CRICKET/Fifth TestToo much remarkable cricket has been played by Australia over the past few years for "never" to be said. But yesterday, the prospect of a historic Australian whitewash - their first over England for more than 80 years - appeared to have receded.
On a deteriorating fourth-day pitch that will surely get worse, having set a target which has never even been approached in Test cricket, and employing aggressive bowling with the new ball allied to yet more fundamentally incompetent umpiring, England, almost disbelievingly, stared victory in the face.
Australia came back strongly in the closing hour, finishing on 91 for three, 361 still required, with an unlikely hero in Andy Bichel at the crease. Sent in first wicket down, presumably to take the brunt of the new ball and see off its hardness - the better for the frontline batsmen to prosper when conditions ease - the bowler, unbeaten on 49, had already surpassed his highest Test score. Bichel made one-day centuries for Worcestershire last season, but this was a brave effort, made while grimacing in pain from the left index finger he fractured during the first England innings.
There was little joy, though, either for Justin Langer or Matthew Hayden, whose top-of-the-order partnership had tormented England all winter, nor for Ricky Ponting. Each was lbw, and the latter with least cause for complaint.
The decisions against the openers were scandalous however, with Langer, as in Melbourne, receiving a delivery from Andy Caddick that pitched seven or eight inches outside leg stump while Hayden, who stands outside his crease anyway, took a further stride down to Matthew Hoggard and was astounded to see Dave Orchard's finger raised.
A glazier was on stand-by last night as the glass in a dressing room door was shattered and Hayden faced disciplinary action from the match referee Wasim Raja for wilful destruction of property. Ponting's wicket was Caddick's 229th, taking him ahead of Darren Gough in the pantheon of English bowlers and into seventh place.
The England captain's handbook will contain little advice on the timing of declarations against Australia. It tends not to happen often, the last time being in order to set a target on this ground in 1995 when Mike Atherton left Graeme Hick unbeaten on 98.
The conundrum for Nasser Hussain was to show confidence in his bowlers and his reading of the pitch, and leaving them adequate time to complete the job while at the same time eliminating the possibility of a home win.
Such Test match declarations generally - and that by Adam Gilchrist at Headingley two years ago was an exception - are made on the team's own terms. Given the rate at which Australia score, the depth to their order, and the paucity of the England attack, this was a ticklish one.
But by the time Hussain finally pulled the plug on his second innings shortly before five o'clock, Michael Vaughan's unquestioned world-class brilliance and the captain's own cussedness had taken the score from 218 for two overnight to 452 for nine.
Never, of course, has a side made more than India's 406 for four to win a Test, although Australia themselves made 404 for 3 at Headingley in 1948 and kick-started their phenomenal run of success by getting 369 for six to beat Pakistan in Hobart three years ago. But their best against England in Australia is 315 for six, and at the SCG specifically, 276 for four, both of them more than a century ago.
What is there to be said of Vaughan that has not said over the past eight months? That he is on the sort of roll experienced recently by Hayden, where anything seems possible and becomes so, is true. But he is playing with great concentration, an almost faultless technique, and a range of strokes that mark him already as the best right-hander England have possessed since Graham Gooch.
His century, his eighth in Tests and seventh since May, was completed on Saturday. Yesterday, he simply batted on, a man greedy for runs and recognising the feast can be followed by famine.
His 183, made in six-and-a-half hours with 27 fours and a six, is his fourth score in excess of 150, and in the last three decades only Gooch, David Gower and Dennis Amiss, with eight apiece, can match that for England.
He and Hussain added 189 for the third wicket, after the captain had posted 160 for the same wicket with Mark Butcher in the first innings.
With the new ball taken by Australia, and piercing the surface of the pitch like a hand grenade, life for a while became perilous against Brett Lee. It did for Hussain, but not until he had made 72 invaluable runs. No one can have given more this winter.
