England edge ahead after Agar`s 98Only two days in and already this series has contained enough drama, twists and turns for HBO to have commissioned it for a box set. If Wednesday brought mayhem under gloomy skies as the bowlers ran riot, the second sunlit day provided a cricket story of a kind unmatched as long as Tests have been played.
Barely 24 hours previously Ashton Agar, a teenager not even included among Australian pen portraits in the match programme, had been one of the longest shots ever to be selected for an Ashes Test as he was presented with his cap by Glenn McGrath. That status has changed somewhat: from anonymity he finds himself one of the most celebrated of Australians. How swiftly can such things happen.
A few minutes before midday Agar found himself as the last man walking to the crease with his side having lost five wickets for nine runs in 31 balls to a rampant Jimmy Anderson and Graeme Swann. At 117 for nine they were facing not just a considerable first-innings deficit but, with the prospect of a wearing pitch and good weather, defeat in the first Test.
Two hours and 14 minutes later he pulled a Stuart Broad bouncer to deep midwicket to be caught by Swann and thus deny himself, by two paltry runs, the feat, barely credible, of an Ashes hundred, in his debut innings and batting at No11. England know about such things: a little more than a year ago at Edgbaston they were reduced to open-mouthed astonishment as Tino Best, a genuine tailender, made 95 and added 143 for the last wicket with Dinesh Ramdin. It had been the highest score ever by a Test tail-end Charlie.
Agar surpassed that and, in the company of Phil Hughes who played an intelligent, understated sidekick to the younger man`s ebullience, they obliterated by a dozen runs the previous record of 151 for the last wicket.
Agar had been uplifting, a lad just having fun, living the dream with not a care in the world. He drove and pulled. He belted Swann for six and then did it again for a second to go with a dozen fours.
There was a late-cut to bring the scores level so delicate he might have been patting a baby`s head. He even flamingoed the magnificent Anderson through midwicket in a manner that would have brought a smile to the lips of its master, Kevin Pietersen. And as Swann took his tumbling catch, there was not a person in the ground who would have begrudged him a hundred. Agar instead just grinned endearingly.
– The Guardian
