With Glenn
McGrath “elbowed’ to the sidelines for this Trent Bridge Test and Australia
losing the toss and bowling on a dead wicket, England was cruising before Shane
Warne got lucky to deliver our first wicket at 105 before lunch. But
then subsequent post-lunch interruptions from rain and ultimately bad
light saw stumps prematurely pulled, with England retiring for the evening at a
“middling” 4-229.

While the
opening day confrontation was one of missed opportunities for both
teams, Test debutant Shaun Tait shed his pre-lunch nerves to fire up in the
final session, helping turn Australia’s accident prone day around with some
lively bowling and two invaluable wickets.

Certainly both
teams had their reasons to complain about what might have been as England gave
up wickets it shouldn’t have – including captain Michael Vaughan gifting Ricky
Ponting only his fifth Test wicket; but it’s hard not to argue the Aussies had a
lot more to whine about when it came to not taking their chances. Michael Kasprowicz saw two catches dropped
while also dealing with a chronic no-ball outbreak, which for Brett Lee was even
more costly when he scattered Marcus Trescothick’s stumps as one of 22 no-balls
from our attack on the day, including 18 before lunch.

Thus it fell
to a far livelier Tait in that last session to this time legally clean up
Trescothick’s stumps when he was 65, on what had become a more responsive pitch
after the rain, before he then inveigled Ian Bell (3) in his next over to offer
an edge to Adam Gilchrist to give the keeper his 300th Test
dismissal. Suddenly England was looking
a bit befuddled at this turnaround to be 3-174, before Vaughan and Kevin
Pietersen somewhat steadied the ship with a further 67, before Ponting struck
for a belated fourth wicket, after both batsmen had been dropped.

While Tait’s
bare figures of 2-62 from 14 overs hardly seems like overwhelming evidence we
have found our next stellar fast bowler, it was very much a day of two halves
for the youngster, as he proved ultimately the most menacing of our shredded
attack, compounded by Warne seemingly suffering back trouble with just six overs
sent down for the day for his opening wicket.

Geoff
Boycott writes in the Telegraph: “England’s now in ‘no-man’s land’ with no guarantee yet it will go on and get the
big score that beckoned after winning the toss.
Now
we’ve finished up at the end of the day with the game on a knife-edge. If these
two go on and the tailenders bat well, England could make a big total. But if
Australia get early wickets, they could collapse to a poor score, and that’s why
I say we’re in no-man’s land.”