Ashes first Test: Moments in time swing the balance

Cricket loves metrics at the moment. No bit of data is too obscure or trivial to build a cult around.

Cricket loves metrics at the ­moment. No bit of data is too ­obscure or trivial to build a cult around. The Australians in the first Test, however, have at least one novel key performance indicator. As Josh Hazlewood revealed after the first day, they budgeted each day for one “extraordinary moment” — an individual feat of particular dash and elan.

Hazlewood was speaking after Nathan Lyon’s mercurial run-out of James Vince, which assuredly qualified. David Warner’s salmon-launching-up-a-stream catch of Jake Ball at short fine leg would have filled the quota on day two, while Mitchell Starc’s limber snare of Alastair Cook at deep fine leg on day three was barely less ­meritorious.

Yesterday? The fall of Moeen Ali after lunch was not perhaps so extraordinary as opportunistically excellent.

It was the Test’s hottest, ­stickiest afternoon, after three days of unseasonal mildness. The batters had deposited a midden of gloves by the boundary’s edge, nearby Tim Paine’s spare gauntlets, both in token of the day’s hard, close-quarters cut and thrust. The lulls in such cricket ­intensify the instants — time drifts by, then is lit by a flash.

Attempting to smother the ­second delivery of Lyon’s 19th over, Moeen genuflected as low and far as physically possible, playing, missing and stretching. As his back toe dawdled in the vicinity of the line, Paine cuffed the bails, which ignited excitedly, and lit the trail to the third umpire’s box.

It was not, perhaps, an ­especially difficult specimen of glovework. The delivery was ­visible all the way; it did not bounce or deviate untowardly; Peter Nevill and Matthew Wade would have backed themselves to execute it. But Paine is, narrowly and debateably, the man in possession, and in search of affirmations. Plus everyone loves a stumping: they are prized for their mousetrap-like springing, their scarcity and their strictness.

Cricket’s applicable statute — Law 30.1.1 — demands that the batsman be “considered to be out of his/her ground unless some part of his/her person or bat is grounded behind the popping crease”. In his little book Cricket and Christianity, former Australian captain Brian Booth called this one of the moral lessons imparted by the cricket gods — it is not enough to be quite good; only the blameless life is truly virtuous.

To some, however, this line exhibited a decided moral relativity. It was straighter than a river but bendier than a rod, and of a healthy width, more texta than ballpoint.

A few, including Michael Clarke, detected molecules of Moeen in the safe zone; others took a more robust view, including, eventually, the only individual relevant, New Zealand’s Chris Gaffney. As a moment, it was­ ­assuredly of extraordinary significance, ending as it did England’s chances of setting Australia a serious fourth innings chase.

Tests, of course, are long and complex enough as not to depend on moments so much as phases. In this particular phase, either side of lunch, the ascendant belonged not to the keeper so much as the bowler. A year ago, Nathan Lyon kept his place in Australia’s XI perhaps only because Steve O’Keefe twinged a hamstring in the Sheffield Shield. After an indifferent tour of Sri Lanka, and amid the explicit mandate for change, his tenure was as uncertain as at any stage since his emergence six years earlier.

Lyon is a cricketer attuned to the dressing room — it’s why Mike Hussey bequeathed him the role of Australia’s chief victory song chorister. His on-field travails bespoke a confusion and perplexity off it.

Lyon’s 2017 has been a leading indicator of growing collective confidence and purpose: his 51 wickets have come more frequently and cheaply than in any year of his career. He has gone beyond laying containing barrages to battering down walls. He has outbowled Moeen here by a margin widened by daylight, if excused by the Englishman’s lack of overs coming into the match.

Lyon’s dismissals of Mark Stoneman and Dawid Malan before lunch were particular collector’s pieces of off-spin to left-handers, drifting it in to the line of the stumps, kissing the edges on the way to Smith’s meaty mitts at slip — catches the captain made look deceptively easy, to go with two others. There has hardly been a great batsman who was not also a great catcher.

Of the specialist batsmen that left Smith’s counterpart, who had hardly played a false stroke in three hours. But with lunch warming in the bain-maries, Joe Root teetered to the off and was so lbw to Hazlewood not even he could talk himself into a review.

The ball’s sharp jag may have been abetted by a crack; but the Australians, who have tended over time to bowl to Root either very full or very short, may have found a tincture of technical fallibility on which to concentrate for the rest of the series.

In the interim, Root has other worries. His schemes have steadily lost their novelty; his resources have looked ever shallower; his tallest scorer has had a barren Test; his five-man attack has punched at little better than half that weight; in the event of defeat today, his team will have won one and lost seven of their past nine away Tests.

England have done better here than some foresaw, without eliminating the notion that they are the combination in greater need of ­extraordinary moments.