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.
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