At the end of the 4th day’s play of the second Ashes Test at Lord’s, the game was right on the balance with Aussies needing 200 odd runs to win with 5 wickets in hand. Yesterday, I was prepared to watch the game all the way through, because whoever wins, it was going to be a remarkable achievement.
If Australia was to win, they had to smash all the run chasing batting records (including a Sri Lankan record of highest successful run chase in first class Cricket) and if England was to win, they had to break a 75 year old jinx, not having won a single Ashes Test since 1934 at Lord’s. It happened to be the latter, and luckily for me, the game was over minutes before the lunch break. A Test Match that was Australia’s to win and England’s to lose for 75 years was dramatically ended and history was made.
There were quite a few umpiring decisions that went against the Aussies, specially during the run chase. But I was amazed by the way they took it over. It was just another aspect of the game for them and Ricky Ponting vowed to move on, rather than worrying about the things out of their control. This was pretty much contrary to how Indians behaved after a few bad decisions against them when they last toured Australia.
After the match, Greg Matthews, (remember the guy who took away a victory that was in our pockets back in 1992?) made an interesting comment. “Last time England won an Ashes Test at Lord’s, Aussies came back and went on to win the series. But in that team, they had a chap called ‘Don Bradman’ to turn the things around”.
