up their clamour until the first Ashes hat-trick for England in this century prompted a raising of the roof. Normal days of cricket have quiet passages which go unreported; the first moments of this Test which were not frenetically dramatic occurred when Such came on half an hour before lunch.

England had to strike before the ball lost its hardness, and thrice they did. Taylor's luck ran out when he was caught very low by second slip and walked, while Michael Slater mis-hooked. No opening batsman on either side has made big first-innings runs except Mark Butcher in Brisbane, and he only played here because Mike Atherton withdrew minutes before the start.

Justin Langer, normally composed but driven by adrenalin as much as anyone, was caught behind off a no-ball from Alex Tudor, and had gone 20 yards to the pavilion without hearing the call - such was the tumult - until Stewart informed him. Langer might have been given run out by certain, hastier, TV umpires when Dean Headley's throw was shown to have hit the stumps with Langer's bat on the line. Not until the next frame were the bails removed and by then the batsman was home.

When Tudor's first two overs went for 21, chaos threatened. Whatever else Alan Mullally does, he gives his captain some control. Yet Tudor went a long way towards justifying his selection ahead of Mullally with his two wickets, albeit short balls clattered to point. His selection ahead of a second spinner is another matter.

For the first hour, all the England players wore their caps in solidarity. But at 52 for three, the Waughs came together in solidarity, too. This was only their fifth century stand in eight years in the Australian Test side, and brilliant counter-attack it was, too.

Mark Waugh first took the initiative by hitting Such back over his head, then driving and cutting the spinners from middle stump while the bounce was true. His twin lashed through mid-off from either foot, trying to make up for his mistake in Melbourne.

Though the ball went soft, England never did. John Crawley might just have caught Mark Waugh left-handed before scoring; Stewart missed an easy chance to run him out when 78 by throwing too high to Ramprakash, the bowler; and Such was shown up at mid-on and mid-off. Otherwise, the fielding was as zealous as it has been for almost 20 years.

The one wicket which off-spin took was the big one of Steve Waugh when he was bowled in the drive and thus set a world record of nine nineties in Test cricket. Before tea, Ramprakash was offering horrible premonitions by making the odd ball bounce and turn, without the consistency to tie batsmen down. Darren Lehmann, an adventurer, cashed in, too, before Australia's tail was wiped out more speedily than England's has ever been.

From the moment Mark Waugh edged the second new ball, Australia's last five wickets fell for three runs. I was just going to come off, remembered Gough. Then the last four fell in five balls, which would have been four if Hussain at gully had not dropped Warne off Headley.

Ian Healy tried to withdraw his bat from Gough's short ball but did not quite. Against Stuart MacGill, Gough carried on from where he had left off in Melbourne by splattering his stumps with another yorker. Gough had been on hat-tricks before, and had taken two of them for Yorkshire. ``I think this time was the one I've been most relaxed,'' he said.

The third ball, to Colin Miller, was the best he had bowled all series, or so Gough thought. ``There was only one ball I was going to bowl,'' he said, meaning a yorker, and it happened to swing out instead of in. ``I'm not one of those bowlers who pretends he always knows which way it's going to go,'' he added.

Only Dominic Cork and Peter Loader had taken a Test hat-trick for England since the Second World War, before Gough did it. The day had everything indeed, except tight bowling from a pair of England spinners.

Day 2: Ordeal by spin ends England's best hopes of sharing series

By Christopher Martin-Jenkins

THE fifth Test has encapsulated the series - Australia a tough, talented, versatile and resilient team; England improved, not as bad as they are often portrayed, but still down on their luck, technically inferior and not quite good enough.

After two days, Australia, 115 ahead with all second-innings wickets intact, were in complete command. Stuart MacGill was a hero, Shane Warne was back and English euphoria after Darren Gough's hat-trick had evaporated in the shimmering Sydney heat.

After the fourth Test at Melbourne it was reasonable to hope that it might be a different story here, but once again England had to have the breaks and to play above themselves. Neither has happened.

