Even the Anglican church on the way to the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) got into the act. The End Game is the sermon promised for Sunday. ”Ashes to Ashes. Are You Ready for the Final Test?”
Facing their cricket mortalities, Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath were as ready as they could be: all they needed was a bit of help from the superintending deity that Warne refers to as the ”scriptwriter”.
They bounded out of the gate together with their fellow retiree Justin Langer. Bowler McGrath took the new ball, first slip Warne assumed the old pose, and 46 070 people waited for their preternatural influence to have its effect. Rain had not dampened the carnival atmosphere, and even simple gestures had the quality of which limited-edition memorabilia is made.
In one over from McGrath, Warne sidled over meaningfully to meet him, either to engage in some occult strategising or to provide another photo opportunity. In one over from Warne, McGrath made a hash of a boundary stop and chuntered away to himself almost wistfully.
In between times, McGrath provided hints of what has made him so good, beating the bat with a frequency unusual even for him. For a bowler of McGrath’s exactitude, the game is calibrated in centimetres. He was a centimetre out here and there as the match slumbered fitfully through its first two sessions: a reminder of how formidably precise he has been throughout his career.
Cricket is also a game of minuscule measurements for batsmen: one of the smaller ones being the distance between genius and idiot, which Kevin Pietersen at times straddles uneasily.
He was in a skittish, self-conscious mood on Tuesday, indulging in lots of glove touching with his comrades and periodically studying himself on the big screen as though to check that he was radiating the appropriate ”team player” body language. Could John Buchanan, who casually dissed Pietersen as ”distanced from the rest of the group” in the England XI, have hooked such a live one with so paltry a bait?
Pietersen began advancing to Warne’s first delivery almost as the bowler began his approach — perhaps he was coming up to get his autograph — and ended up having to shimmy sideways to defend off the back foot several metres down the track. He also renewed his cheeky habit of creeping up on McGrath — a risk-reward proposition not previously entertained by an international batsman, and not without good reason.
McGrath has lost enough pace as a bowler now that a decision to pull or hook him is an act of genuine volition rather than a reflex action. He hasn’t, however, lost any height, and his trajectory is as steep as ever. Pietersen could almost have held a phone poll on the wisdom of his shot by the time the ball arrived, but once committed to the stroke he was never in a position to do other than hit it in the air.
In position at midwicket was Michael Hussey, the man with the manga superhero nickname of Mr Cricket, and he levitated to take the catch.
Geoff Boycott’s old saw is that batsmen, to guard against overconfidence, should study any scoreboard with an eye to what it would look like with two additional wickets: in England’s case this summer, it should almost be five. A second duly fell in Ian Bell, who continued a habit he would like to get out of by attracting the day’s best ball. England proceeded with utmost care through the rest of the day, knowing that one false move exposed a lengthy tail.
Warne didn’t have much of a day on a pitch that did him few favours, bowling at first to the accompaniment of the theme from Dad’s Army and, after stumps in the guise of Dad, appearing on the outfield in front of the Ladies’ Pavilion to bowl and bat with his three children.
Coverage of cricket in Australia often has a febrile air to it, thanks to the conjunction of the cricket season with the media’s annual silly season, when even less is happening in the country than usual. But even by these standards, the valedictory tributes to Warne, McGrath and Langer have been lavish. In the old Soviet Union, radio stations would have been playing martial music at such a passing.
Prime time on Channel Nine the previous night, for instance, was devoted to a lengthy celebration of the first and blondest among equals — Goodbye Warnie was watched by a peak audience of 1,43-million. — Â