Win or lose, Clarke's men have fought harder than in India

SO whom would you back in conditions at Trent Bridge as reliably Indian as Shah Rukh Khan and hostility to the DRS?

BOTH England and Australia have played in India in the last eight months. England won, surging back from behind; Australia, charitably, finished fourth, with the umpires and scorers having better series. So whom would you back in conditions at Trent Bridge as reliably Indian as Shah Rukh Khan and hostility to the DRS?

The counterintuitive answer for much of these three days at Trent Bridge has turned out to be Australia, who have played disciplined and patient cricket in tune with demands of a desiccated surface, beneath a beating sun.

At tea, the visitors still had the better of this ceaselessly fascinating Test. After that, Ian Bell, who might be deemed an old India hand on the basis of his fine hundred at Nagpur in December, drew the game back into alignment. Stuart Broad then did something recognisable wherever the game is played, tilting the match, if not the moral balance, firmly in England’s favour.

Something about Australians and “walking” invariably generates more heat than light. Let it be admitted: not even saintly Victor Trumper walked.

Everybody knows it too. MS Dhoni is alleged to have said that he walks against everyone except Australia. So it might be best to content ourselves with the observation that this Test match has proven a pretty telling vindication of Dhoni’s mistrust of the existing dispensations regarding umpiring technology: first a probably correct decision by Aleem Dar clumsily overturned by the third umpire; now a gaffe by Dar which the third umpire was powerless to remedy because Australia had depleted its referrals.

At least, as often seems the case with DRS misadventures, a rough-and-ready equation has been reached: Trott on 0 approximately equals Broad on 37. What do you know, eh? Umpiring “all evens out” when run through video. Either that or there is another secret technology, an ICC Even-Up-O-Matic, silently at work.

Earlier, Australia had toiled with enormous spirit. This was despite England starting the day with its most successful batsmen in India in harness, Cook and Pietersen, both guilty of playing at balls they ought to have left in the first innings, and resolved not to be twice convicted. Yet Australia matched them in patience, so that neither appeared completely at ease. In his slowest Test fifty, Cook for once looked tense enough to gnaw through his bat; through his fourth slowest, Pietersen played his defensive pushes with a pedantic, ostentatious and slightly grudging straightness.

In contrast to England on the second day, Australia offered an object lesson in the right lengths to bowl on this pitch; when Broad and Finn hit these, it was chance; when the four Australian pace bowlers did so, it was habit. It became impossible to remember an out-and-out Australian bouncer since Pattinson began the match with his “vertical Harmison’’ over Cook’s head - only on Wednesday, but now seeming like a fortnight ago.

Stump to stump was the corridor of uncertainty; just back of a length, where the occasional delivery was sticking in the dusty pitch, was the range of riskiness. Yorkers, the quickest way from one end of this slowest of surfaces to the other, were an excellent and much-used variation. Even 10 years ago, a spinner would have expected to bowl 40 overs on a third day pitch such as this; now the skill in demand was reverse swing, which came and went in its mysterious fashion, like a cat by night.

In the 26 overs set aside for him, Ashton Agar played his part nonetheless, bowling slowly, temptingly, enjoying the necessity of batting restraint, and supported by fields that did not expect him to turn the ball round corners; only when the left-handed Cook and Broad were on strike was a bat-pad catcher employed, and an off-side sweeper was on patrol throughout his overs.

His captain provided Agar with a maiden Test wicket by leaping to catch his opposite number, then showed further trust by granting him the last over before lunch, which probably caused the new teen idol to trend on Twitter again.

Shane Watson also bowled some invaluable “dry overs”, adding to the inertia he induced by a heavy-booted trudge to his mark at half the pace of anyone else in this game, his back as it receded resembling a fridge being pushed slowly down a narrow hallway on casters.

Australia had the game under such close control with England 5-176 and leading by only 111, in fact, that it was a surprise when Clarke replaced the ragged old ball that batsmen were struggling to time in favour of a new Duke, which then provided so little sideways movement that Agar was back in the attack after half a dozen overs.

New to the crease and short of recent runs, Matt Prior welcomed the brief interlude of bounce and hardness, and provided positive reinforcement for Ian Bell, who played perhaps his best Test innings - dash - and there have been some excellent ones.

Bell is almost obsessively neat and compact in everything he does, with his fetish for bat twirls, cuff adjustments and guard notchings. He would roll his wrists turning a door knob. Only every now and again does he reveal his gifts, such as by the feathery late cuts he played to the third man boundary yesterday, performed so unconsciously that they looked like rehearsals for shots rather than shots themselves.

By close of play, Australia had taken one wicket for 150 runs with the second new ball, which England will have noted for when it comes their time to bowl.

Otherwise, Clarke’s captaincy was hard to fault. He might have posted at deep backward point to Prior someone who hadn’t spent his last two days with his head in a sick bowl, for a taller, springier fielder than the unfortunate Cowan might have reduced England to six for 208, although in the event this was not costly.

Nor should he be too crestfallen. If Australia ends up losing their fifth consecutive Test in India, as it were, Clarke can console himself that they fought a great deal harder here than in the other four.