England chose an odd side - Alec Stewart should have kept and Ashley Giles should have played - lost an important toss and missed one more of those half-chances which might just have tipped the scales, though it would also have deprived spectators of a lovely century by Mark Waugh.

Before Waugh had scored on Saturday, a ball from Dean Headley bounced, hit him on the glove and just evaded the grasp of John Crawley, diving at full stretch to his left at short-leg. It was another case of almost but not quite; so near and yet so far. How long, oh Lord, how long?

Nor did these things change yesterday. Nasser Hussain batted doggedly and well for almost three hours for 42, and Crawley justified his inclusion by hitting five fours and playing the spinners with finesse, but the fact remained that although seven English batsmen got to double figures, the biggest partnership was 49 and no one got to 50.

Alec Stewart, who, as it transpired, might just as well have kept wicket because he began batting after a night's rest, was out chasing a wide ball from Glenn McGrath, and both Mark Ramprakash and Graeme Hick failed to keep attacking shots along the ground.

Generally, too, there was too much block or bash about the England batting. As the former Australian captain and coach Bobby Simpson was quick to observe, they failed to work the ball into the gaps for singles, thereby increasing the pressure on themselves and decreasing the disruption to the spinners.

That was not a mistake which the Waugh brothers had made during the glittering partnership of 190 for the fourth wicket, which followed Australia's shaky start and preceded the spectacular Saturday evening collapse against Gough and Dean Headley.

It would have been asking too much for yesterday's play to match the high intensity of Saturday's which was, as they say, as good as it gets - rarefied cricket on a hot day beneath a vivid blue sky, played to the first full house for a day's cricket at the SCG for 13 years.

Waugh's driving through mid-off and mid-on - sometimes, in the case of Peter Such's off-spin, over them - and his late-cutting and his elegance off his legs were almost as memorable as the inswinging and outswinging yorkers with which Gough completed the first hat-trick in an Ashes series this century. He and Headley took the last five Australian wickets for three runs in 15 balls.

Australia's spinners were too good for fretful batsmen on a turning pitch. Though Warne was in the thick of the struggle from early on the second day, it was MacGill, his fiery little understudy, who proved the hardest spinner to handle.

MacGill's five for 57 improved on the five for 66 he took against Pakistan at Rawalpindi. As usual, he spun his leg-breaks viciously, further than Warne, though not with the same formidable ability to give the ball a tweak without losing length or direction.

Miller bowled his off breaks well wide of the off stump with the intention of hitting it, varying his pace and trajectory cleverly.

Warne took two good catches in addition to his wicket and, although his flight deceived no one and he bowled few variations, this was not at all a bad performance, considering that he had not played a Test for 10 months. It is too early to say with certainty that he is not the bowler he was.

Warne had a hand in the two England wickets before lunch during a tense morning's cricket. In the seventh over a hitherto restrained Stewart was tempted by the cunning McGrath to drive at a wide ball with his weight not fully committed and the result was a fast edge to third slip and McGrath's 200th Test wicket.

As he had throughout his topsy-turvy series, Butcher, not selected until Michael Atherton withdrew on Saturday morning with further stiffness of the spine, played McGrath better than anyone, but he had his awkward moments against Miller, who switched from outswingers and off-cutters to slower off-breaks after six overs with the new ball from the Randwick end.

MacGill was called upon first by Taylor, but at 52 for one Warne was called up to take over from Miller, and all Australia paused in anticipation. Mark Butcher went down on one knee to lift his second ball boldly to the midwicket boundary, then right back to the fourth ball, which spun from middle stump and might just have grazed the leg. Ramprakash started impressively, but lost his timing after lunch and drove McGrath on the up low to wide mid-off.

After a patient reconnaissance Graeme Hick began to strike the ball with clean assurance, removing Warne from the attack with a fiercely pulled four followed by a straight driven six. But MacGill bounced a long-hop higher than he expected and he carved low to short extra-cover.

