England v Australia 2nd Test

After Lord's

England went to Edgbaston for the second Test of the 2005 Ashes one match down. Australia, the reigning world champions with Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Adam Gilchrist in their prime, had won comfortably at Lord's, and the familiar pattern of English capitulation looked ready to repeat itself. Then McGrath, warming up on the morning of the match, trod on a stray cricket ball left on the outfield during a game of touch rugby and twisted his ankle. He was ruled out. It was a small accident with large consequences: Australia went into the Test without the bowler who had done more than anyone to define the previous decade and a half of Ashes cricket.

Ricky Ponting won the toss and, extraordinarily given the damage that decision usually does, chose to field first. England made him pay early.

Flintoff blazes, Australia fold

Marcus Trescothick made 90 and Andrew Strauss 48 as England put on 112 for the first wicket, and although Australia's bowlers, missing McGrath, fought back through the middle order, Andrew Flintoff blazed 68 from 62 balls with five sixes and Kevin Pietersen made 71. England were bowled out for 407, a total built on momentum rather than control; the scoring rate through the innings was the fastest either side would manage across the match.

Australia, missing their leading fast bowler, still had Warne and were expected to bat their way back into parity. Justin Langer made 82 and Ricky Ponting 61, but the middle and lower order could not build on the start: Australia were bowled out for 308, a deficit of 99, with Andrew Giles and Andrew Flintoff sharing six wickets between them.

Warne turns it around

England's hundred-run lead should have set up a comfortable position from which to press home the advantage. Instead their second innings collapsed spectacularly against Shane Warne, whose leg-spin turned the match on its head. England slipped to 31 for 4 inside the first hour and were staring at a total that would hand Australia the initiative back entirely. Only Andrew Flintoff, with a defiant 73, and some late resistance from the tail dragged England to 182 all out. Warne finished with 6 for 46 from 23.1 overs, figures that on their own turned what had looked like an England procession into a live contest.

It left Australia needing 282 to win, a stiff target but, on an Edgbaston pitch that had already shown signs of wearing, not an impossible one.

England set a target and lose their nerve

Australia's chase began solidly enough, Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden adding 47 for the first wicket, but Andrew Flintoff produced the spell of his career, bowling around the wicket into the rough and dismissing Ponting for a duck to spark a collapse. Australia lost wickets steadily through the middle session: Hayden, Martyn, Katich and Gilchrist all fell cheaply, Gilchrist and Jason Gillespie both gone within three balls of each other to leave Australia 137 for 7, before Michael Clarke went as well to make it 175 for 8, only the tail left to bat.

Shane Warne had already shown what he could do with the ball; with the bat, batting at nine, he added 42 useful runs in a defiant partnership with Brett Lee before he trod on his own stumps attempting to hook Flintoff, out hit-wicket for a score that briefly threatened to make the match safe. Australia were 220 for 9 still needing 62, and it was down to Lee and Kasprowicz.

Lee and Kasprowicz

What followed has become one of the most replayed passages of play in Ashes history. Brett Lee and Michael Kasprowicz added 59 runs for the last wicket, run by run dragging Australia back into a position that had looked lost. Lee, unbeaten on 43 at the close, played with real assurance; Kasprowicz, batting for survival more than runs, hung on. England's bowlers, Steve Harmison and Andrew Flintoff foremost among them, kept probing with short, hostile bowling that tested both technique and nerve deep into the final afternoon.

By the time the target had been cut to single figures, Edgbaston had turned into one of the loudest grounds in Test cricket, every ball met with a roar from a crowd that sensed something extraordinary either way.

The final over

Australia needed two runs to win when Steve Harmison bowled a short ball that flew off Kasprowicz's glove through to wicketkeeper Geraint Jones. Umpire Billy Bowden raised his finger; Kasprowicz was out for 20, caught behind, and Australia were all out for 279. England had won by 2 runs, the narrowest margin by runs in the history of Ashes cricket. Andrew Flintoff, who had taken 7 wickets in the match and scored 141 runs, was named man of the match, and the image of him crouching to console a shattered Brett Lee at the non-striker's end became the defining photograph of the entire series.

The scorecard shows Warne finishing with 10 wickets in the match to go with his defiant 42 lower down the order, and Flintoff's Test bowling figures across both innings reading 7 for 131 from 37 overs.

The series that followed

The result levelled the series at one apiece and reset the tone of the summer entirely. What had looked like another routine Australian series win turned into arguably the most closely fought Ashes contest of the modern era, decided only in the final session of the final Test at the Oval, where England held on for the draw that secured the urn after 16 years without it. Edgbaston 2005 is generally regarded as the match that turned the series, and the closeness of the finish, two runs, remains the tightest in the 120-plus years of Ashes cricket by that measure.

The full scorecard, innings by innings, is on this page, and you can see how the two sides were built on the England and Australia team pages. In The Follow-On you can pick either XI and try to find two extra runs, or bowl the over that Harmison never quite got the chance to finish.

Sources

• CricArcade Test archive: the full scorecard, fall of wickets and partnerships on this page
• ESPNcricinfo: Australia in England 2005, second Test scorecard and report
• Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2006: the Ashes of 2005