Tom Curran endured the worst feeling he has experienced on a cricket field after the debutant’s ecstasy at making David Warner on 99 his maiden Test wicket turned into a moment of agony that summed up England’s sorry Ashes campaign.
The Surrey right-armer was swamped by hair-ruffling team-mates – and finally gave the England supporters among the near‑90,000 Boxing Day crowd something to cheer about on the field – after teasing the Australian opener into a false shot that ballooned to mid-on.
Just as Warner was thundering back to the dressing room, however, the big screen offered him a late festive gift and a chance for those in canary yellow to once again laud it over their guests. Curran, it transpired, had overstepped in delivery and Warner duly marched back to the crease to a deafening chorus of local delight.
“It was horrible, the worst feeling I’ve had. But looking at the positives, I get to get my first wicket twice,” Curran said after the close, reflecting on the day the 22-year-old bowler became England’s 682nd Test cricketer but received a kick in the teeth along the way.
Curran was not the first England bowler in recent times to have their maiden victim scrubbed off by such an error. Ben Stokes was denied the scalp of Brad Haddin in Adelaide four years ago and Mark Wood, the Durham quick whom Curran nudged ahead of here, thought he had New Zealand’s Martin Guptill at Lord’s in 2015.
Neither bowler had it rubbed in their face so soon afterwards, though, with Warner nudging the next ball off his hips for Test century No21 and his trademark helmet-pumping celebrations. “A ‘Where were you?’ moment,” the popular Victorian Bill Lawry said on the Channel Nine commentary, reflecting the drama that had unfolded in the space of two deliveries.
What followed was nothing new for the series. Curran muttered something to the Australia vice-captain, who then returned the season’s greetings in kind. Jonny Bairstow and Jimmy Anderson were then in the mix before the umpires Kumar Dharmasena and S Ravi – new to the fray but no doubt briefed by the officials they replaced – brokered the peace.
“It was just one of those things where the bowler’s going to be annoyed that he overstepped the mark,” said Warner, who fell for 103. “I didn’t let it go, I obviously had to bite back as I normally do. Getting recalled was fantastic, but it was a bit of a rollercoaster of emotions between those two deliveries.”
Anderson, whose subsequent removal of Warner moved him to 519 for his career and level with the great Courtney Walsh in fifth place in the all-time Test charts, said of Curran: “I was gutted for him. It was hard to watch the elation in his face then drain from his face seconds later when the big screen showed his foot came over the line. It’s one of those things. You’ve got to learn the hard way and unfortunately for him it’s on debut at the Boxing Day Test match. I’m sure he’ll be behind the line from now on.”
Asked about a slow surface on which just 244 runs were scored for the cost of three wickets on the opening day, Anderson replied: “People want to see entertaining cricket, especially in an iconic Test match like Boxing Day Test match at the MCG. We didn’t add to that excitement unless you’re a David Warner fan. It wasn’t exciting to watch and it wasn’t exciting to play in, to be honest, when it’s attritional like that. But that’s the pitch that we’ve got and we’ve got to put up with it.”
