It was always going to come to this at some point. An Ashes series that has already given us pretty much everything reached deep into its rummage bag at Old Trafford and came up with another element of jeopardy: a day of soppers, moppers, bruised skies and the sight of a funereal Martin Saggers planting his spiked umbrella close to the sodden pavilion boundary as the tectonic plates of the summer’s cricketing drama seemed to shift his feet.
Hello 90% precipitation my old friend. I’ve come to commune with you again. And while England’s supporters, doggedly present in ponchos and sodden hoodies, will feel only frustration at losing two sessions of a must-win Ashes Test match, there is a comforting summer trope even here.
English cricket will continue to turn its face towards new forms and new economic tides. But rain will find you in the end. And so it came to pass as England and Australia managed only two hours in the field in Manchester. But two hours that came crammed with tempo-shift and close-quarter drama, circled by issues of rain etiquette, moisture judgment and light finagling, and which provided in the process a reminder of certain non-negotiable parts of the spectacle.
Firstly cricket in England remains, at bottom, a conversation about the weather that got out of hand. Here is a game that is essentially a series of variations on a country walk on a rainy August Sunday afternoon.
Some part of the current five-Test spectacle was always going to revert to that base cricketing unit. And you have to hand it to the rain. It really came to the party here, reminding us all of its own structural power.
Why couldn’t England bowl their one really quick bowler here once the skies began to close in? Because of the weather. Why doesn’t England produce elite spinners? Because of the weather. Why did England have to bowl their two part-time/semi-off-spin bowlers as they pushed for victory on the most vital Test match afternoon of the past four years? That would be because of the weather too.
For all the frustration of those four lost hours the weather still allowed some moments of uniquely-turned sporting intensity. Moments that might just – because this is how Test cricket works: adagio then allegro – end up adding an extra layer of umbrella-gnawing intensity when Sunday comes around, with the promise of another drip-drip race-against time.
First we had The Inspection. Perhaps, who knows, one of the last really great, nation-gripping inspections Test cricket in this county is going to see. The full baroque assembly was out there. Rope-draggers and super-soppers, concerned looking men in Timberlands and shorts.
The appearance of the umpires at 1.55pm brought cheers and hoots and howls, followed by a classical 14-man huddle at the edge of the covers, a huddle made up exclusively of men, because men must always huddle on such occasions – rain delays, barbecues, funerals, weddings – in order to point at the skies and grimace and hold tersely shared opinions.
Finally we were go, announced by the formal brandishing of the yellow plastic practice stumps by a striding David Saker, greeted by warm cheers and the sense of some minor human victory over the vicissitudes of nature. After which things kept on happening, even as they seemed not to happen.
Rain had shrunk this spectacle, condensing it on to a miniature canvas. But there was drama here too. England spent most of the first hour bowling straight at the stumps with Jonny Bairstow standing up, hoping the rain-bloated ball would skid on.
For a while it became the Bairstow hour, stump mic improv, as England’s keeper kept up a steady line of quips, shrieks and .blather. Eventually Bairstow went back and Jimmy Anderson sent down a series of bouncers, bringing the bizarre grey-day spectacle of a 40 year old bowling middle-aged chin music, chin jazz, chin hits of the 90s.
Anderson looked a bit disgusted by the whole thing. This is fine. He always looks like that. A pained-looking Jimmy on a grey dank day as the umpires force a dying pink ball through the unforgiving gauge. This is some good stuff.
Finally England changed the ball and were immediately ordered to bowl their spinners. Moeen Ali decided to match the weather forecast and bowled some filth of his own.
But it was Joe Root who produced the best spell of the day, sending down a range of all-sorts, getting the ball to curve in the air, to turn, to nip, and doing it all with real intensity.
Root got the only wicket of the day. Labuschagne had already flipped him for two straight sixes en route to a fine hundred. Root got him with an off-break that leapt enough to take the edge, well caught by Bairstow.
At 5pm the players wandered off for the scheduled tea. And ten minutes later the drizzle came back, the kind of rain that settles like a bedtime blanket over the ground. That was that, a single session of extreme grey-day cricket that nudged England closer to one of the great series set-ups at the Oval; and Australia a little closer to retaining the urn. What more could anyone really want from this thing?
