reiterates that splitting the squad is only an option under consideration – but the proverbial cat is out of the bag. If the first-choice bowlers do go to Hobart, will it suggest that the coach is not happy with their progress? And what about the captain and coach’s oft-repeated assertion that it is important to win every game? It certainly makes easy copy for we hacks and is just what we need -something to write about on an otherwise blank day. Opinion in the media is camp is split, to be fair.
Training is going well. I walk along the river for half an hour and then run back to the hotel. I am almost enjoying it, but in this fabulous place it would be hard not to. It is still delightfully quiet without the full Ashes ‘circus’ of reporters, television crews, photographers and so on who are yet to arrive and, of course, I am operating entirely by myself for the BBC. The lack of feeling of being under the microscope means that the players are much more accessible and friendly too. This is what cricket touring is all about, but it won’t last.
DAY 8: 10 November 2010
A vital round of Sheffield Shield matches gets underway with off spinner Nathan Hauritz very much under the spotlight. He had a poor tour of India, but simply put, there does not appear to be any other serious contender within Australia. It must be very awkward for Hauritz, carrying the expectations of being the latest to follow in Shane Warne’s footsteps, and clearly there is no comparison to be made between them. Arguably, this is Australia’s weak link. Playing against Victoria, Hauritz goes for five runs per over and is wicketless. Ponting, meanwhile, scores 32 in Tasmania’s first innings against Queensland.
England have nets at the Adelaide Oval, but do not name their team. I presume it will have to be their Test XI again, so the decision can be taken about the bowling attack. It is also an open media day giving the press from both sides an opportunity to interview a number of players in a large conference room that has been set aside in the basement of the team hotel. It is also the moment when all of the players are filmed by Australia’s Channel 9, folding their arms and smiling rather self-consciously at the camera. These brief clips will be shown during the Test coverage as the players walk out to bat. I can hear much guffawing and leg-pulling coming from the room next door.
James Avery is the excellent ECB media manager who tours with the team, and with whom I have a brilliant working relationship. I am not saying that he gives me what I want in the way of interviews all the time, but he is always very cooperative; particularly when I am out on the ground itself immediately at the end of a Test, live on air, and in desperate need of players to talk to. Today I opt first for Stephen Finn. He is on his first tour of Australia, and did not bowl at anything like his best during the opening match, so it will be interesting to find out how he feels he is getting on.
Unfortunately, the quietest place I can find to chat with him is outside the hotel toilets. Not exactly glamorous. Finn is a delightfully laid back 21 -year-old and seems like a really nice young man. Feet on the ground and all that. He laughs when I tell him that I compare him to Angus Fraser, but without the tantrums. Graeme Swann is next. Graeme is the very definition of a ‘character’, and gives you so much in an interview including, this time, pointing out that behind me James Anderson has dropped his trousers and is mooning at the pair of us! The Swann/Anderson double act will be an amusing feature of the tour with their ECB videos.
Dinner at the Verco family home. Tom and Lucy Verco have been friends of mine for years, and it is so nice to get out of the hotel and into a family environment for an evening. I know everyone believes that hotel life is one long holiday, but it soon becomes very claustrophobic. It is also easy to settle into a very dull routine unless you really make an effort to get out in the evenings.
DAY 9: 11 November 2010
As we anticipated, England name the same team. This confirms two things – that this is their favoured line-up for the First Test, and that if the bowlers fare well here, they will almost certainly miss the match against Australia A. This is still a confusing issue for me. Why give the reserve players the hardest and most challenging practice match of the three? I would have played a reserve player or two here – like Morgan and Bresnan or Tremlett – then gone into the Hobart match with most of my Test players. By naming this team, it would seem England certainly intend to send the first-choice bowlers to Brisbane when the Hobart team is announced next Wednesday. That would give them an extra four days of acclimatisation.
The overriding priority today is for Alastair Cook to get some runs. Traditionally the Adelaide Oval is a batsman’s paradise, but this morning it is dull and overcast, and the South Australian pace bowlers – Peter George in particular – are quite a handful. Strauss perishes unluckily for 4 to a catch down the leg side and walks off swishing his bat in frustration. He knows he is in good form at the moment and a leg-side nick to the ‘keeper is always an infuriating way to get out. It gives us a chance to study Trott at the crease, particularly his unusual and obsessive marking of the crease. This begins with him asking the umpire for his guard, which he marks with three deliberate and long rakes of his boot. He then runs his bat along the groove before asking the umpire for his guard again. This happens at the start of every over at least, and sometimes more often than that. He has received warnings in the past from umpires for time wasting – the batsman should be ready to receive the next ball when the bowler is at the end of his run-up – and it seems certain that the Australians will do everything they can to put him off. I can’t believe that Shane Warne, if he were still playing, would allow Trott to hold him up. I suspect Warne would have adopted the Norman Gifford approach. I have seen the wily ‘Giff sneak up undetected behind the umpire many times in his Warwickshire and Worcestershire days, to clean bowl a young batsman before he was ready. With Trott, his crease-scratching antics are a touchy subject. Last summer I took a deep breath and asked him live on the radio at Lord’s if he was worried that the Aussies would have a go at him using the time-wasting complaint to distract him. Trott muttered something unintelligible and walked off.
It was interesting watching some of the tennis stars at Wimbledon last summer, going through their various routines before every point. Maria Sharapova pulls at the strings of her racquet with her back to her opponent and then taps her left thigh twice when she is about to receive serve. Rafa Nadal seems to take superstition -for that is surely what it is – even further. Emma and I sat almost directly behind the umpire at ground level for the men’s singles final so were only a few feet from Nadal’s chair. It was astonishing to witness the tortured lengths this great sportsman goes to in order to make sure that he sips exactly the same amount of liquid from the two drinks bottles he has under his seat Then, when replacing the bottles, obsessively making sure they were perfectly lined up. As the psychiatrist in Fawlty Towers says, “Enough for a whole conference there”. One can’t help wondering whether Trott’s excessive fiddling about is really necessary. And I know there are members of England’s camp who think that it is bordering on the idiotic and makes Trott look unnecessarily vulnerable.
Trott does seem to have made an effort so far to get a bit of a move on, but after being dropped at slip on 11, he mis-pulls George and is caught and bowled for 12. Cook battles away, occasionally lapsing into the poor footwork around off stump that has caused his technical problems, before playing a desperate firm-footed flash at a wide ball from George, edging it to the wicketkeeper for 32 from 91 balls. It is not a convincing innings and as he troops off, Cook knows that questions about his form and place at the top of the order will continue to be raised in the media. At least he still has three more innings before the Gabba in which to get some runs.
Just as he had at Perth, Pietersen plays some good shots before getting out – this time to a catch on the deep square-leg boundary to a hook shot for 33. It is frustrating that he has not gone on to make a really big score. He is in good touch but cameos won’t win the Ashes. It is left to Collingwood to make the one substantial score of the day. The first 30 or so of his 94 runs are rather scratchy, in my opinion, and I suggest that to him when I interview him after play. “Oh,” he replies rather defensively, “I thought I played rather well.” As an interviewer there is nowhere to go
