CRICKET/Third Test: England's Ashes dream died shortly before five o'clock here yesterday afternoon. It was not a pretty end, but ruthless, bloodthirsty and, in its way, as exhilarating as the nature of the rivalry between the oldest enemies in cricket demands. From Mike Selvey at the Waca
The wolf pack had closed in for the kill: seven slips and gullies and a short-leg for the beanpole tailender Steve Harmison, with Brett Lee, one of the world's fastest bowlers, at full tilt downbreeze armed with a new ball.
The England captain Nasser Hussain afterwards said, only half in jest, that Harmison was shivering, and with good cause. Minutes earlier, Lee's bouncer had careered flush between Alex Tudor's face guard and helmet peak, splitting open his left eye and sending him reeling, over and over on the ground, then up again and finally back down as the Australia players surrounded him, realising the seriousness of the situation. Steve Waugh, the Australia captain, confessed he was worried for the sight of the eye.
Tudor was taken from the field on a stretcher and had the wound stitched. Last night he was recovering slowly from the experience, but the mental scars may take a while longer to heal, a painful metaphor for the experience of the entire team this winter.
As the doctor was threading his needle in the dressing room, Harmison was greeted with a searing bouncer from Lee - just to let him know that this is a game where quarter is neither given nor asked - and then, with an emphatic finality, had his stumps splattered with a missile of a full toss.
With Tudor out of the game and Chris Silverwood absent hurt - he would surely have hobbled out on his injured ankle if there had been any point - that was it.
While England, all out for 223, left the scene to count their wounded and the cost of the defeat, the Australians retired to their dressing room to celebrate long and hard, drink their beer and, led as ever by Ricky Ponting, sing Beneath The Southern Cross, the victory song that has been heard the world over this past decade.
England's defeat inside three days follows that by an innings and 51 in Adelaide and, before that, 384 runs in Brisbane, and was as comprehensive as it gets. Hussain's team has been outplayed totally in every aspect of the game, with the gap between the sides, in the estimation of the England captain, wider than ever despite the obvious progress made by England against all other opposition.
Yesterday, following Saturday's carnage with the bat by Australia, Glenn McGrath, at fast-medium, demonstrated levels of metronomic accuracy achievable not even in the wildest imagination of an England bowler, so that Hussain, playing with impressive fortitude, had to seek counsel from the coach Duncan Fletcher during an interval to find a way of breaking the stranglehold. He never managed it.
And Shane Warne, bowling into the strong breeze, broke with his norm and floated the ball up tantalisingly slow as if he were Tich Freeman after another stumping. It was all too much. If consolation there be, it is that this series has taken 894 overs to decide, 229 more than it took the Australians to wrap up the series in England two summers ago.
There is now a natural break in the proceedings for a few weeks to accommodate the start of the interminable triangular one-day series, with the Tests picking up again in Melbourne on St Stephen's Day.
The third day of this Test, with the outcome of the series all but settled, did see some commendable England resistance: first from Hussain himself, who battled away for almost four hours for 61 before becoming the victim of another shocking umpiring decision in a match littered with them; from Robert Key too, who enhanced the reputation he is gaining with the Australians themselves by playing with great common sense and character before being sent on his way by the genius of McGrath; and lastly from Alec Stewart, who with little to play for but respectability, cracked his first ball for four and nine more boundaries besides in an unbeaten 66.The start yesterday, though, had been as chaotic as it gets with a sequence of hapless cricket that could be produced as a comedy award winner at next year's Edinburgh fringe. The nightwatchman Richard Dawson had already been dismissed when, in the fifth over, Michael Vaughan pushed the penultimate ball of a McGrath over firmly wide of mid-off and called Mark Butcher for the morning's first run. As Lee misfielded, Butcher called for a second that was never there, aborted his run and left Vaughan stranded. Butcher had been run out by Vaughan in the first innings and Machiavellian minds sniffed retribution.
Hussain arrived, having passed a furious Vaughan, tapped Butcher on the rump and told him not to worry, to see it out. The next ball thudded into his pads and Butcher departed lbw, swiping the bails away in his anger and subsequently fined some £800 by the match referee, Wasim Raja.
What now was Hussain thinking? Gillespie began a new over to him, Hussain prodded, felt the edge and dare not watch as the ball sped to first slip. He waited for the jubilation, but Warne had grassed a simple chance.
That Hussain subsequently battled out an innings was a relief to all. Time spent in the middle was time not spent seething in the dressing room. On top of everything else, three wickets in three balls including his own and either the Samaritans or the murder squad would have been in business.
GUARDIAN SERVICE
