Merlyn adds to Ashes lore

It wasn't quite Shane Warne versus Mike Gatting, 'The Rematch'.

For starters, Gatting, 12 years on, was greyer, ruddier and rounder.

Warne, meanwhile, was unavoidably detained -- by the third Ashes Test, 2005 -- so a stand-in had to be wheeled in.

Shane was replaced by Merlyn, a great lump of metal with knobs on.

Merlyn is a bowling machine with a difference. Its great strength, according to the inventors, is that it has mastered leg spin, making it just about unique in seamer-friendly England.

The idea last week was to recreate "The Ball of the Century", Warne's dismissal of Gatting with his very first ball on June 4, 1993 at Old Trafford.

Graham Gooch, an onlooker at the non-striker's end that day, has suggested ever since that Gatting would never have missed the ball, which drifted towards leg before spinning back to clip off stump, had it been a pork pie.

Gatting turned up at the Old Trafford nets last Friday looking well-fed and game for a laugh. Merlyn, perhaps a little rusty, did not get Gatting first ball but dismissed him with his second as the former England batsman snicked towards slip.

Warne has rubbished his nearest rival in England - Merlyn does not even have an ear stud -- but Gatting, who faced two overs while being gently sledged by around 60 or 70 onlookers, was more enthusiastic.

"It's not Warne," he said, but added: "It's an interesting machine and very good provided the feeder doesn't tell you a lie about whether it's a leg-break or a googly that's coming out, because you can't see the ball out of a bowler's hand.

COACHING PRODUCT

"As a coaching product, it can teach you to pick up on the length, pick up on the line of the ball to play the shots you feel you can play. It gives you a bit of confidence and can help you learn to play the appropriate shot."

With that, feeling no doubt peckish, Gatting departed, followed by the crowd.

A couple of days later, Warne bowled at England for real, on a wearing Old Trafford pitch sporting plenty of inviting rough. Soon he was facing Andrew Strauss, who he had nicknamed "the new Daryll", in reference to Daryll Cullinan, the former South African batsman who never got close to decoding Warne's spells.

Strauss had been dismissed by the leg spinner in both innings in the second test. In the second innings, Warne's delivery spun some two or three feet from outside the left-handed batsman's off stump to hit leg.

Strauss, an assiduous fellow, responded by spending more and more time since in Merlyn's company, trying to make sense of things.

On Sunday, Strauss scored a century. Warne failed to take a wicket in conceding 74 runs.

It may be premature to suggest that the 35-year-old Australian is losing his psychological hold over Englishmen.

He has already taken 20 wickets in the Ashes, more than any other bowler from either side in the series, at 20.90 runs apiece.

But England's batsmen, perhaps for the first time since Gooch, have begun taking the fight to him rather than wait for their undoing. Kevin Pietersen set the tone and the other have followed him down the pitch.

Their success seems to have taken them almost by surprise. "Our guys who played Shane yesterday (Sunday), apart from one little area, felt quite comfortable scoring off him," Michael Vaughan said at the end of the drawn third Test.

"If he just missed a patch you could score off the back foot and if he missed a patch fuller you could drive it quite nicely. I can't honestly answer why the spinners didn't get a bagful because it was spinning for most of the match."

It may be that Merlyn's magic has indeed helped counter Warne's wizardry.

English and Australian commentators, most of whom had predicted a comfortable series win for the world champions, are still trying to fathom out why they have got it so wrong. Theories and counter-theories are being tabled.

Vaughan likes to put it down to his team's mettle. Perhaps he meant the team's lump of metal.