Ashes 2019: James Pattinson finally puts injury behind him

James Pattinson of Australia celebrates after taking the wicket of Joe Denly of England during day two of the Ashes Test. Picture: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

Two years ago, James Pattinson would have been pardoned for preparing his baggy green cap for mounting in a glass case. He had just been ruled out of another tour, to Bangladesh, due to the recurrence of the recurrence of the recurrence of back injuries that had plagued him since his days as a teen tearaway.

When you saw him in the flesh — and you did, because he remained a feature of Cricket Australia promotion and marketing — Pattinson looked as taut and ripped as a cricketer ever has.

Unfortunately his work ethic in the gym and on the track was partly a reflection of how seldom he was making it onto actual cricket fields, due to stress fractures that no sooner closed than opened again. In October 2017, a drastic surgical solution was posited, involving bone grafts, pins and wires, with no guarantee of success.

It offered Pattinson a lifeline, by which he lowered himself into cricket in Australia again late last summer. His impact was immediately gratifying. On Thursday evening at Edgbaston, he had time to bowl but a single over, but it made material a comeback to international bowling fully six years since his last Ashes Test.

The day had already seen Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft score their first Test runs for 492 days, but by comparison they had hardly been away. When Jason Roy’s low hands failed to ride the bounce yesterday morning, he became Pattinson’s first Test wicket in 1255 days.

It was a slow day for cricket’s oldest rivals, although gradual rather than leisurely, the inaction as tense as the action; the pitch required care from the batsmen and patience from the bowlers. Nicks hardly carried. Bouncers were effort wasted.

Pattinson bustled; Pattinson chafed; Pattinson pawed the ground. He was the bowler before lunch when Joe Root benefited by Law 29.1.2 — that quirky distinction between the ‘‘disturbance of a bail’’ and the ‘‘complete removal’’ necessary for the wicket to be put down that is cricket’s equivalent of the reprieve for the condemned man should the scaffold’s trapdoor fail to open.

His attempt to overturn an lbw decision in Rory Burns’ favour after tea was the worst review since the release of Fifty Shades Freed.

Pattinson was full of spirit too. He charged in; he followed through at length; every so often he ran back to his mark too. He caucused with his captain; he swapped jokes with teammates.

Looking over at his dugout Pattinson could see Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood in supernumeraries’ bibs, despite their 43 wickets in the previous Ashes. Pattinson’s selection has been a kind of selectorial intuition — educated, for he has been in prime first-class form this summer, but a hunch nonetheless. He took a step to justifying it yesterday afternoon when he beat Joe Denly for pace against the run of play.

As Pattinson shared the new ball with Patrick Cummins, it was worth reflecting how long this had taken to happen. When the pair made their debuts in consecutive Tests in 2011, they loomed as a long-term new ball combination, names to remember and to bracket.

Yet although they were playing their 18th and 21st Tests respectively, they had previously played together in only two one-day internationals, Cummins having had his own protracted injury travails.

When they bowled in Australia’s selection trial, Cummins described Pattinson in the terms one might use of well-liked but distant cousin known mainly by repute: ‘‘He’s impressive isn’t he? It’s the first time I’ve seen him live in a couple of years. You hear from guys playing him in state cricket, and who’ve faced him in the nets, about how well he’s been bowling …. In terms of changes, I haven’t seen a lot.’’

A few key strokes on YouTube will find you a bit more. Footage of Pattinson 1.0 at the start of the decade shows him a strong but limber athlete with a fresh face and bounding stride. What amounts almost to Pattinson 3.5, after a succession of physical rehabilitations and technical recalibrations, resembles a cricket frontiersman, with his ample torso, sleeve tattoo, and hips and shoulders that could block a door. Still only in his thirtieth year, he has the method and the motivation to be a long-term spearhead.

For all their perseverance, however, the Australians battled, in a scenario they had expected to edge: their pace versus England’s mix-and-match top four. The sun shone much of the day. Not until a ball change was there much lateral movement. The pacemen may have missed a trick by attacking Burns through the first session almost exclusively from round the wicket, where he lined up off stump well, playing defensively under his eyes and accumulating off his hip.

When Cummins switched to over the wicket in the afternoon, Burns immediately played and missed at consecutive deliveries, playing with a closed face towards mid-on. Pattinson and Peter Siddle later did the same. By then, however, the batsman was established — indeed, as the overs passed, his idiosyncratic technique went from eccentric to endearing, like some garish garden feature you one day realise you’d miss if it wasn’t there. By the close he had brought England within sight of the first-innings lead they will need if the deliveries occasionally keeping low grow more frequent.

As one pace bowler in Pattinson put injury behind him, another was trying to do so, James Anderson jogging with intent for nearly half an hour before play under the watchful eyes of the England medical staff and fans in the Raglan and Drayton Manor stands. He followed with five minutes of cheerful throwdowns. The smiles might yet widen.