The most compelling Test of them all

A legend was born 30 years in the past this week and still feels as youthful as yesterday. At Headingley in July 1981, to put no finer purpose on it, England hauled off the best heist in Test - maybe even generous - history. Even Ronnie Biggs might have doffed his covering to such chutzpah.

Familiar as they are, the issues withstand replicating, if only to emphasise their implausibility. Midway through day four of a game that aspired to one-sidedness, England lost their seventh second-innings wicket at 135, still 92 behind. Nobody - not England at the SCG in 1894, neither even India in Kolkata in 2001, the other two cases of a boundary victorious a Test after subsequent on - has ever paid out so much time on the canvas before getting higher to administer a knockout.

While the lob was too stacked encouraging the bowlers - as it so often is in the most riveting competitions - that game vaunted one of Wisden's Top 10 Test innings (Ian Botham's heave-and-humpty-laden 149 not out) as well as one of the good book's Top 10 bowling performances (Bob Willis' conclusive, career-salvaging 8 for 43). No other correspond has been so blessed. As for those 500-1 odds, they were hugely conservative: bestowed that only one boundary had won after subsequent on in 901 earlier Tests, it should have been 900-1 against. Throw in a backdrop of civilised unrest and public strife and you have a recipe for magic.

Even so, in Test cricket's 2000-strong pecking rank, Headingley '81 ought still tug its forelock. Much of the play bypassed Quality Street and slumbered in Mediocre Alley. The comes to an end warranted the means; an faultless world calls for parity.

So what, then, makes an epic generous argue, one that clenches from armament to ribbon and doesn't be reliant on the inexpensive thrills of the frantic terminal lap? In essence, there are four key components: context, worth, balance and drama. Of these, balance, of power and talent, is the most neglected: neither bat neither ball, neither one boundary, should dominate. After all, we're not chatting about a correspond that lasts 80 minutes, 90 minutes, three hours or an every part of day, but the best part of a week, at times more. As such, for all the leaning to of the more exhilarating recreational activities to be low-scorers, balance is more valued in cricket than other sports.

Football buff seldom salivate over goalless draws; baseball purists disdain run-fests; tennis aficionados crave decline shots and stop-volleys with their helps and smashes; no subject how powerful the drives, golfers ought putt well. In cricket, equally, we like to observe the game in all its guises, which is why Tests are its foremost signifies of expression: vindication should be as valued as assault, maidens as essential as sixes, twist as needed as pace. Greatness, in other remarks, is a giraffe of an order. Helpfully, because of the languid way time wends it course, letting us to savour the recede and flow more profoundly, those expectant breaks between spheres, even luncheon and tea, can be as fascinating as the achievement itself. Indeed, much of the pleasure of spectatorship lies in loving the suspense, in studying inaction.

Balance, though, is no warranty of excellence. In 1974 and 1982, Melbourne played Ashes Tests where the margins were not ever less than wafer-thin. On the first function six jogs spanned the least of the four innings (238 for 8) and the utmost (244); on the second, the sum totals stretched from 284 to 294. Yet the second referred is recollected virtually wholly for the Allan Border-Jeff Thomson last-wicket liaison of 70 that came in a boundary of spinning overcome into win, while the first is not ever referred in discussions of this ilk, not so much because the correspond was drawn but because the climax was such a dud: with 16 to get from the last three overs and three wickets in hand, Australia, now two-up, chose protection over glory.

As for drama, there's none like a comeback. A cluster of fourth-innings recoveries have resisted good sense, no more than in Port-of-Spain in 2000, when West Indies blasted away Zimbabwe, Andy Flower et al, for 63, hence turning into just the second assembly - and the first in 118 years since Fred Spofforth demonised England at The Oval - to win after requesting the resistance, keenly or then, to pursue under 100. Then there was Kingston 1999, where Brian Lara's magnificent 213 underpinned a ten-wicket thrashing of Australia just eight days after Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie had dispatched West Indies for 51: an all-time small chased by an all-time high. Yet on mathematical enclosed land only, none, not even Australia victorious in Colombo in 1992 after trailing by 291, contacts Headingley '81.

As with Kingston, though, Headingley's source is farther undermined by its timing: it was the third of a six-Test series. It answered nothing. Nor, for that subject, did the fastened Tests. Surely, just as baked desserts warrant covering, we be authorised to resolution.



