January 6-11, 1989, The SCG. England beat Australia by 93 runs.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/1711 ... ia-1978-79One major contrast with cricket when I first started watching, is how much more facilitated batting is now. Partly due to equipment, particularly the helmet which transformed run making for lower order batters especially. But mainly it's the pitches, which clearly helped the bowlers a lot more and deteriorated faster. One series of bad pitches remains imbedded in my memory above any other, the Packerless Ashes of 1978-9.
Adelaide apart, occupying the crease was like Russian roulette. Any score beyond 200 looked like runs on the board. And England got nowhere near that in their first innings in the fourth Test in Sydney, totalling 152 with only Ian Botham's 59 making it beyond 20. In the circumstances, Australia's lead of 142 in reply, looked huge. When Boycott was out first ball of England's second innings, the game looked lost. But it in fact ushered in one of the greatest England innings of the past fifty years. Derek Randall's 150 in ten hours. Given the conditions, and the heat, and the quality of Hogg, Hurst, and Dymock, Randall's innings was at the very least the equal of Michael Atherton's marathon in Jo'burg.
Techniques were more variable back in the seventies, more characteristic. Randall walked into the stumps as the bowler delivered, with his bat flapping like a stable door in the wind. His lank hair tufted out from under his dark blue England cap, like he was an insubordinate schoolboy game for a lark. And he always seemed to provoke the Aussies. Here, Rodney Hogg in particular.
Randall set himself to single mindedly save the game by whatever means. Some of that plan involved audacious stretches of time wasting. But the main part was made of immense concentration and determination. Do England players now seek to occupy the crease in adversity so dutifully as the Notts batter did on days 3 and 4 at the SCG? It's hard to believe they do. So focussed was Randall on the draw, he couldn't even contemplate the win that his later batting partners began to propose between overs. He just wanted bat until stumps on day five. England had lost the previous Test at the MCG, to reduce their lead to 2-1. Another defeat in Sydney would wipe out their early advantage completely.
England eventually set Australia 205 to win. They were bowled out for 111 by Emburey and Miller. Because the pitch was still a dog. At the MCG, Allan Border made his debut. In his second Test, in his home town, he wasn't dismissed in either innings, making 105 runs on an appalling surface. He was clearly a class above his team mates and of course went on to be one of the great Test batters.
Randall's innings to win the Fourth Test was one of the best by an England player I can remember, though it, and this hard fought win is rarely mentioned now. In his superb book on the series, The Ashes Retained, captain Mike Brearley said this was the most brilliant victory in adversity that he knew of. But two years later it was eclipsed for all living memory by the miracle of Headingley. Sydney and Randall's heroics faded from recollection.
I always say that everybody's right.