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Consider this scenario.
It’s a crucial Test match – the Ashes are in the balance. One team is under the pump, due to some over aggressive stroke play, poor fielding, undisciplined bowling and dodgy selections. But they have a lot of potential and an inspirational captain.
They also have a wicketkeeper who isn’t very good behind the stumps but he’s an extremely good batter, if a little erratic. The keeper is leading the fight to save the game.
Then he’s dismissed in controversial circumstances. The match is lost. The losing captain calls the controversial decision wrong, wrong, wrong. He says that decision was the turning point in the game. He’s mocked by the other country’s media as a whinger.
Opinions flare. People bag each other according to their respective countries. It gets ugly.
It’s not Lords, 2023.
It’s Edgbaston, 1985.
And the whingeing, losing team wasn’t England, but Australia – captained by Allan Border, with Wayne Phillips as the batter.
It was the fifth test of the 1985 Ashes. Going in to the match, the series was 1-1, with two tests to go. We held the Ashes so if we got away with two draws, we’d retain them.
Not bad for a team that had been decimated by the South African rebel tours (we took third-choice pace bowlers to England). New captain Allan Border was entitled to feel a little hopeful.
Game on.
Australia put on 335 in the first innings. Not terrible – but not great. England responded with 5-595 (our bowling attack included Jeff Thomson and Simon O’Donnell, with Bob Holland turned into a stock bolwer).
Australia collapsed to 5-36 in response, Richard Ellison taking 4-1 in one spell. Game over…
Or is it? Because Greg Ritchie and Wayne Phillips combined to take the score to 5-112. This was Ritchie at his peak and Phillips was in strong batting form that summer. Maybe they could save us. Rain helped. We only had to hang on for something like 20 overs and it would be a draw.
But then… Phillips, when on 59, drove a Phil Edmonds delivery right at Allan Lamb, who turned out of the way – the ball hit Lamb’s thigh, rebounded into the air and was caught by David Gower. The umpires ruled it out!
You can see it here around 15 minutes in:
Australia lost 5-29 and England won the Test by an innings. It was Australia’s biggest Ashes defeat since Manchester 1956. Sigh. We lost the next Test by an innings, too, by the way.
Poor Allan Border.
Now, there were plenty of reasons Australia lost this game – mostly inadequate bowling, fielding, and batting. There was also poor selection (Wayne Phillips chosen as keeper over Ray Phillips, Simon O’Donnell chosen as a bowling all rounder when he had barely taken a wicket that summer, Dean Jones not even taken on the tour) and captaincy (using Bob Holland as a stock bowler, refusing to use part time bowlers more).
But for Border the explanation was simple…
Yep, it was that second innings Wayne Phillips dismissal.
“English umpires are the best in the world, but in this instance they’ve made a bit of a blue,” Border fumed.
“I can’t understand this decision, which I feel cost us the game. We didn’t deserve to get out of it but at that stage we looked like saving the game. I watched the slow-motion replay 30 times and I couldn’t tell what happened.”
“We have a game based on the benefit of the doubt going to batsmen,” added Border. “While we play under those rules I can’t understand this decision going against us.”
In response, the English press treated Border’s comments with kindness, respect and nuance… Oh, who am I kidding? They went after him like a pack of dogs, calling him a whinger and a lot worse.
David Gower, then English captain, stated, “It’s fairly simple really. The scorebook says ‘Phillips, caught Gower, bowled Edmonds.’”
Now the Edgbaston incident isn’t completely the same as what happened at Lord’s – it wasn’t a “laws say yes but what does the spirit of cricket say hmm hmm” thing, more a “did the ball touch the ground in the first place hmm hmmm” thing.
But there are enough similarities for me to bring it up.
Particularly this – I think part of the reason Border lost it was part of the reason English cricket players and fans have lost it this week: to cover their embarrassment and frustration that their team lost a match they shouldn’t have.
Australia had several opportunities to win (or at least not lose) the Ashes in 1985 but kept blowing them. Instead of dealing with that head on, it was easier to make it all about the Phillips dismissal.
England had several opportunities to win the second test at Lords (and the first test, come to think of it). But they stuffed it. Remember, both Warner and Khawaja were dropped early in their crucial innings.
There were several key collapses, caused by silly rather than aggressive batting – even after Australia lost Nathan Lyon during the game. England let Lyon get away with a 15-run last wicket partnership. England also let in an amazing amount of extras – 38 in the first innings, 36 in the second – which exceeded the Australian victory margin. There were also selection issues.
They could have picked a proper wicket keeper who can bat (Foakes) and/or a number eight who can bat (Woakes, Rashid) but they didn’t. And Bairstow was silly to wander off. Look, I get it, we all daydream. But no one else seems to do it.
Instead of talking about these things it’s become all about the stumping. It’s a lot easier for England to put it all on that rather than taking a hard look at just how aggressive their batters should be, or whether the (considerable) benefits of having a keeper who can bat like Bairstow make up for the (considerable) drawbacks of having a keeper who keeps like Bairstow.
(I haven’t got the stats to back this up – I wish I did – but it always seems when a team picks a sub-standard keeper because of their batting, the whole team’s fielding suffers.
I think this is because wicketkeeper has to be the captain of the fielders and it’s hard to take them seriously when they are constantly fumbling the ball themselves.
That certainly seemed to happen with Wayne Phillips and Matthew Wade and Jos Buttler and Bairstow. Like I say I haven’t got the stats to back them up. But shouldn’t it be discussed?)
I’m not pretending Australians are holier than thou. If this happened the other way around England would be bellowing and we would be clutching our pearls. It didn’t just happen in 1985. Remember when Dean Jones was run out in the West Indies in 1991? When teams lose, their supporters get frustrated. And sulk.
So, while, yes, English supporters are acting like a bunch of sooky kids now, Australians act like sooky kids plenty of times too, so maybe we can just be a bit more understanding. After all, the game of test match cricket is played by, and commented on by, big children.
And a side note: I think Stuart Broad is one of the most superb sledgers in the history of world cricket. It is hard to imagine any other player with such skill when it comes to one liners and showmanship.
We should glory in it while we can.
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