Fifty-four for eight, and then 477

Mark Taylor won the toss at Edgbaston and batted. Matthew Elliott was bowled by Darren Gough at 11. Taylor was caught at 15. Mark Waugh was bowled by Gough at 26 and Greg Blewett was caught at 28. Four wickets down, and none of the four had reached double figures.

Steve Waugh, Ian Healy and Michael Bevan all went at 48, Healy first ball. Jason Gillespie was leg before at 54. Eight down for 54, on the first day of an Ashes series.

The ninth wicket

Shane Warne and Michael Kasprowicz then added 56. Warne made 47 from 46 balls with eight fours, two runs fewer than the top eight had made between them. Kasprowicz was caught for 17 at 110, and Warne was the last man out at 118, in the thirty-second over.

Andy Caddick took five for 50, Gough three for 43 and Devon Malcolm two for 25. England used three bowlers and needed no fourth.

Full scorecard: England v Australia, 1st Test, Edgbaston, 5–8 June 1997 →

What England did with it

Nasser Hussain made 207 from 337 balls with 38 fours, and Graham Thorpe made 138. Their fourth-wicket stand of 288 came off 461 balls in 294 minutes and was a record for England against Australia, passing the 222 Hammond and Paynter had made at Lord’s in 1938. The card records that in its notes, and records that both men made the highest Test scores of their careers.

England declared at 478 for nine, 360 ahead. Gillespie had pulled a hamstring after ten overs, so Australia had bowled most of those 138 overs with three front-line bowlers and whoever else could be found.

Four hundred and seventy-seven

Australia’s second innings was the first one reversed. Elliott made 66, Taylor 129 and Blewett 125. The first wicket put on 133 and the second 194, and at the close of the third day Australia were 256 for one. They were all out for 477, which left England 118.

Mike Atherton and Alec Stewart got them by nine wickets in 21.3 overs on the fourth day. The same eleven Australians had made 118 and 477 in the same match, two days apart, against the same attack.

The series

England led 1-0. Australia won the series 3-2. The side that had been 54 for eight on the first day of the summer held the Ashes at the end of it. Edgbaston is remembered now, when it is remembered, as the one England won before the summer went the usual way.

What the number hides

Collapses are filed by their totals, and 118 is not a total anybody files. It sits nowhere near the line of 26, 36, 42, 45 and 60. But 54 for eight is a worse line than several of those. Trent Bridge in 2015 was 46 for eight; Lord’s in 1974 was 42 for eight; Sydney in 1887 was 29 for eight.

The difference between a collapse that becomes a number and one that does not is the ninth wicket. Warne and Kasprowicz doubled the total, and the innings that would have been remembered as sixty-something for ten became 118 all out, which nobody remembers at all.

Trent Bridge is the comparison this site keeps making. There, the same eleven made 60 and then 253 in the same match. Here they made 118 and then 477, with the 54 for eight sitting inside the first of those totals where the record cannot see it.

What the card holds

Eight wickets for 54. A ninth-wicket stand of 56 that turned a collapse into an ordinary bad innings. A record stand of 288 for the other side. Three hundreds in the second innings from a side that had managed one score above 17 in the first. And a result line that reads England won by 9 wickets, at the start of a series Australia won.

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No. 9 in Collapse, a series of 16.

NextDrawn, with the scores level