THESE ARE the days where the sporting gods are cruel. They dare to spin dreams and then crush them. First Tom Watson at Turnberry, and Lance Armstrong in the Alps, and now Australia at the English citadel they have made impregnable for the past three-quarters of a century.
Australia, who even with innermost turmoils, never ever display anything but the utter conviction of their right to dominate, arrived here yesterday believing they could overturn a century and more of Test history and with an unfeasible run chase to win a match that was unwinnable.
One-hundred-and-five minutes later they were all out for 406, England triumphant by 115 runs, and the dream lay in tatters, blown away by a raging bull called Flintoff, in his Lord’s Test match swansong, and an upstart Swann having the time of his life.
Andrew Flintoff rampaged in from the Pavilion end unchanged and unbowed since he took the new ball six overs before the close of play on Sunday. The three wickets he took yesterday, beginning with that of Brad Haddin with his fourth ball and without addition to the score, and ending when he uprooted the stumps of Peter Siddle, gave him morning figures of 10-1-43-3 and five for 92 in all, the third five-wicket haul of his Test career and his first since The Oval against this same opposition four years ago.
If he milked each wicket for all it was worth, hamming it up for the crowd, posturing and posing, then this was glorious, teeth-jarring fast bowling, not a thing of beauty but driven by brute force and personality.
At one time, Andrew Strauss, sensing his steam running out, and wishing to protect him from himself, tried to suggest he might hand over to another. The captain was forced to hold his hands up in reluctant acceptance of the inevitable: he might as well have tried to stop the tide.
Those who know Flintoff understand that the announcement of his retirement from Tests at the end of this series would impel him to greater things and, through him, perhaps the team.
It has proved thus. He has earned a place on both bowling and batting honours boards, a double given to very few.
It was Graeme Swann, though, who cleared the passage to the win and then administered the coup de grace. For more than five hours Michael Clarke had batted sublimely, and now he had the chance to complete one of the finest match-winning innings in history.
Jimmy Anderson’s urgent opening burst had been repelled, and now Strauss turned not to another seamer but to Swann, whose Ashes debut jitters in Cardiff had held him back. Clarke had played him beautifully, twinkling feet and deft angles.
This time he danced down to the second ball which drifted away from him at the last moment, eluded the outside edge before spinning back to hit off-stump.
The off-spinner kept his nerve at the end, too, when Mitchell Johnson, a bowler in tatters but a dangerous batsman with a Test hundred in South Africa and now 63 good runs to his name, had licence to throw the bat in one last effort. Swann fired one in flatter, through the arc of the swing and took out middle. Four for 87 was his reward.
If England leave here with some concerns, and they will certainly consider a change for the third Test at Edgbaston in nine days – probably in the form of Steve Harmison for Graham Onions – then it is Australia who are in disarray.
Their batting is sound, sound enough indeed to make 674 for five in Cardiff and 406 in the fourth innings here.
The bowling, though, is a disaster, with Johnson’s timing, an essential ingredient in an unorthodox method, while Siddle has huffed and puffed but blown down only Swann’s Cardiff house.
Meanwhile, there is the chance now to rest and recuperate: Flintoff his knee, the toss up being whether it is his knee or his gin and tonic which receives the most ice; Kevin Pietersen his Achilles’ tendons that so restricted him in this match; Onions his sore elbow that kept him from the field on the fourth evening.
And for Ravi Bopara to reflect that style is no substitute for substance. He has much to learn if number three is to be his position.
Guardian Service