2005: A Cricket Odyssey

GH was there

It’s the best piece I’ve written that never saw the light of day.

As England’s players came off for tea, the Lord’s members rose to them, in jubilant egg-and-bacon array. They had slain the mighty Australians in two sessions for 190 with bowling aggression of a kind seldom seen in Ashes of recent memory. I was kind of pleased too, because I was putting the finishing touches to a despatch for The Guardian with which I was, I have to say, pretty happy. Nothing so guarantees good cricket writing as good cricket, and the visitors’ unanticipated batting collapse lent itself to ready anatomising.

What I’d actually committed was a rookie error. For this, as you might have guessed, was twenty years ago today, at the start of a series in which if it could happen it did. England’s reply began with a trip and a stumble, then, against Glenn McGrath, a long slide down. His opening spell was thirteen overs - thirteen! Every one of his five wickets for 21 was a hole beneath the waterline of the piece I finally had to scuttle. As England reached the close on seven for 98, I ruefully filed, ahem, my second despatch of the day.