Cricket doesn’t get any grander than this. Three games in a row where both teams have been in it right to the gritty end.
Three barnstorming finishes; twice by bat and once by ball, where the real winners have not only been those in the stands but those watching at home, wherever in the world they may be.
England controlled the narrative at Headingley when it mattered, capitalising on key tactical mistakes from Pat Cummins to keep the urn in play.
Headingley, again. Surely someone at Cricket Australia whipped up a memo in the last four years asking for a move to Cardiff, to Trent Bridge, to Paris even, as long as an entire nation didn’t have to relive the collective trauma of Ben Stokes doing his best impression of Atlas holding up the heavens.
But here we are again, slate grey skies over North Leeds as Cummins watches our dear departed monarch smirk from beyond the grave as she gives Stokes another favourable toss. It seems it isn’t just the weather in England that works against the visitors.
But from here on out, Australia repeatedly squander opportunities to take a commanding foothold in the game. Maybe it’s the hostile crowd, maybe it’s a relaxed disposition going into a run of three games where only one result is needed. Call it what you will, but at Headingley Australia lacked the ruthless instinct that has made them World Champions.
Of course, it doesn’t help that the batting innings for the visitors have been, for the most part, under cloudy skies with plenty of lateral movement of the ball. England’s bowlers have consistently been able to make the ball talk more than Jonny Bairstow, and capitalised at key moments in the game.
(Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)
Here again, Australia’s first innings was characterised by an inability to take on the swinging ball. Until Marsh whacked his way to the wonderfully symmetrical score of 118 off 118, Australia’s top order looked bereft of ideas in conditions they usually play well. Marnus Labuschagne in particular, often a world-class leaver with his mid-air swats at balls outside off, once again falls to a faithless prod at a ball that needn’t have been played.
The rest of the top order crumble like Yorkshire Blue, falling with reliable certainty as the recalled Chris Woakes and the galloping Mark Wood make the most of the bowling conditions. Jimmy Anderson, somewhere just out of sight, sends his curses to anyone that will listen.
Marsh’s aggression and intent showed exactly what the top order failed to accomplish, and was only exacerbated by Stokes’ first innings and Brook’s second. Prodding at a swinging ball is only going to achieve one effect, and if Joe Root and Bairstow had been paying attention, the game would have been over far quicker.
Barely any time later, Stokes walks back onto a cricket pitch. England seem to fabricate tailor-made scenarios like this for their captain, such is his powerful intent to destroy bowling attacks as he bats alongside the tail. He finds few willing allies, with wickets falling every 30 or so runs until he miscues a Todd Murphy delivery, 20 short of another famous century.
Shirts in the Western Stand are printed with his wagon wheel from his innings here in 2019, some shirts are inexplicably off. This is the power of Stokes. A near-certain Australian lead of somewhere between 50-100 is whittled down to a meaningless 26.
Once again, though, Australia fail to deliver the decisive blow to a long English tail. Sure, Moeen Ali and Woakes can swing the bat, but constant short balls to Mark Wood and Ben Stokes end in a torrent of boundaries. A game-winning position was there for the taking, a 100 run lead would have made the resulting chase a far more difficult process.
(Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)
Not only was it Stokes’ presence that made this innings feel like shades of 2019, but the inability to be adaptable in the field is something that Cummins has inherited from Tim Paine.
Hang on. Something’s missing. It’s only been five days and five hundred thousand opinion articles since Bairstow left his dusty crease behind for greener pastures. Where is the controversy? Weren’t we promised a bevy of fodder for the English and Australian tabloids to froth over? (Remember, we don’t yet know about Alex Carey’s alleged armed hold up of a local barbershop).
Finally, it arrives. Not long after Broad bullies Warner into the history books, Moeen Ali bowls what many consider to be ‘a pretty average delivery’, to which Smith replies with ‘a very average shot’, prompting Bairstow to remark ‘see ya later Smudge.’ Smith feigns disbelief, and the media feign controversy. It might not be the Long Room, but by jove it’s something.
But Bairstow may have had a point. Smith, in the form he’s in and with the stellar record he has, must have more game awareness than he displayed here. Perhaps the intent shown by Marsh subconsciously rubbed off on him, but flicking a ball that has barely turned to mid-on isn’t the answer.
As a senior player, Smith needed to have the foresight to see the kind of score he had to make, in a match that had a minor eon left to play. Labuschagne doesn’t get off lightly either, his attempted sweep of Ali tracking high into the deep and landing in the grateful hands of Brook, another example of the lack of a cutting edge. These two could have killed the game between them.
Most tellingly however, it was the plan in place during the final innings that sealed the deal for Australia. With England 6/171 after Jonny Bairstow failed to redeem himself in his home town, Australia bewilderingly abandon the line and length that has worked to strongarm the Brits into the position they’re in.
Back comes the short balls, field spread for easy singles. Brook and Woakes rotate the strike with the kind of ease you’d expect from a One Day game. Mitchell Starc is removed from the attack, which might be fair enough considering the spells he’s bowled already, but Cummins refuses to chuck the ball to Murphy until it’s too late, instead keeping Scott Boland in the attack when the cult favourite is extracting little to nothing from the ball.
(Photo by Ashley Allen/Getty Images)
These kinds of plans don’t win games when there aren’t enough runs on the board. Cummins needs to display the ruthless streak that Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh were so adept at. The confidence in what has worked so far, an aggressive field that keeps a batter on strike, you know, the stuff that works.
There’s nine days until we do this all again, a lot of time for the Australian camp to pore over what went wrong. Thankfully, this team has shown that they can win in all conditions, so long as they execute the right plans.
The loss of Nathan Lyon is a big one, and was highlighted here in letters big enough for the world to see. But Cummins needs to trust his players. The Ashes won’t return to these shores unless he does so.
At the end it falls to the brightest prospect in the country Harry Brook, who strikes a sublime 75 at a strike rate of 80.65 to see England within inches of the finish line, allowing Woakes and Wood to deservedly seal the win. The crowd roars like they did four years ago, maybe not for as long, and maybe not as loudly, but the victory is just as important. The series has more life in it than Bairstow has thousand-yard stares.
The appetisers have been cleared, side dishes polished. The main course is about to arrive in Manchester. Australia will either win a hotly contested away Ashes for the first time in over two decades, or England will square the ledger for a deciding 5th match that may well be one of the most watched test matches in history.
We know there won’t be a draw, so let’s remove that possibility shall we? Nine days to wait. Nine nights for Stokes to dream about balls disappearing into the crowd. Nine afternoons for Cummins to practice the art of the coin toss. Buckle up.
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