Hussain was caught off pad and bat off a ball pitched well outside his off stump - Mark Waugh's 100th Test catch - in the 50th over, and it was a matter of time after that. Warren Hegg and Alex Tudor did well, but they were out of their depth.

Both were close to being stumped off MacGill before Hegg was bowled through the gate and Tudor off his pads by a googly. Crawley, by contrast, got a leg-break, which spun sharply to give the redoubtable 'Tubby' Taylor his 156th slip catch for Australia. England therefore looked doomed again last night.

The home spectators have loved this match as much as the many and vociferous England supporters among the 81,041 aggregate attendance of the first two days.

Day 3: : Australia take command with Slater's run of good fortune

By Christopher Martin-Jenkins

A GREAT innings probably won the final Test for Australia yesterday. If Michael Slater's 123 out of 184, an innings replete with brilliant strokes and dazzling footwork, turns out not to have been a match-winning effort, someone will have had to bat equally exceptionally for England today. Either way this will have been an epic cricket match, watched by the biggest Sydney crowd for a quarter of a century.

If England lose narrowly, the moment when Slater appeared to be run out for 35 when Australia were 52 for two, but was reprieved by the third umpire, will inevitably be seen as the most significant turning point.

It has been a wonderful cricket match and when the bails were plucked off on a golden summer evening, England still had a theoretical chance of getting the 287 they needed to win and level the series. Of their six specialist batsmen, two had already played their final innings of the series, however, 183 were still required and the odds remained long on an English victory.

Cricket is a game of chance and umpiring error has always been a part of it, so too much fuss should not be made. Simon Taufel, the third umpire who had to judge on a direct hit on the stumps by Dean Headley from deep mid-on, is a young official who is highly regarded, though he had stood in only nine first-class games when this season started. He looked at replays from three different angles, the most important of which, unfortunately, had Peter Such, waiting behind the stumps for Headley's throw, obscuring the view of both ball and stumps. Taufel eventually ruled not out, though everything suggested that in the days before television replays the square-leg umpire, in this case Steve Dunne, would have lifted his finger.

An experienced English umpire, who has done the television adjudication job in Tests in England, said that Slater should have been given out on the evidence of the various angles. Television commentators watching the head-on camera replay spotted movement at the base of the stumps just before Slater's bat reached the crease.

How magnificently he cashed in on his good fortune is evident from the fact that only one man has ever scored a higher proportion of a completed Test innings - Charlie Bannerman, in the first innings of the first Test played, at Melbourne in 1877. ``There was some really good bowling today and batting conditions were really hard,'' said Slater at the end of the day. ``Once we got 200 ahead, every run felt like two. We're quietly confident 280 odd should be enough if we bowl well.''

Slater was out of the Australian side for 20 Test matches, including the six in England in 1997, because the selectors deemed him to be too rash. In this series, as in the last against England four years ago, he has made three fine hundreds, all, it is true, in the second innings once a first-innings lead had been gained. But there is a man for every situation in the Australian side, except, the evidence shows, when they are in the sort of position England faced today, chasing a fourth-innings total on a wearing pitch.

Analysing his 11th Test century and his seventh against England, Slater added: ``I kept telling myself to wait for the ball I knew I could hit where I wanted to; to keep it simple and not get too far ahead of myself.''

His driving was unstoppably powerful and well timed, mainly through or over extra cover whenever a fast bowler overpitched but also, three times, over the boundary off Such from well down the pitch. The first of his three sixes was swept into the O'Reilly Stand at midwicket, the other two were driven straight.

At the other end all was struggle and strife. Darren Gough sprained an ankle in the first over of the day but still dismissed Mark Taylor with his sixth ball, angled across and edged low to first slip, before Headley and Such took over as the bowlers on whom Alec Stewart relied. Headley, a cricketer with a big heart who has gained new and higher stature in a single week, took two more wickets before lunch, with some more straight, fast, authoritative and rhythmic bowling.

