Debutant Agar shines with two world records

Saturday, 13 July 2013 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

ESPNCricinfo: No last man has ever made a Test hundred. Ashton Agar came within inches of achieving it in his maiden Test innings. His eyes lit up at the opportunity to pull Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann flung himself forward to hold the catch at deep midwicket. He was denied the ultimate prize, but his extraordinary innings will remain part of cricket folklore forever. Before Agar’s astonishing intervention, life was going swimmingly for England. James Anderson was producing a contented exhibition of reverse-swing bowling. Graeme Swann was finding substantial turn. Australia lost five wickets for nine runs in 31 balls. But if England had imagined that a decisive advantage in the first Investec Test was theirs for the taking, as Australia’s first innings shrivelled on a parched Trent Bridge morning, they were mistaken.

Agar might have missed a maiden hundred but for the man dubbed ‘Ashton Who?’ two world records in a day was enough to be going on with. He walked off the ground with a smile and a shrug that won further admiration. His 98 had taken only 101 balls with 11 fours and two sixes. The cricketing world knows his name now. Agar was a 19-year-old debutant who knew no fear. He now holds the highest score by a No. 11 of all time, surpassing Tino Best’s 95, also against England, at Edgbaston only last summer. He shared in a transformational stand of 163 in 33 overs for the last wicket – another world record – with Phillip Hughes, a specialist batsman watching him in disbelief. He even gave Australia a first-innings lead of 65 and nobody, not the most one-eyed Australian alive, not his mother in her most doting mood imaginable, expected that. England’s shock reverberated into the start of the second innings, Joe Root and Jonathan Trott dismissed by Mitchell Starc in 7.3 overs up to tea. Root got a feather on a leg-side flick – his doubts were not strong enough for his captain to agree to a review – and Australia successfully reviewed to gain an lbw against Trott, with no definite proof of an inside edge that the umpire Aleem Dar had suspected. When Best set his mark last summer, that was explosive hitting; this was batting. One on-drive off Anderson, played with perfect balance, back leg off the ground in the style of Kevin Pietersen’s flamingo, was a gem. Just over a year ago, Agar was playing 2nd XI cricket in Melbourne for Richmond. A few weeks ago he was batting at three for Henley in the Home Counties League. Now he has a Test half-century at the first time of asking, a run-a-ball fifty that brought happy applause not just from the Australian balcony but from the entire Test Bridge crowd. The Agar family had travelled halfway around the world to watch him make his debut. They were in jetlag heaven. Agar began tentatively and was helped by crass England tactics. But he will long bask in the memory of how he twice deposited Swann straight for six and then pulled Steven Finn defiantly for four in a youthful show of Australian defiance. On the Australia balcony Darren Lehmann laughed with delight. An unregarded teenager had shown Australia that the game was not up. The ball spun markedly as early as the second morning; it reverse-swung by the 31st over. The nature of Test cricket in England is not what it once was. England had hinted that they might contest the Ashes on dry surfaces and they have been as good as their word. But the Test is halfway through and the match is only four sessions old. England had to abandon plans to restrict Stuart Broad to a watching brief. Broad had officially passed a fitness test before play on an injured shoulder but he had bowled gingerly in front of a posse of England backroom staff. He could barely throw the ball in. Until 10 minutes before lunch – a session extended to two-and-a-half hours – he stood there and watched, unemployed for his own protection. It has been quite a week for Broad. He has had a cortisone injection in his shoulder, been cold shouldered for laddish remarks on Twitter about Andy Murray’s girlfriend and then struck on the shoulder by a bouncer from James Pattinson. As the overs ticked by, and he was not called upon, he probably got a chip on his shoulder to complete the set. Australia’s innings might have ended on 131 when Agar got the benefit of the doubt on Swann’s appeal for a stumping from the third umpire, Marais Erasmus. He must know a good story when he sees one. England were forced to turn to Finn and his hapless attempts to browbeat Agar with short balls on such a slow surface failed miserably as the young debutant lived the dream. Agar pulled him more and more confidently; Finn’s tactics looked more and more misconceived. By the time Finn pitched the ball up, Agar had the confidence to drive him eagerly through extra cover. Finn’s four overs cost 32 and he has rarely looked so impotent. England’s employment of deep fields to Hughes, a specialist batsman who was blocking, with the intention of bowling to Agar, a No. 11 dismissing the ball to all parts, looked increasingly clownish, a manual that no longer applied.