Section:GDN 1N PaGe:40 Edition Date:190827 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 26/8/2019 20:24 cYanmaGentaYellowb
- The Guardian Tuesday 27 August 2019
(^40) Sport
Cricket The Ashes
Miracle of
Headingley
sets Test
record for Sky
Ben Stokes and the miracle of
Headingley resulted in Sky’s highest
audience for a day of live Test cricket,
with a peak of 2.1 million UK viewers
switching on as England levelled the
Ashes in dramatic fashion.
The fi gure is dwarfed by that for
the World Cup fi nal between England
and New Zealand last month – another
match-winning performance from
Stokes – that peaked at 8.7 million
in the UK after Sky (3.5m) opted to
share its live broadcast with Channel 4
(5.2m). But while the partnership was
a success – the fi nal beat the 8.4m peak
audience on day four of the 2005 Trent
Bridge Test, when Channel 4 held the
rights – a repeat deal with a free-to-air
broadcaster is not expected during this
Ashes series.
Channel 5 has reported an audience
of “over” 2 million for the one-hour
highlights package that followed day
four at Headingley, while BBC’s Test
Match Special claimed similar fi gures
to its coverage of the World Cup fi nal
with 1.3m requests on the day via its
online platforms.
The frenzied fi nale to the third Test,
in which Stokes (135 not out) and No 11
Jack Leach (1 not out) put on 76 runs
for the last wicket as England chased
down an improbable 359 to win, left
Ali Martin
Australia captain will come
under scrutiny after defeat
at Headingley but his style
of leadership shone through
Geoff Lemon
T
his isn’t a great week to
be Tim Paine. Australia’s
Test captain has always
been vulnerable to
criticism: given he fi rst
took over the team
in caretaker mode, it’s an easy
move to question his legitimacy.
Double down with the fact he was
initially picked as almost a specialist
wicketkeeper, with his batting closer
to useful than dominant. These
shots are cheap, but it was only ever
going to take a bad loss or a couple of
low scores before people took them.
Anyone’s captaincy will fairly
come under scrutiny when a team
concedes a fourth-innings chase of
well over 300 or after a hefty last-
wicket partnership. The same goes
for bowling out an opponent for 67
and still losing. You can question
Paine’s tactics of putting the fi eld
back for Ben Stokes so early and you
can question his use of reviews after
a late, incorrect referral when Pat
Cummins hit Jack Leach on the pad.
But knowing what didn’t work is, of
course, the province of hindsight.
One obvious incongruity after
Stokes’s miracle was seeing Steve
Smith in training kit lining up with
the support staff to shake a long line
of English hands. Smith’s batting
had not been hugely missed, with
Marnus Labuschagne making 74 and
80 in his place; Smith the former
captain might have been an asset on
the fi eld in those frenetic fi nal overs.
But i t’s not like Smith the captain
was an ice-cold decision-maker:
he stressed and fretted, and had
defensive impulses, and lacked the
personal charisma to rally a group
by voice rather than by batting deed.No gain in putting
Paine in the dock
The number of viewers who
watched Ben Stokes’s Test heroics
at Headingley on Sky Sports2.1m
the Australia coach, Justin Langer,
ruing his side’s use of the decision
review system.
Nathan Lyon believed he had
trapped Stokes lbw for 131 when
England were two runs away from
the target, only for Joel Wilson, the
on-fi eld umpire, to turn down the
appeal. The Hawkeye projection sug-
gested it was out but with the captain,
Tim Paine, having burned his team’s
last review in the previous over – a
speculative lbw against Leach from a
Pat Cummins delivery shown to have
pitched outside leg – the on-fi eld deci-
sion stood.
The tourists have made nine unsuc-
cessful reviews in the fi eld during the
series, and Langer said : “We’ve been
really poor at it. We’ve talked a lot about
getting better at our reviews. We’ve got
a way we go about it but sometimes
you don’t quite get it right. The one
off Pat Cummins was getting pretty
desperate at the end and that often
happens. That’s just how it works out.”
Australia’s tour continues with a
three-day match against Derbyshire
from Thursday and with Steve Smith
back after missing the third Test with
concussion and his stand-in, Marnus
Labushagne, having made three suc-
cessive half-centuries, the pressure is
on the other batsmen.India in the Under-19s World Cup in- We didn’t become team mates
until 2014 on a one-day tour to the
Caribbean and he was going through
a rough patch at the time, with some
low scores and then a busted hand
when he struck a locker.
It may surprise some people when
I follow this by saying he was already
a mature guy at just 22, with a young
family. And what I liked about him
was that he treated everyone the
same. It didn’t matter who you were,
your background or what you looked
like, he always had time for you. We
hit it off straight away.
Just before the incident in Bristol
in 2017 I really thought he was
coming into his own as a cricketer.
That set him back a bit but since then
he has become more aware of his
surroundings and responsibilities.
