Ashes series a tale of finding an attack route through defence

AUSTRALIA's bowlers have prospered by starving England of scoring chances.

"BOWL defensively to attacking fields" was a career-long mantra from the King of the "G", Shane Warne, a counter to those who believed that Warne's cricket was exclusively about attack.

Michael Clarke is a disciple of Warne and, as such, it is no surprise that his team buys into the Warnemeister's philosophy, as they did successfully again on the first day at the MCG in Melbourne, strangling England into near-inertia for long passages of play.

A world-record crowd came; a nudge over 91,000 walked through the Birrarung Mar, over the William Barak Bridge and into one of the great stadiums of the sporting world.

The impression they will have taken away was of an incredibly disciplined home attack, a great player battling hard to save his reputation on this tour and a game that sometimes demands steadfast willpower and concentration - from spectators and players alike - if full benefits are to be enjoyed.

Those who stayed got what they came to see in the final hour of play, when Mitchell Johnson thundered in with the second new ball to take two late wickets and tilt the day Australia's way.

With the wickets of Ben Stokes, caught at first slip, and Jonny Bairstow, castled neck and crop through a yawning gate, the rewards went to Johnson, but as ever he reaped the benefits of the work of others, in particular Ryan Harris, who was outstanding.

Harris bowled 20 overs - a few more than he might have hoped for owing to a groin injury to Shane Watson - of which eight were maidens. Add to this the seven maidens bowled by Peter Siddle, and the seven bowled between Johnson, Watson and Nathan Lyon, you have almost a quarter of the day's total quota. Harris picked up Joe Root and Ian Bell, both caught behind to good balls, and might have had more, given that three catches were dropped off his bowling, two of which came from Kevin Pietersen's blade.

Pietersen has always been the most watchable of batsmen, but his struggles to impose himself on the opening day were illustrative of England's travails against Australia's attack more generally. Four minutes over three hours it took him to get through to a half-century, but in his diligence and struggle there was a message to those who have written him off, and to those who felt that he might be the next big name to follow Graeme Swann into the sunset. He finished the day unbeaten on 67 and there was a pride in his performance that had been missing hitherto.

Before this match, Pietersen reacted gracefully to some criticism from Geoffrey Boycott, saying that, while he respected the Yorkshireman's achievements greatly, they were not exactly peas from the same pod.

For most of the day it seemed that Pietersen was keen to change those perceptions, batting at a Boycottian pace, taking 13 balls to get off the mark and spending an hour and a half before tea accumulating 20 runs. The irony was lost on no one when, late in the day, his 63rd run took him past Boycott's tally for England - in five Test matches fewer.

Sometimes even the great entertainers must wrap themselves in a dour cloak for the day. Pietersen's attitude was best summed up in the way that he out-patienced his tormentor, Siddle.

Inevitably, Clarke turned to Siddle immediately, but Pietersen was exaggerated in his defensive play and refused to entertain anything outside the line of his stumps, which meant a kind of stalemate for periods, an unusual state of affairs when he is involved in the game.

Pietersen did enjoy one outrageous piece of good fortune. On six, he hooked Harris to fine leg, where Nathan Coulter-Nile, substituting for Watson, succeeded in taking a good catch, but not in keeping his body within the boundary's edge. This let-off seemed to shake Pietersen from his reverie because the runs came, if not in flood thereafter, then at more than the slowest of trickles.

Harris was the unlucky bowler again when Pietersen, on 41, pulled a short ball in the 75th over, only for George Bailey to juggle and fail to hold on to a sharp chance.

There is sympathy in this quarter for England's No 5. If he knuckles down and scores slowly, people say he should not change his natural game, given that he is the one player the opposition players fear; if he gets out irresponsibly, or "clownishly", to use a phrase Pietersen used of his dismissal in the second Test in Adelaide - criticism is forthcoming. It is difficult being KP, as he once said.

Ultimately he must be judged on the number of runs he scores, not the manner of them, and he was the only England batsman to go on after getting a start. All of Pietersen's colleagues got in - Root's 24 was the lowest score of the top five - but no one went on, Michael Carberry's 38 being the next highest to Pietersen.

As elsewhere on tour, Carberry looked good until he got out, leaving a ball from Watson that darted back from round the wicket, the fourth time he has been dismissed from that angle. How far the batsmen's struggles are because of poor form, and how far as a result of excellent Australia bowling could be seen in Alastair Cook's innings. The England captain tried to impose himself from the start and fairly skipped to 20 off 23 balls, taking advantage of the new ball's hardness and Clarke's attacking fields. As things tightened, he took a further 24 balls to score seven runs. Cook is a batsman who is best when keeping things simple, feeding off loose balls and keeping out good ones.

Against this attack, Cook has to search for runs, and it was an uncharacteristically loose back-foot force that ended in the hands of second slip.

Clarke's confidence in his bowlers was reflected in his decision to bowl first. "I can't believe I'm about to do this," he said at the toss, but his decision was based on decent reasoning: a greenish tinge to the pitch; some juice in the air cloud cover; an opposition on the run, but most of all an attack, in defence, at the peak of its game.

THE TIMES