CRICKET:THIS WAS not a pretty day's cricket: one for the connoisseurs, as the phrase has it. For the better part of the 59 overs possible before heavy rain swept in for the second time, to curtail proceedings, England bowled drier than a Pom's bath towel, as they are fond of telling you out here, keeping the brakes on Australia's progress.

Apart from a 50-run flurry in near enough even time after lunch, when Shane Watson and the debutant Usman Khawaja made merry, the England bowlers kept the lid on the batting, and when Khawaja, having made 37, was frustrated into playing an ill-judged sweep to what proved to be the day’s final delivery, bringing to an end an innings of unfulfilled promise, it was England who shaded the honours.

England captain Andrew Strauss saw the admirable persistence of his pace attack allied to Graeme Swann’s subtleties make amends for some desperate luck against an excellent demonstration from Watson and Phil Hughes of the art of opening the batting on a tricky pitch.

Watson, having batted through two hours of denial in the morning, with not a boundary to show for it, and showing total discretion on leaving the ball, then hit five fours in reaching 45 before he edged Tim Bresnan to first slip, slapped his hand against the face of his bat and sloped off.

Hughes had batted with considerable restraint against bowling that allowed him no room to swing his arms in his accustomed robust fashion, his judgment of what to leave a match for that of Watson. To Hughes went the only boundaries of the morning, but more pertinently there seemed to be evidence he is coming to terms with the more technical rather than instinctive demands of opening.

Then, with lunch imminent, and in the fraction of a second that it took him to jab at a short delivery from Chris Tremlett and steer it straight to Paul Collingwood at third slip, all the good work was undone.

The testing first morning, though, in which only 55 were scored, lent evidence enough that batting will not be easy on what looks an untrustworthy pitch. That it appears striped horizontally across is a concern which generally means it cannot be mown evenly. In other words, there are corrugations which will lead to erratic bounce and two paces, depending on whether the ball strikes grass or the bare surface.

For the most part the seamers failed to come on to the bat in anything like a comfortable fashion, making timing difficult but also causing the occasional edge to fall short of the slips. Every so often, though, a delivery flew through to Matt Prior, disconcerting for the close fielders who will have been unsure of the depth to stand.

Watson’s departure brought the stand-in captain, Michael Clarke, to the crease, to the considerable sound of booing, not all of it of the Barmy Army pantomime sort. This has not been a good series to be Australia’s captain, with Ricky Ponting having averaged 16.14 – the worst in an Ashes series since Joe Darling in 1902 – and Clarke only 21.14 before this Test.

That figure took an immediate plummet when he sliced Bresnan straight to Jimmy Anderson in the gully. If one of England’s primary aims has been to destabilise the opposition through the leader then they have exceeded expectation.

The Sydney crowd may have had a glimpse of the future, however, with the manner in which Khawaja began his Test career. He clipped his first delivery away nicely through midwicket for a couple and then revived memories of David Gower’s Edgbaston debut, swivelling as if on nylon castors to pull Tremlett’s next delivery to the square boundary. It was an emphatic start.

Over the next two hours, however, he was taught a strong lesson about the fundamental differences in the level he has been used to and Test cricket played against a skilful and determined attack. In no time he had raced to 15 from 10 balls and, briefly, a game that had seemed shackled came alive.

But England allowed him no further luxury, keeping to their lengths and lines, with beautifully set fields. Suddenly the runs began to dry up and it became a game of patience.

His rollicking start was replaced by stagnation that brought only a further 22 from 85 deliveries. Swann was the final straw, the old pro snaring the young upstart.