Michael Clarke gets dark at hand of ump in dramatic Ashes Test

MICHAEL Clarke asked umpire Aleem Dar to take his hands off him as the fifth and final Test at The Oval ended amid high controversy.

MICHAEL Clarke asked umpire Aleem Dar to take his hands off him as the fifth and final Test at The Oval ended amid controversy and confusion after one of the most extraordinary days in the history of Ashes cricket.

Down 3-0 in the series and with the urn long gone, Clarke rolled the dice in a desperate attempt to salvage something from a campaign in which his side could have won four of the five Tests but in the end came away empty-handed.

After establishing a first innings lead of 115 after bowling out England for 377 – with debutant James Faulkner grabbing the first four wickets of his career – Clarke then let loose his batsmen on a frenzied second innings run blitz that ended at tea with him declaring at 6-111.

That left England the enticing task of scoring 227 from 44 overs, a target of less than a run a ball, and for once Alastair Cook abandoned his customary caution and set his side to win the match and become the first England team ever to defeat Australia 4-0.

The run chase ebbed and flowed but England always held the whip hand, blessed with the fallback option of shutting up shop if the task became too difficult. At times it seemed that England’s customary negativity would prevail but a blistering innings of 62 from 55 deliveries from Kevin Pietersen – back at the ground where his epic 158 denied Australia the Ashes in 2005 – saw them close in on victory as the light started to fail.

With only four overs remaining, the target had fallen back to less than run a ball, with England needing only 21 runs to clinch a revered place in Ashes history. But Clarke had been badgering the umpires for a couple of overs to check the light levels and eventually Dar and Kumar Dharmasena produced their meters.

Clarke moved close to check their readings – he later revealed at the post-match presentations that the lux reading was 5.7, “no comparison”, as he put it, to the brighter 8.1 level that had prompted the umpires to call play off in Manchester on the fourth evening when Australia was in control at Old Trafford – when Dar reached out with his left hand to push the Australian captain away.

Clarke, already being jeered by the crowd – the same spectators who would have witnessed the most doleful of draws had he not been so audacious in his captaincy – reacted angrily to Dar laying his hand on him.

“I can’t remember what I said,” Clarke recounted later. “I remember Aleem touching me and I asked him politely to not touch me because if I touched him I’d be suspended for three matches.

“Once they took the reading, I knew it was going to be darker than what it was in Manchester. I was batting at the time in Manchester and I knew it was going to be darker.”

Clarke took one glance at the reading and immediately led his team from the field as the crowd broke into the taunting chant of “Same old Aussies, always cheating”.

The way the near-capacity English crowd jeered Clarke was nothing short of disgraceful given that their own side had played nothing but negative cricket at every stage of the match, right up to the point where  Cook and his players would have been laughed out of the stadium had they not chased the overly-generous target the Australian captain had set them.

Clarke conceded a lot of the time I think, I believe, that is when you are at your best chance of taking wickets and winning the game – when both teams are able to still win the game.

Certainly it was nothing short of gobsmacking when Cook, at his post-match press conference, damned with faint praise Clarke’s boldness in breathing a dead Test match back to life.

“Australia should be credited a little bit for the way they set the game up,” said Cook, whose side batted at barely 2.2 runs per over in the first innings, well below the Australian run-rate the previous day.

Still, the mood at the ground changed dramatically as officials hastily made preparations for the Ashes presentation ceremony, with the urn being entrusted to an England captain for the third time in succession.

Fireworks erupted from the historic pavilion at England’s oldest Test ground as Cook held international sport’s tiniest trophy aloft.

“It is what dreams are made of,” said Cook of that moment. “It happened a lot quicker than I’d have liked and I probably pulled a very ugly face when i picked it up.  I don’t dare look at the footage.”

The Australians had to force themselves to stay and watch the presentation ceremony and the grim looks on their faces suggested a lot of private vows were being made that this scene would not be repeated when the second chapter of the 2013 Ashes story is played out in Australia from November to January.

Clarke, while quick to pay tribute to Cook and his players, insisted the series had not been all doom and gloom for Australia.

“The result is there, England have won 3-0. I think today we didn't have anything to lose so it was about trying to get a game. England certainly deserve credit for the way they came out in the second innings and tried to win the game,’’ Clarke said.

“I think we take a lot of positives especially out of last three Test matches. Maybe I'm biased but I think we would have won in Manchester if it didn't rain. We got close in Durham, we were in a position to win that match batting last, and then no rain yesterday, (this) would have had a fantastic game of Test cricket.

“So I think there were some real positives to come out of last three Test matches. I’m really pleased with the boys, some special personal achievements I think. Obviously Chris Rogers and Steve Smith to score their first hundreds for Australia is outstanding. Shane Watson batted beautifully for a big hundred and our bowlers fought their backsides off for the whole series.

“I think our bowlers deserve a lot of credit, especially Ryan Harris who got the Australian man of the series and rightfully deserved it.”

Harris won the award on the vote of England coach Andy Flower while Australian coach Darren Lehmann nominated Ian Bell as England’s player of the series. Not surprisingly, Bell was named overall man of the series after scoring centuries in the Trent Bridge, Lord’s and Durham Tests.