Hand’s down, this is the most fascinating Ashes Series for a decade.
The quality of play might not always be there, but the surprise and delight of this roller-coaster ride has me hanging on the edge of my late-night seat like no Ashes series I can remember since 2005.
As I write a Johnny-come-lately wicketkeeper nurdler and lanky fast-bowler maybe writing yet another last-gasp twist into an unlikely and totally implausible Australian win.
Australia were, quite rightly, firm favourites coming in. Even their poor performance and England’s win in the Cardiff Test were seen (especially after the first day at Lord’s) as as an aberration that would quickly be righted. But, once again, from day one at Edgbaston the twists and turns of this intriguing series have caught almost all unawares.
Some, mostly parochial Englishmen, might have predicted and stiffer resolve from England, but no reports or articles that I saw predicted such a one-sided dominance by the Lions over a seemingly resurgent Australia. But while Aussie supporters may be down in the dumps right now, the very nature of the series so far impels them not to lose hope – not even if the baggy greens go 2-1 down.
To be quite honest, while the English could take revenge for the whitewash last series, it is equally likely that Australia could come out and annihilate England and take the series 3-2.
That’s the sheer exhiliarting beauty of it – no-one seems to be able to tell; the form guide and patterns of dominance and hierarchy that once use to make pundits bold and bookies safe has gone out the window. To quote Yeats ‘The center will not hold … anarchy is loosed on the world.’
The rough beast that has been unleased is the predictability and form guide of cricket. It use to be (at least in my cricket viewing lifetime) that nations had periods of dominance, or at least, advantage in the Ashes contest. Australia Subjugated England 1989-2007 (with that one glorious, unexpected exception).
England rose to power 2008-2013. Indeed, we might have expected, England and Aussie supporters alike, that Englands current crop would give them a few more Ashes series than it did. True surprises were so riveting because they were just that – total surprises.
No-one seriously thaought England were going to get close in 2005. Ditto in 1981 before that famous follow-on and Botham’s heroics. They didn’t happen often, once every few decades.
Now we have two continuous series that have come seemingly from nowhere in their ability to confound our expectations and the zeitgeist’s opinion. It’s hard for us to adjust psychology retrospectively, but did anyone seriously think Australia and Johnson (more specifically) were going to gut and taxiderm the carcass of English cricket like they did last time in Oz?
I’m not talking just winning (there was the odd voice talking up the possibility of a narrow Aussie series win) I’m talking the manner and, to be quite frank, utter absurdity of it? When we look back at the distinguished careers of Stuart Broad, Jimmy Anderson, Graeme Swann, Alastair Cook, Ian Bell, Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior etc, would anyone seriously believe such a side could be dispatched so cheaply?
And so far this series is a microcosm of just the same unexpectedness. For Australia to collapse so badly on the corpse of turf that was the Cardiff pitch? England likewise at Lord’s?
Even the individual performances of the modern Australian cricketer defy basic sporting pattern recognition. Johnson, so apparently mentally fragile, to come back and terrorise the English batsmen as Lillee had once done; Moheen Ali, who even Englishmen were telling us, wasn’t much chop; and now Finn… Finn!
The ‘unselectable’ joke of a gangly fast bowler like the big kid making Aussie batsmen look like under 6s at a Saturday morning.
Jimmy Anderson (long may he be gone if you’re an Aussie supporter) has been the epitome of this trend. Examining his cumulative performances over the last two series I can’t work out if this bloke is the greatest English medium-fast swing bowler since Alec Bedser or the bowling equivalent of a flat (swinging)-track bully?
We’ve had the English-age (2008-2013) We’ve had the Aussie-age (1989-2007), now we’re in the midst of the split-personality age.
I could not try to turn prophet and write some witty things like: ‘cricket has come full circle’ or ‘like other sports of our age the role of momentum and individual player psychology has made cricket an unpredictable game’. I could maybe chuck in the old chestnut about the increasing trend towards homeside dominance.
It may be that these two sides are just so evenly matched, know each other so well, that the one who turns up not 100 per cent on their game are in for a hiding?
Or maybe they know each other so well that the unknown quantity of the newly selected player can easily tip the balance one way or another?
But mostly, when I get over myself thinking I’m any sort of writer, I realise that I don’t really care. I realise that this is what top international sport is all about.
I’m over my parochialism (somewhat) and displeasure that Australia aren’t grinding England into the dirt like a year and a half ago. Anyway, the cricket’s too good to care too much about writing this tosh.
And to think, I almost wrote an article a couple of days ago about Australia’s imminent dominance.
Oi! Pete Nevill just gloved one down leg of Broad and the Poms haven’t any reviews left – come-on Aussie! If only they can just set the nervous nellies of England 150 and then unleash the Demon Mk III.
(I did say I was only somewhat over parochialism.)
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