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Opinion
Any time an individual or team is vying to dethrone the incumbent champion in their respective sporting competition there is one simple message they must heed: if you come for the king, you best not miss.
It’s a warning supposedly of Machiavellian origins popularised by Omar Little, a renegade in Baltimore’s drug scene who thrived off staking and ambushing his enemies in the 2000s hit TV show The Wire.
Omar’s word of warning from the show is one which must be understood and noted by the English cricket team ahead of this winter’s Ashes series on their home turf, where they will hope to secure Test cricket’s most prestigious prize, and bragging rights, for the first time in eight years by defeating an Australian side ranked second in the world who’ve consistently been one of cricket’s top dogs over the past few years.
It’s been 18 months since the English side were embarrassingly demolished by a blood-thirsty Australian outfit 4-0 in the 2021-22 Ashes. In that time, under Brendan McCullum’s guidance, they’ve reinvented themselves and supposedly Test cricket, through the adoption of the ultra-attacking ‘Bazball’ concept.
Or, the art of tonking the ball incredibly hard, incredibly often to score at T20 strike rates in the game’s longest format. Under the hard-hitting Kiwi, England are yet to lose a series.
(Photo by Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)
And it seems, rightly so, they’re doubling down on the effectiveness of this approach so far. Charging into the Ashes with a courageous heart and brave mind.
So much so, captain Ben Stokes recently requested flat, fast pitches, typically associated with Australian conditions where their most poignant recent struggles have been glaringly obvious, and shortened boundaries, reportedly only 60 metres long. Within these publicly proclaimed requests lies a hint of overconfident, potentially harmful, naivety seeping into the England camp.
Superficially, these seem to be baseless mind games designed not to grind Australia into accepting defeat before a wicket’s been taken, but rather into convincing England they, and their lights out, up-tempo, six-hitting tactical circus, has any hope of victory.
Perhaps, that’s exactly the intention. Perhaps such mental and verbal tactics have been spewed without any intention of acting on them.
Perhaps Australia will arrive at Edgbaston for the first Test and pitch will be anything but flat and fast, the ball will move a mile, David Warner’s Test career will crash and burn with Australia’s hopes of successful Ashes retention, the boundary rope will lie three rows deep in the crowd with only Ben Stokes capable of reaching it, Andrew McDonald will collect the ire of the Australian public and media, and a Kiwi coach and Kiwi captain will inspire a famous England Ashes win.
But that all seems a bit improbable, doesn’t it? Perhaps England’s verbally constructed pre-Ashes faux confidence in its electrifying style will crumble under the weight of the finest fast bowling trident in world cricket.
Stuart Broad talks of scoreboard pressure potentially getting to Australia knowing they can’t score as quickly as their adversaries. And yet, nothing about Steve Smith, Marnus Labuschagne, and even Usman Khawaja indicates anything outside their batting bubble weighs too heavily on their performances.
This is after all Smith, who many consider the best bat since Donald Bradman, who withstood a barrage of verbal abuse last time England hosted the Ashes on his way to arguably Test cricket’s most herculean single-series performance and who, at the peak of his powers, is borderline impeachable.
Khawaja has seen enough winters to back his ability and his side.
Labuschagne, heir to the Smith-shaped iron throne at the summit of cricketing lore, is an oddball batting addict capable of surfing practically every obstacle thrown his way with a smile and overwhelming enjoyment.
(Photo by Quinn Rooney – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)
Even if all three of these man fail to fire in a single Test match, about as likely a proposition as India winning the Ashes, Australia boast Travis Head, one of Test cricket’s finest swift scorers, especially on flat and fast pitches, who blew England out of the park on home soil two summers ago; Alex Carey, a reliable bat; Cameron Green, a highly-touted all-rounder starting to show his natural class; and potentially David Warner, whose record in England is torrid, but his record on fast flat pitches? Incomparable.
This isn’t an infallible force of an England side who’ve not lost a match in three years, but rather a side high on its rather recent supply who scored quickly and aggressively against a New Zealand team without two of its best bowlers and still failed to win the series.
A side littered with stars, like Joe Root and Stokes, who’ve barely played in recent months through injury or failure to be selected in the IPL.
There is no doubt England have improved drastically under McCullum, but have they improved to the extent they seem to think? Put simply, no.
They’re exciting, they have incredible potential to score quick and blow sides out of the water, and they are far from the side crushed on Australian soil in the summer of 2021, but they’re also far from the lofty pedestal they’ve placed themselves on.
England are making a lot of noise on their pursuit of the Ashes, but in Australia they face an adversary, a cricketing king, unlike any they’ve faced in the Bazball era, one up to fight tooth and nail for Test cricket’s greatest honour.
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