He has the Test vice-captaincy back
now but he doesn’t need a label,
because he leads any team he plays
in regardless.
What we witnessed on Sunday
wasn’t a fl uke, it was the result of the
hard work I mentioned. Seriously,
you will not fi nd a cricketer more
dedicated to self-improvement.
He trains at 100mph and is just
unrelenting with it. And over time
it has made him into the player you
see today. Those mammoth bowling
spells at Headingley are testament
to that.As a batsman he has become
excellent at judging scenarios. He
now has the all-round game and
technique to adapt. Think about the
start and end to that innings: his fi rst
73 balls he scored three runs. His
last 45? 74. Incredible. Even when
Jos Buttler was run out, he kept his
cool. Refusing to celebrate personal
milestones sums him up too. It is
team fi rst, every time.
Huge credit must also go to Leach
for sticking with him. He is a better
batsman than some would give
him credit for. He gets in line, fi ghts
his corner and is harder to get out
than you would think. Cricket is an
amazing game because he scored
one run and yet it is probably the
biggest he will make in his life.
The decision to give him the
nod over myself after Edgbaston
was one I couldn’t argue with. AllI care about is England doing well
and if that means I’m looking on
for a bit, I won’t lose any sleep.
Whatever happens will happen and
I will support the boys regardless.
The schedule makes it tricky to get
back in but I am enjoying my time
at Worcestershire. A video of me
bowling seamers went around social
media the other week and while I’m
not on it, I heard it caused a bit of
a stir. People were thinking I’d lost
confi dence in my spin bowling but to
be honest, that was nonsense.
One of our quicks, Josh Tongue,
was injured and after bowling some,
ahem, half-decent seam last year,
our captain, Joe Leach, asked me to
switch for a spell. Sometimes the
view from the sofa isn’t always the
most informed. I am fi nding form
with the bat too and when the time
comes, I will be ready.My friend Stokes is
England’s greatest
ever all-rounder
Continued from back pageEight men on the fence may well
have been his plan and it may not
have been in his power to rein in
bowlers losing their heads.
Paine’s leadership was evident in
other ways. Even as Stokes was mid-
shot hitting the winning boundary
Nathan Lyon collapsed to the ground
at backward point. He had fumbled
a chance to run out Leach in the
previous over, then had a leg-before
appeal against Stokes turned down.
As soon as Paine noticed his spinner
on the deck he walked over to help
him up.
“He’s a really important player
in our side. I said to him that if our
players see him dealing with it
really quickly and moving on then
our younger players are going to do
the same thing, and we turn up to
Manchester in a much better frame
of mind .”
It was one instance of an
impressive level-headedness. Rather
than scratch at the review or the run-
out or the catch that Marcus Harris
dropped, he looked more broadly.
“We could have batted them right
out of the game. When you keep
giving a team with high-quality
players a sniff , they’re going to make
you pay – we probably missed a n
opportunity to get 450 in front.”
I t’s worth mentioning the logical
fallacy that Paine’s wrong DRS
review meant that Lyon’s dismissal
was lost. If the Cummins review
had not been sent upstairs, then the
next ball would have been bowled
a couple of minutes earlier. The
entire next over would have been
slightly diff erent, both for bowler
and batsman. In short, Lyon’s ball
to Stokes can only exist in a world
where Paine has already taken the
review. If Paine doesn’t review, a
diff erent ball is bowled, with an
unknown result. Something else
happens, and one of the teams wins.
You can’t unscramble the omelette
of a cause-and-eff ect timeline.
So that just leaves the not-out
decision by umpire Joel Wilson. He
is being roasted in the Australianmedia, but after a poor game at
Edgbaston he actually bounced
back in the third Test with a series of
excellent decisions and a 7-1 record
against the review system.T
he contention that he
made a blatant mistake
is not fair. Replays
suggest HawkEye was
questionable, tracking
a change of direction
after the ball fl icked the front pad.
The reconstructed ball straightens
more sharply than is realistic and
apparently smashes leg stump. But
watching live it looked more like
it might be going down leg, and
Stokes’s fl urry of movement across
the crease increased that impression.
Paine treated that episode with
equilibrium too. “I don’t think I’vegot a referral correct the whole
series, so I can’t sit here and bag
the umpires – we also had other
opportunities to win the game
and we didn’t take them, so to sit
down and single out an umpire is
unnecessary.”
It’s unnecessary, but it is easy.
When things go wrong it’s tempting
to pick the easy marks to blame. It’s
better to remember nothing has ever
gone completely right, and that the
Ashes are neither won nor lost yet,
and that when they are it will be the
product of a thousand decisions. It’s
up to Paine and Wilson to remind
themselves of this, even if a lot of
voices tell them otherwise.▲ Tim Paine (right) was unable to halt
Ben Stokes’s momentum on Sunday
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