England fights back, at last

By Ted Corbett

LEEDS, AUG. 18. By the standards of the last 44 days England had cause to bring out the champagne at Headingley today. It not only batted longer than in any of its other six innings against Australia, but forced it to take a second new ball and avoided the follow-on.

And to think that early in the third day of the fourth Test it looked as if it might be bowled out for a pittance. Is it down and out? Good heavens no! The sunshine days are just around the corner.

The day began appallingly. With only three runs added to the overnight total of 155 for two Nasser Hussain played back - does anyone ever play forward to this nightmare of a bowler? - and was hit on the pads. Replays showed that the guilty leg guard may have been an inch outside the off stump but we cannot blame umpire Shepherd for his misjudgement.

We can lay a heavy charge against Mark Butcher who took leave of all his senses in the next over when he saw Brett Lee with the ball in his hand three yards from the bowler's stumps and thought it was good idea to go for a run. He was out by such a distance that Butcher did not even wait for the third umpire's verdict.

Usman Afzaal, a flambouyant young batsman just to judge from his walk to the wicket, stayed 18 balls and hit 14 runs. If he considered that was the right innings for this moment of crisis he was so out of touch with the game as to be insensible and it was hardly a shock when he guided McGrath's standard ball to Mark Waugh at slip. England was 174 for five and the follow-on mark was still 74 runs away.

Even though Mark Ramprakash, at his stylish best, was hit on the wrist by a ball from Gillespie, he and Alec Stewart guided England to lunch at 235 with certainty. It may have been the coolest England middle order batting of the series.

Afterwards, in quick succession, the pair divided 16 runs off Lee's warm-up over ahead of the new ball, survived an over from McGrath in search of one victim to give him a 348th Test wicket, and seemed set to milk the new ball as Damien Martyn did on Friday. Ramprakash obviously thought so and tried to crash a Lee ball through point - although to reach it he had to leap off the ground - and gave Adam Gilchrist his third catch of the innings.

Alex Tudor, top Test score 99 not out, managed just four balls before he edged McGrath to provide Gilchrist with his 18th success this summer. McGrath was just seven behind Dennis Lillee's 355 in aggregate wickets and may now overtake him before he flies home.

Lee hit Andrew Caddick on the arm and Caddick replied with a cover driven four. Stewart went elegantly to fifty and then hit McGrath high over cover for six. His fifty had taken just 67 balls and the joint batting average of his remaining partners cannot have inspired any confidence.

Caddick went - testily since he appeared to have missed the ball by a wide margin - to Lee, Darren Cough was caught off a skier to give McGrath his 349th wicket and bad light stopped play with Stewart just seven short of Marcus Trescothick's 74, England's top score of the series.

As the bad light turned to heavy rain at 300 for nine we could reflect on the way Stewart's innings left the selectors with an additional headache.

He is debating retirement from Test cricket - ``I'll not even think it through properly until the end of the summer,'' he told me - but the committee will announce a squad for India on August 28.

They admit there is no-one to take his place. Their bosses tell them to pick and be damned. In other words Stewart, the only man for the job, will be chosen and may then decline to tour.

What an embarrassment, even for selectors who have chosen 19 players who cannot score a century between them in four Tests.

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