He trapped Justin Langer on the back foot then out-witted Mark Waugh with a second successive short ball, pulled to square-leg and well caught by Mark Ramprakash. Such's first wicket came from an even better reaction catch by John Crawley, who clutched the ball to his chest at silly-point off the face of Darren Lehmann's bat.

Such bowled throughout the hot afternoon session from the Randwick End, never afraid to flight the ball, turning it sharply, albeit quite slowly, a fact which gives England a grain of hope. Two of his remaining wickets were caught close to the bat, the other two - Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath - at midwicket. Headley bowled Steve Waugh with a beauty which swung in and left him off the pitch and finally got Slater, eighth out after tea, cutting.

England bowled and fielded with spirit and control and Stewart captained well, notably when blocking Steve Waugh's favourite scoring areas after he dropped to seven because of a hamstring injury, but he was too reluctant to give Alex Tudor a second chance. His straight, brisk morning spell restrained Slater as well as anyone.

When England's long march to freedom began, four overs after tea, Australia looked with confidence not just to Warne and McGrath, with 515 Test wickets between them, but to Stuart MacGill and Colin Miller. But England went out with guns already removed from the holsters and soon they were smoking.

Mark Butcher stroked three offside fours in McGrath's first over, a reprise of his batting when England chased 247 and won by eight wickets at Trent Bridge last season, albeit on a far better pitch than this. Stewart's first ball from Miller was driven with conviction through extra cover.

There were 28 on the board already when Miller switched to his slower style, 39 when MacGill joined him and 55 when Warne was summoned for the 14th over to put a stop to all this upstart English enterprise. This time it took him a full over to account for Butcher. With the cunning of experience he sensed Butcher's naive eagerness to get down the track and delivered a top spinner from so wide that he cut the return crease and should have been no-balled. Umpire Dunne did not spot it and Butcher was stranded.

Stewart played several bold lofted strokes to leg but there was a desperate air to some of them. Having struck five fours and made 42 off only 55 balls he, too, was beaten by a leg-break as he danced out to pull-drive, and Ian Healy had the bails off with unerring speed.

Nasser Hussain, outstanding in the field earlier, survived with Ramprakash to the close of another cap- tivating day's cricket. They cannot do it, surely?

Day 4: MacGill proves the new maestro

By Christopher Martin-Jenkins

LEG-SPIN bowling of high class proved, as expected, too much for England on a pitch the colour and texture of a cheese biscuit, so Australia won the fifth Test by 98 runs and the series by three games to one. It would have been 4-1 but for the Brisbane storm but this was a margin which, after all the twists and turns, faithfully reflected Australian superiority without exaggerating England's shortcomings.

The beaten side had contributed with honour to a rousing final game which attracted a total of 142,282 spectators in all and 27,754 yesterday, all of them more than happy to stay on to applaud both sides. This despite the fact that England had managed to add only 84 more runs for their last eight wickets on the fourth day, going down 21 minutes after lunch.

The wrist-spinning executioner might have been Shane Warne, the best the world has seen in recent times, the most accurate Australia have ever produced and the man Mark Taylor was still nominating as his most likely long-term successor soon after collecting the elegant glass replica of the Ashes urn from Tony Lewis, president of MCC, the guardians of the fragile original urn.

It was not Warne, however, who was man of the match on his return to the Australian team after his shoulder operation. Stuart MacGill, once his understudy, now proved very much the leading man, overwhelming England not with mysterious variations or unfathomable flight but simply by the sheer viciousness of his spin, achieved with an action which looks as gentle as a jockey reaching up to stroke the neck of a horse when the race has been won.

MacGill's seven for 50, a career-best, gave him 27 wickets in the four Tests he has played in this series and 47 to date in eight matches for Australia. The West Indies play good spin bowling no better than England do, which is not very well and it begins to look as though Australia's next Test series in the Caribbean in March is going to be more one-sided even than this one has been for most of its course.

