Bath 28 Wasps 16: Ashton works the oracle to make Bath run hot

It is quite something to bring together a group of strangers and ask them to bond together as one in the biggest game of the season to date, especially when this select band includes a full-back who might have considered auditioning for a job as body double for the Invisible Man, a young Samoan from Auckland University who has been at the club all of five minutes and, in Chris Malone, an outside-half so profoundly distrusted by the great unwashed on the terraces that they declared a public holiday when he was dropped for Olly Barkley earlier in the month.

The fact that this disparate group of individuals acted in common cause at the Recreation Ground on Saturday was one of the minor miracles of the Premiership campaign. Of course, we are not talking about the 1971 Lions or the 1995 All Blacks here; this revamped Bath back division did not create the kind of magic with which Brian O'Driscoll and his Leinster colleagues had entranced the same venue six days previously. But they did click to a considerable degree and, as a result, Brian Ashton is one step closer to a canonisation ceremony in Bath Abbey.

He is some coach, this Ashton. Until he rejoined Bath at the start of the year after a decade away, the club closest to his heart could not score a try at home for love nor money. There was more chance of Lord Lucan cantering through the Royal Crescent on horseback - and of the horse turning out to be Shergar - than of Bath putting the best part of 30 points past a defence as parsimonious as Wasps'.

At the weekend, those missing tries suddenly materialised. Apparent no-hopers played out of their skins. There were counter-attacks and offloads, side-steps and dummies. Whatever next? Elephants? Joe Maddock, picked at full-back ahead of the more obviously threatening Michael Stephenson, blew hot and cold, but the best of his work was very good indeed. Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu, the new Samoan centre, also had a mixed afternoon. Some of his rugby was terrific, the rest merely excellent. As for Malone ... suffice to say the opticians are under siege from people worried that they can no longer trust the evidence of their own eyes. The Australian, promoted as a result of Barkley's thumb dislocation, dipped into a bag of tricks no one knew he possessed and set about ripping up the Wasps defence.

Armed with Josh Lewsey, Tom Voyce and Stuart Abbott, Wasps arrived in the belief that they possessed a monopoly on elusive attacking runners. Indeed, Abbott threatened to give them some purchase on a game they clearly expected to win with his balanced and inventive stepping in broken field. It was probably not enough to earn him a place in the England side to face Wales in this weekend's Six Nations match at Twickenham - Andy Robinson, the national coach, is likely to stick with Mike Tindall and Jamie Noon at centre - but on another occasion his efforts would certainly have won the day.

Yet on this day, Wasps were restricted to a single break-out score from Ayoola Erinle, who, if truth be told, should have been pulled up short by the touch judge, who missed a toe on the whitewash, and by Gareth Delve, the Bath back-row forward, who missed the most straightforward of tackles. Bath, on the other hand, created three tries of considerable quality. David Bory, the France wing who could well be the signing of the season, was involved in all of them, but it was no one-man show. The likes of Matt Stevens, Steve Borthwick and the rumbustious Andy Beattie did their bit too, and not just in the bump-and-grind.

Ashton was delighted that backs and forwards alike had listened to instructions and backed themselves to stay on their feet rather than plummet towards terra firma at the first suggestion of a possibility of a tackle.

"With defences as they are, you have to do something with the ball," said the grand old radical of the English game. It sounded sensible enough, but Bath have not been doing things with the ball for the best part of five years. This time last season, Ashton would have been charged with sedition for giving voice to such heresy.

His opposite number, Ian McGeechan, was deeply taken with the transformation in Bath's approach. "We finished second in an awful lot of areas out there," he said. McGeechan's coaching partner, Shaun Edwards, preferred to take issue with his own side's contribution rather than tickle the enemy's fancy with admiring words.

Asked to describe the visitors' defensive display, he responded with the word "crap". Urged to expand on his theme, he thought for a second before replying: "OK, we were very crap".

If truth be told, Bath would privately have confessed to an extreme case of crapulence after most of their previous Premiership outings, and it may well be that they will slip a notch now that Borthwick, Stevens and their colleagues in the tight five, Lee Mears and Danny Grewcock, are Six Nations bound. But on this evidence, they are far too potent to end the season in the relegation shake-up.

Just one thought in passing: can anyone out there even begin to explain why Ashton is coaching a back-line containing a New Zealander, a Frenchman, a Samoan and an Australian, rather than a group of Englishmen with red roses on their shirts?

Bath: Tries Bell, Fuimaono-Sapolu, Malone; Conversions Malone 2; Penalties Malone 3. Wasps: Try Erinle; Conversion King; Penalties King 2, Staunton.

Bath: J Maddock; A Higgins, A Crockett (M Stephenson, 62), E Fuimaono-Sapolu, D Bory; C Malone, N Walshe; M Stevens, L Mears, D Bell (D Flatman, 66), D Grewcock, S Borthwick (capt), A Beattie, M Lipman, I Fea'unati.

Wasps: J Lewsey; P Sackey, A Erinle (F Waters, 72), S Abbott, T Voyce; A King (J Staunton, 78), M Dawson (E Reddan, 52); A McKenzie (J Va'a, 43), R Ibañez (J Barrett, 10-20), T Payne, S Shaw (R Birkett, 54), G Skivington, L Dallaglio (capt), J Worsley, J Hart (J O'Connor, 35).

Referee: D Rose (Warwickshire).