On that count, two equates loom greatest, terminal Tests both: Australia v West Indies, Melbourne 1961 and India v Australia, Chennai 2001 (arguments for The Oval 2005 are persuasive but the argue hardly moved into a fourth innings). There were commonalities aplenty. The protagonists were steadily equated and commenced proceedings all square. Batsmen wielded nothing less clout than bowlers (in the first, West Indies made 292 and 321, Australia 356 and 258 for 8; in the second, Australia made 391 and 264, India 501 and 155 for 8); the balance of power turned like a cocaine-powered pendulum; the champions prevailed by two wickets in the terminal assembly of the terminal day. In neither case, at the end of a rousing rip-snorter of a succession, did the insist to close on a fitting crescendo either inhibit or unnerve. Perfection - or as close to as makes no difference.

At foundation, demarcating between these two noble expositions of cricketness is a subject of time and place. Winning in Chennai substantiated to Indians that that astounding triumph in the earlier Test in Kolkata, where Australia's unprecedented sequence of 16 following wins was lastly detained, was not only no fluke but a launchpad for five-day power and monetary boom.

Forty years beforehand, in the rouse of unforgettable grippers in Brisbane and Adelaide, Australia and West Indies had substantiated that the Test correspond itself, on life support subsequent the caution-drenched drabness of the '50s in general, and the incurable torpor of the 1958-59 Ashes succession in actual, was vibrant and kicking. The MCG, additionally, played the terminal play-act of a five-Test succession, one that kept attentions rapt right through, safeguarding, in one way or another, the decidedly anachronistic concept of a generous argue taking more than a month to arrive at a conclusion.

But perform we really need resolution? Stalemate, after all, scarcely prohibits memorableness. Witness Lord's 1963, a game of twin halves: West Indies 301 and 229, England 297 and 228 for 9. The ninth household wicket plunged with six demanded and two spheres outstanding, whereupon Colin Cowdrey plodded in, broken wrist in a sling. Fortunately he was at the non-striker's end as Wes Hall hit in, and David Allen pragmatically obstructed the next ball. Come the last deliverance, for just the second time in Test annals, all four effects were probable (in Bombay in 1949, when India, 355 for 9, were pursuing 361 in resistance to West Indies, the umpires miscounted, time was called and the terminal ball, criminally, went unbowled). Allen obstructed again. Unlike Dennis Lillee and Max Walker at the MCG 11 years afterwards, he had an alibi: of course dread of overcome was a element (West Indies were now one up in the series), but he couldn't very well risk moving out a one-armed associate to face the music. The line between forgettable and imperishable can be greatly slender.

Nor was it basically the terminal play-act that conserves this actual find in aspic. Ted Dexter, Brian Close and Basil Butcher not ever batted better, Hall and Fred Trueman seldom bowled better, and the co-stars embraced Garry Sobers, Lance Gibbs, Charlie Griffith, Rohan Kanhai and Ken Barrington, all at or close to their peak. So forceful was the onvolvement, so assiduously did even those the cause for countrywide security chase the climax, England was not ever more susceptible to a fission assault than on that evening.

But a correspond to justify/define 2000? Look no farther than that 1960 fasten in Brisbane, which did more, arguably, to ensnare and recapture imaginations than any other solitary cricket match. Another near-symmetrical argue - West Indies 453 and 284, Australia 505 and 232 - it was scarcely short of candidates for the time capsule: Sobers' audacious first-day 132, Hall's unstinting blast and brimstone, Alan Davidson coupling 11 wickets with counts of 44 and 80. Best of all, the effect scorned the capitalist with accent on on win and overcome with virtually feckless fearlessness.

In The Greatest Test of All, Jack Fingleton secured the most critical ingredients: "In the terminal examination, maybe the two best men in the correspond were the two officers in accuse - Benaud and Worrell. They could have acted firm, fastened the game up, acted for a draw. But neither desired a draw; both desired victory." And if both were rejected, it was in the very grandest and noblest of manners.

What other sporting activities can cite as its apotheosis a correspond that dazzled with escapade yet turned down to yield a champion - past, that is, the game itself? Be satisfied, cricket, be proud.

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