Jim Higgs, the former Australian leg-spinner who was one of the selection committee which first took a chance on the talent of Warne, continues to express the theory that any country who do not have spin bowlers of high quality will not produce batsmen who play them with authority. That is the first thing for England to ponder as the post-mortem begins, not that it is something which David Lloyd, Ray Illingworth and others before them have not known and said many times.

No one of sane mind could doubt the near impossibility of the task England faced when they started the day still needing 183 with eight wickets left. No country has ever successfully chased as many as the original target of 287 in the fourth innings at Sydney and only Australia have ever managed more than 200.

Taylor opened the bowling with his two senior bowlers, Glenn McGrath and Warne. The maestro was soon spinning the ball past Nasser Hussain's outside edge, following through with relish and alternately shouting and smiling whenever there was a near thing. The Australian fielding was as sharp as ever from the outset, Justin Langer twice denying Mark Ramprakash runs at short extra cover as McGrath probed expertly around the off-stump in the first few tension-filled overs. With his 16th ball of the day McGrath drew a poor stroke from Ramprakash, a weak, schizophrenic half-cut at a ball lifting just outside the off-stump which snicked the ball very low to Taylor at first slip.

Ramprakash waited in the hope that the ball had bounced a fraction before it reached Taylor's fingertips, but Darrell Hair ruled that it had carried without further recourse to the third umpire, Simon Taufel, who must have been pleased that his decision to reprieve Michael Slater the previous day did not, numerically, cost England the match. Slater added 88 more in his brilliant innings after the run-out incident and as events transpired even a target of 199 would have been just out of England's reach.

Taylor's catch was a beauty by a first slip without equal in recent times. Allan Border's previous all-time Test record of 156 catches took 156 Tests: Taylor's 157 have come from 104. The more spectacular catches are usually taken at second slip, for whatever the country concerned, but Taylor's concentration is remarkable given all that a captain has to think about and he is equally good low to the ground and above his head off the quick bowlers. Off the slow ones it is a fascinating and significant fact that he has taken 30 catches off Warne to only 20 by Ian Healy. The ball turns that much in Australia.

Graeme Hick made a nervous start in company with a composed Hussain, who was playing the ball late and using his paddle sweep effectively against Warne's marvellously accurate and teasingly flighted leg-breaks. Neither batsman allowed McGrath to bowl outside the off-stump with complete impunity, Hick cutting him crisply for the first four of the morning and Hussain driving him imperiously past cover.

Hick, however, fell to a disappointing shot off MacGill, a victim of the English obsession with the sweep. Missing his stroke on the full toss, exactly as Alec Stewart had done in the first innings at Melbourne, he too was bowled round his legs by a ball he could comfortably have stood up to and driven off the leg stump. Good bowling, poor technique.

John Crawley's dismissal five overs later left England up a creek without a paddle. He had already had some trouble with Colin Miller's sharp and quickly turning off-breaks and he should have known the moment that Miller shrewdly switched to round the wicket that it would be unwise to pad up without playing a stroke. Crawley made no pretence at doing so but he was well forward and the ball hit him halfway up his left thigh: Steve Dunne, the umpire, might have given him the benefit of doubt about the height.

Australia needed no further luck after that until MacGill's seventh and final wicket. Warren Hegg was out 10 minutes after Crawley, toe-ending a cut at a leg-break which turned phenomenally and with three overs to go before lunch MacGill took the one remaining wicket that mattered with a classic ball: a leg-break, tossed up on the leg-stump and driven firmly back to the bowler by Hussain as the ball bit.

Alex Tudor was yet another man to be bowled round his legs sweeping but Dean Headley, for whom 1999 has started so well, aimed a few defiant blows before Healy caught him brilliantly as a leg-break bounced and spun high off the shoulder of his bat.

So to one last freakish dismissal: a long-hop from MacGill, cracked hard off the back foot by a blameless Peter Such against Mark Waugh's right boot as he turned in self-protection. The ball cannoned straight to MacGill without bouncing. One of those days; one of those matches; another of those series in which fortune has favoured the stronger side.