Dancing Myself Dizzy - Day Two at Trent Bridge

One Sunday morning in 1995 I awoke later than planned and headed for the launderette with my cricket kit, the comments of my team mates having been less than complimentary the week before. When I returned, delayed by a queue for the tumble dryers, it was 11.15 and I had missed the first hat trick by an England bowler since 1957.

Fast forward to today. Having watched much of the afternoon session (although I missed Pietersen dropping Yuvraj while looking for a missing piece of Lego) I eventually lost control of the television to a bored seven year old. Still, if anyone asks me what I was doing when Stuart Broad took his test hat-trick I can tell them that I was playing Just Dance 2 on the Wii.

For much of the day it was like watching test cricket in years gone by. England had been skittled on the first day and their opponents, helped by butter-fingered fielding, were building a considerable lead. Just about everything was going to the script: VVS Laxman was dismissed after reaching fifty, Rahul Dravid was batting on and on and Yuvraj was playing loosely at the start of the innings. The only surprise was that Sachin Tendulkar, whose record at Trent Bridge is formidable, fell early, but his record against England over the last nine years is not as stellar as might be expected.

As with yesterday, however, Stuart Broad was to have significant impact on the game, delivering one of the great spells in test cricket history. The new ball has been difficult to play in both innings and now he was devastating. First Yuvraj feathered a brute of a ball to Matt Prior, but then came the real fireworks. Dhoni slashed ill-advisedly to slip, Harbhajan was given out leg before although he had got a big inside edge and Praveen Kumar was comprehensively bowled to give Broad a hat-trick as Trent Bridge went wild. In the next over, Bresnan had Dravid caught at third man (can such a thing ever have happened before?) and Broad polished off the innings not long later to complete a spell of 5-0 in just sixteen balls. Astonishing.

Harbhajan, of course, can feel rightly aggrieved about the decision that cost him his wicket, but his right to show dissent, as he also did when he had a leg before appeal turned down at Lord’s, is invalidated by his board’s refusal to embrace the full DRS. Indeed, the evidence of this series seems to be that hot spot, which they have kept, is appreciably less reliable than Hawkeye. It will be interesting to see if their attitude softens after this series.

England, then, found themselves behind on first innings but not to the catastrophic extent that appeared likely in mid-afternoon. They lost Cook, who seems to have lost his rhythm, before the close but Strauss and Bell, promoted in place of the injured Jonathan Trott, saw them through to the close. Tomorrow promises to be a fascinating day.