CRICKET:FOR ENGLAND there are, for all the dog days, times when things go right, and they are to be savoured. But occasionally, very occasionally in Australia these past two decades, there are days when nothing goes wrong.

Here yesterday, in the still beautiful, rafter-packed Oval, Jimmy Anderson bent down to his left in his follow-through and just failed to grasp a return catch offered by Mike Hussey. The Australian had three runs at the time and went on to fall seven runs short of a third Ashes century in successive matches.

That apart, and the fact the England openers had to face, albeit successfully, a single over before stumps, from the moment the sun rose in a cloudless azure sky, to that when Alastair Cook calmly knocked a Ryan Harris yorker to midwicket and marched off to the dressing-room, England had produced a flawless performance. A perfect day. Lou Reed wrote a song about it.

To bowl Australia out for 245 in such conditions, having lost a toss they were anxious to win, would have required the most vivid imagination beforehand, an incisive start with the new ball, and patience and skill thereafter to execute the plans they had so carefully put in place.

By the time Anderson was two deliveries into his second over of the match, three batsmen were back in the dressing-room, two runs had been scored and the statisticians were trawling the records to find a worse beginning to any Australian innings against anyone.

Eventually, 60 years back, in their second innings against England at Brisbane, where they lost three wickets before scoring a run, they found one.

Thereafter England nagged away until the edifice came tumbling. As in Brisbane, Anderson was outstanding, but this time, with four for 51, he got some reward, putting to bed forever the idea that he cannot bowl in Australia.

Ricky Ponting, who has scored five of his 39 Test hundreds here, marked his 150th Test by edging his first ball to second slip, which is one more delivery than Simon Katich had the opportunity to face before he was run out to the previous delivery, the fourth ball of the innings.

Michael Clarke then fared little better, gone to second slip in a stiff-backed, six-ball trice.

Later, as Shane Watson and Hussey began to dig Australia out, England simply sat back and waited, so that Watson succumbed immediately after his half century and lunch, and the beleaguered Marcus North suffered strangulation before prodding abjectly, the pressure cooker doing for him during an afternoon session in which England conceded only 65 runs from 32 overs. That was brilliant cricket.

For a while thereafter, the spectre of Hussey and Brad Haddin, triple century partners at the Gabba, loomed as they laid the brickwork for another rescue operation.

All the while though, Graeme Swann had been toiling to no reward, save knowing that his containing role was crucial to England’s four-man attack. If off the pace in Brisbane, he was excellent here: the virtue of persistence finally saw him strike twice in successive deliveries as Hussey, who had batted superbly, edged to slip, and Harris, promoted beyond his station to eight, was lbw first ball, the inevitable referral failing to convince the third umpire Billy Doctrove that he had made faint contact with his inside edge.

It was timely. The new ball was due and it hastened the finish, with a second comedy run-out, another wicket for Anderson and a single deserving one for Stuart Broad.

But as this is Australia, Anderson’s display sparked an angry on-field dispute between the captains.

Ponting complained to Andrew Strauss at the close of play that he had failed as England captain to manage Anderson’s sledging against the batsmen.

The flashpoint came when Strauss seemed not to curb an exchange between Anderson and Haddin, as much as join in to protect a fast bowler whose insecurities have been well chronicled but whose bowling craft, at 28, is blossoming by the day.

Strauss waved aside Ponting’s public protests, suggesting that he had no right to complain just because he had suffered one of the worst days in Australia’s recent Test history. The result is bound to be a stepping-up of tensions as England seek their first series win in Australia since the mid-80s.

After play, Anderson, who is still suspected by the home side of being mentally soft, was asked if he now regarded himself as “the enforcer” in England’s attack.

“No, not really,” he said.

He also feigned not to know what the dispute between Ponting and Strauss was about. “I’ll ask, and tell you later.”

But the fast bowler, amusingly depicted by one Australian newspaper at the Gabba as “the sledge-crazed speedster”, has become the player Australia believe they must break to keep alive their chances of regaining the Ashes.

Anderson’s sledging does press the boundaries of acceptability. One of the gentler souls in the England camp, he suggests a need to act out a role that does not come entirely naturally.

These then are torrid times for Australia. To be bowled out in such conditions can happen, but to do so in such a catastrophic fashion demands recrimination whatever the final outcome. This is a ground on which they have posted in excess of 400 in the first innings of each Test since 1999, while it is six years before that since they made fewer than 350, batting second, and a year before that since India put them in to bat and dismissed them for 145.

Consolation comes only in the knowledge that they went on to win the latter game and lost the first by a single run.

The results from yesterday can be passed down the coaching chain, starting with Andy Flower and his preparations. In Brisbane, the hard work and words of batting coach Graham Gooch finally instilled into Cook the need to play the percentages, and not be satisfied with the glory of a hundred but develop an appetite for more.

Next, consider the contribution made by the bowling coach, David Saker, who has drilled into his pace bowling charges the absolute necessity of the correct lengths and lines for the conditions and the value of discipline.

Then finally, consider all the work put in by the fielding coach, Richard Halsall. England were magnificent.