Joke has been on Michael Clarke's Australians

AN old joke concerns a chemist, a biologist and a statistician going hunting.

Dramatic draw in fifth Test

AN old joke concerns a chemist, a biologist and a statistician going hunting.

The chemist aims at a deer and misses five feet to the right. The biologist aims at a deer and misses five feet to the left.  “We got ‘im,” says the statistician.
 
It is a joke that has been on Michael Clarke’s Australian this summer.  In tabulated numerical form, the Ashes of 2013 looks so tight that a statistician might struggle to split the antagonists - if anything, the visitors may even shaded it.
 
Of the combination at The Oval, three of Australia’s batsmen (Clarke, Watson, Rogers) averaged more than 40, and five of their bowlers paid less than 30 runs per wicket (Harris, Starc, Smith, Lyon and Faulkner). 
 
In the same categories for England at The Oval fell only one batsman (Bell) and three bowlers (Anderson, Broad and Swann). Australia’s keeper Brad Haddin held a record twenty-nine catches to Prior’s eighteen.  In four of the five Tests, Australia held first innings leads; not once did they allow England to make 400, while twice passing it themselves.
 
In this respect, the series resembled the Ashes of 2009, where Australia had six batsmen with averages over 40 and three bowlers who took 20 wickets versus two and none, and also lost.  But that was a close-run series, which might have tilted the other way but for a coin toss and a selection or two. The 3-0 margin in this rubber implies teams of seriously discrepant qualities. How, then, to explain it?
 
This was not, as has been widely observed, a series from the top drawer, or what we might think of as the locked drawer occupied by 1902 and 1948 (if you’re Australian), or 1981 and 2005 (if you’re English).  On one reading, it was a kind of battle of the bads, in which England prevailed, because its bads were mainly just lacklustre, while Australia’s were irredeemably poor.
 
Under the cosh, England found a way to endure, never prettily, sometimes tediously.  They may not always take the most direct route to a win, but they do know how not to lose.
 
When Australia stumbled, it was often badly.  When they stumbled at Lord’s and Riverside, it was at the top of a flight of a stairs into a darkened rat-ridden basement with a floor covered in broken glass. 
 
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, one nine-wicket session in a series might be deemed misfortune; two looks like haplessness.
 
A statistic widely bandied will be Australia’s use of seventeen players in the series versus England’s fourteen, although one should be wary here of mistaking cause and effect: losing teams are almost obliged to make changes; winning teams enjoy the luxury of  preserving their continuity.
 
Whether Australia’s forces were always best disposed is another question.  While England altered its top six once, and only after winning the Ashes, Australia had three different opening combinations, and four different number threes, none of whom were Phil Hughes, who had occupied the role in Australia’s two preceding series. 
 
The captain batted at number four on six occasions, number five on four.  Five different batsmen occupied number six.  To be sure, if you keep on rotating a Rubik’s cube long enough, it will eventually solve itself.  But you’d better have strong fingers and a high boredom threshold.
 
Harris, Pattinson, Siddle and Lyon, probably Australia’s optimum bowling line-up, never played together.  Starc played three Tests and was dropped twice.  Australia’s man of the series Ryan Harris should in hindsight have played at Trent Bridge (although, to be fair, five Tests in seven weeks seemed to take the edge off even the indefatigable Siddle, who did not take a wicket in his last 51 overs).  This wasn’t chemistry; this was alchemy.
 
As captain, Clarke never looked other than alert in the field, and gave the impression of sedulous preparation, from his leg slip and short mid-wickets for Trott to his deep backward point for Prior.  Even here, though, there was an air of improvisation.  No fewer than five fielders stood at short leg: Cowan, Hughes, Khawaja, Warner and Smith.  Yesterday Smith cost Australia a review with his enthusiasm about a pad defection from Trott - his enthusiasm was pardonable, but it was not a mistake an experienced bat-pad catcher would have made.
 
Of England it was harder to obtain an absolute as distinct from a relative sense, and they tended perhaps to go slightly underreported, if only because their taciturn leadership, unsentimental proficiency and occasional insouciant gamesmanship made them a less alluring subject than Australia’s recent decline and present flux. 
 
Their captain, Alastair Cook, seems more like a chief operating officer than a chief executive, implementing prearranged strategies, issuing readymade phrases. He may have been inhibited by his own form, which prevented him placing a personal stamp on his team’s performances.  But at the centre of a web of tight personal relations, he can take credit for an obviously united dressing room.
 
Man-of-the-series Bell was both England’s best player, and their most emblematic member, attaining the kind of everyday excellence that is their hierarchy’s overriding objective.  Funnily enough, the slow and arid pitches Australia have regarded so dubiously probably ended up doing neither side any particular favours, and may have helped a few of the visitors: how, one wonders, would Steve Smith have fared in a season of green seaming tracks?
 
In the end, the 2013 Ashes will be recalled as having more undulations than actual twists.  Predictions of three-nil margins were not uncommon in advance - perhaps, if Mickey Arthur’s recent comments are to be believed, even at Cricket Australia. 
 
On the positive side of the Australia’s ledger, they probably outstripped the expectations entertained for them after Lord’s.  On the negative side, they have now not won a game of international cricket in any form since 10 February - 196 days - which implies a decline of Spenglerian proportions.  And that is a statistic that requires little further elaboration.