Nothing so deflates a team as a dropped catch; nothing so elevates a team as a great catch. The second Test evidenced both. On Friday night, England’s fielders did more to break their bowlers than Australia’s batters. And today, as Australia’s bowlers searched and probed, probed and search, Steve Smith and Alex Carey curbed England’s lead with fielding to lift a whole nation.
Will Jacks had provided the solitary exception to England’s clumsiness on the second evening by diving at backward square leg to catch Smith one-handed. Smith cancelled this out and more. It was in many ways a manufactured intervention, with a degree of difficulty introduced – Smith had come closer at slip to shadow Carey’s creeping up to the stumps as Michael Neser ran in from the Stanley Street End.
Smith seemed to be diving left almost before the ball was edged – it was as though he had imagined the catch before it came
You can take a chance on this when you’ve already taken more than 200 Test catches, and have had a good long bat and field on surface scored with fourth day cracks. Though his view was partly obscured by the keeper’s right knee, Smith seemed to be diving left almost before the ball was edged, having detecting the hint of extra bounce and the rigidity of the defensive bat – at any rate, it was as though he had imagined the catch before it came.
Jacks had batted well – calmly at any rate, and without trouble, during the 96-run, 221-ball, three-hour partnership with his captain. And Ben Stokes, for such an irresistible force, has always had a sideline in immovable objecthood. Viz Headingley 2019: after 100 minutes of the mighty match-winning innings with which he is identified, if you recall, Stokes was 3 from 73 balls. When he sets to defending, he showcases a bat as dead and straight as Geoffrey Boycott’s. Were Stokes marooned on an ice floe, you’d back him to survive on a whiff of pemmican and the occasional slice of sled dog.
As often happens, however, one brought two. In Neser’s next over, Stokes also defended a ball that bounced a little more, and Carey accepted a thickish edge. Such catches are always underestimated, because their two-dimensional representation on television does not do justice to the third dimension – the centimetres of deviation that can be involved in little more than a metre of the ball’s transit. It all seems to happen in a snap, like a door shutting or a suitcase closing; in fact, it requires the reflexes of quicksilver. Carey had a quite astonishing match, making the hard look easy with the gloves, and the awkward comfortable at the crease. Neser then secured a fifth wicket thanks to another Smith catch, at the end of a bustling spell. First to congratulate him as he came in was Nathan Lyon, fighting back any residual “filthy” feelings.
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England adding 59 in a two-hour session to tea without losing a wicket felt like a veritable triumph
The irony is that this was not England’s worst day by any means. They showed they could do more than “run to the danger” without running away from the danger – and Test cricket in Australia is ever about sizing the danger up, breaking it into parts and dealing with each in turn. After the chaos of their second innings collapse, following their spasmodic Thursday, error-strewn Friday night and directionless Saturday afternoon, England adding 59 in a two-hour session to tea without losing a wicket felt like a veritable triumph.
Still, this Australian team is developing a familiar swagger. As he waited to commence their second innings, Jake Weatherald cheerily signed the cap of the boy holding the Australian flag, while Travis Head promptly gave the crowd what they wanted by hefting Gus Atkinson for six to leg and four through the covers. Four byes continued Jamie Smith’s wretched match.
Thunderstorms hovered out of view in the darkness of the night, but they could not come quickly enough for England, and Australia had nailed down its two-nil lead by 7.30pm. The final blow, fittingly, was struck by Smith, who had taken four, six and chip or two off Jofra Archer – reminding him, perhaps, that the paceman has still to dismiss him in Test cricket. With his climactic six off Atkinson over backward square leg, Australia’s skipper took his record as locum to seven wins and a draw in eight matches – another form of accepting every chance that comes along.
Photograph by David Gray/ AFP via Getty