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LET me tell you a short story about cricket; I'll call it The Tale Of Two Balls. Old Trafford, June 4, 1993 - the first Test of an eagerly awaited Ashes series. A world class player of spin, English batsman Mike Gatting prowls the crease. The return of the redoubtable Gatting has heartened a pessimistic nation. The Australians know they are in for a much stiffer contest than the walkover of 1990/1991.
Facing Gatting is an obscure leg spinner by the name of Shane Warne. Warne's Test career is modest so far - 31 wickets in 11 matches at an average of just over 30. Rotating his head like a meerkat, Gatting assesses the chinks in opposing captain Allan Border's armour. Mentally, he lasers a line through the field placement to the most vulnerable boundary. As Warne works through his approach of a few paces, Gatting looks every inch the man to plunder runs. The ball twirls through the air, drifts down Gatting's leg side and bounces on the pitch well outside leg stump. Sensibly, Gatting thrusts his left leg forward, aligning his bat with his pad to defend against the spin.
Then, in a crystallised moment of sporting perfection, time slows down, stops and speeds up again. The ball bites the ground, hard, and springs prodigiously to the side, from right to left, evading Gatting's bat to clip the top off his off-stump. It is a moment Gatting - shaking his head in disbelief as he trudges from the field - will rewind ad infinitum in the theatre of the mind. It is the moment when a single ball - the Ball Of The Century, no less - announces the arrival of a genius and the end of a contest.
Now, fast forward, Time Traveller, to the Gabba, November 23, 2006; the first Test of another hugely anticipated Ashes series. Short and squat, Aussie captain Ponting wins the toss; long and spare, Harmison opens the bowling. Months of pent-up energy come down to this simple act - a tall man throwing a small, leather-clad ball at three sticks. Everyone knows the lolloping Geordie can, on his day, destroy a side in a style reminiscent of the great West Indian, Curtly Ambrose. Harmison steams in with huge strides and releases at the top of his rotation...but Langer, the batsman he so peppered at Lords, offers no stroke.
Indeed, not only does Langer offer no stroke; he cannot - the ball is so hideously wide you would need three bats stuck end-to-end to reach it. Something has gone terribly, fundamentally wrong - the ball has slipped out of Harmison's hand from the wrong place at the wrong time. It skews sideways across the wicket, bouncing into the hands of the startled Flintoff at second slip. Silence in the Gabba, then...laughter. From that moment on the belief drains from the Englishmen; ditto their supporters watching back home.
As the Australians pile on the runs, the first Test becomes embarrassing; as McGrath dismantles the upper order, it becomes unendurable. There are murmurs of oppostion from (who else?) Flintoff, who takes four wickets, and Pieterson, who puts on 92. But once again a single defining moment, the photo negative of Warne's, if you like, has pre-determined the outcome of the match.
Is it too far-fetched to suggest that it, like the Ball Of The Century, could have pre-determined the outcome of an entire series? Will the dismal trajectory of Harmison's opening salvo mirror the waywardness of all English hopes? With Adelaide fast approaching, we must hope not - both for ourselves, and for the sake of the superlative Australians.
For however seductive the prospect of a whitewash might sound, Ponting knows, and all but the most unenlightened of Australian fans know, that it is far, far sweeter to win tooth and nail, to claw that hard-won victory, than witness an act of sporting self-destruction.
by Pom
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