Graeme Swann puts a positive spin on England's great escape

Spinner admits he and England under-performed at Cardiff but says Australia over-performed and it will be closer at Lord's
Graeme Swann
Graeme Swann failed to take a wicket during the first Test. Photograph: Mike Egerton/Empics

For a man so battered and bruised by five days of cricket, Graeme Swann is in a chipper mood. After the first Test he has some ugly bowling figures, a rash of purple blotches along his arm where he has been hit by the ball and, despite all that, there is still a smile on his face. "We got out of jail," he says, grinning, "and it's a happy feeling to have done that. We could very easily have been one-nil down and that wouldn't have been a nice feeling to wake up to."

Just 24 hours earlier Swann had been sweating it out in the dressing room in Cardiff as the much maligned Monty Panesar walked out to bat and try to save the Test. "Funnily enough I wasn't that worried when Monty went in, because with 11 overs to go it was a nigh-on impossible task. But I still couldn't watch it. I sat in the back watching the highlights of the Formula One, reading a Sunday supplement about buying houses in Majorca and listening to the roars of the crowd.

"It was superb game. But it was strange afterwards because we didn't know how to celebrate or react. It didn't feel like a win but it certainly felt like more than a draw. There was a definite gritting of the teeth and a satisfaction that we'd pulled it off for Colly's sake but certainly we weren't jumping up and down to go and have a party on the Trafalgar Square bus."

The exquisite agony of the ending cannot disguise the fact that for the first four days England took a pasting. And Swann, who gave up 131 runs without taking a wicket, suffered as much as anybody, even if he had the consolation of scoring 78 runs. It was while making his 31 in the second innings that he was hit by a barrage of short balls from Peter Siddle. "It was hard to know what to do, whether to stand there and play or try to get under it and wear a couple. But I kept thinking that, if I got out hooking, my dad would absolutely tear me to pieces."

The runs he scored, like England's draw, should not eclipse the failings elsewhere. Bowling at Australia, he says, "felt a bit like banging your head against a brick wall. When you finally get the wicket and the next guy comes in and middles his first five balls you think, 'Oh, here we go again.' I just didn't bowl very well. I probably put too much pressure on myself to run up and take wickets straight away, in the first couple of overs the new ball was slipping out of my hand and I never got the rhythm I wanted. I was bowling too full and that's a sign that it wasn't coming out of my hand too well, without the dip I'd normally get.

"But you can't take anything away from the way they batted," he says. "They all came in and looked in exceptional form and showed us how we should have played on that wicket in the first innings. It was a very nervous day's cricket the first day but our ending up seven wickets down wasn't good enough. It was good cricket by Australia, that's the way you play when you dominate a game. You grind somebody down and use that little advantage you have. They batted as Australian teams always do, with that sort of cocksure swagger.

"It wasn't until the Saturday morning that I felt happy with the way the ball was coming out and then, perversely, there was nothing on it because we were just waiting for a declaration." He will be drawing on his spell then for the next Test. "I'm more than happy going into this week knowing that I actually finished that game bowling how I wanted to, even if it was a shame I didn't start that way. Even if I had bowled better I don't think we would have won, it just would have been a lot closer."

So what exactly went wrong? "The whole game we didn't assert ourselves as we wanted to, we didn't dominate at any time. We were quite happy with getting 435 but in hindsight that was probably 200 runs short on that pitch. Then we went out all guns blazing on the second day but we started badly with the ball and we never pulled it back. It was only a rearguard action that got us through."

So England escaped and in doing so set the country ablaze with Ashes interest. Swann, for one, does not expect England to be so outplayed again. "Our under-performance was exacerbated by their over-performance," he says. "It made it seem there is a gulf between the sides. There's not. As the series goes on we'll see a lot more close games of cricket." Swann is certainly an optimist. England just have to hope he is not delusional too.

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