Ashes debrief and final cricketing ramble for the Summer
“Bowling from the Pavilion End, Stephen Blackford.
“Bowling from the Pavilion End, Stephen Blackford.
Tuesday 1st August 2023
Act One: A dogged opening session of play
Well my friends it’s over and yes, there is a little quiver in the voice as I lament and declare this year’s cricketing Ashes Summer to be over. I joked last evening on Twitter (“X” now, surely? Social Media Editor) that I now have a gaping void where Test Match cricket has resided rather snugly for the past two months and I requested my readers to send suggestions as to what I could now compulsively and obsessively fill this void with in the coming months. Sure I was being overly dramatic, a forte I’ve long since mastered, and of course the football season will soon begin again, my Social Affairs Editor Dr Horseman tells me the ladies netball World Cup is rather exciting and I need to turn my sporting attention and support to my Los Angeles Dodgers to guide them through the play-offs and into an October surprise of World Series glory. Before that we have golf’s Ryder Cup as well as a plethora of cricketing IT20 and ODI encounters, including a World Cup, and before we collectively know it, Christmas will upon us once more as well as a final countdown for England’s Winter tour and five Test Match series with India in January and February 2024, the third match being played on my birthday, a rare indulgent treat!
But can we have some more Ashes cricket please?
Now!
Please?
Who in their right sporting mind wouldn’t want just a little more Ashes cricket from a series that saw every winning margin less than 50 runs or the equally tight victory declaration of 3 wickets? Every Test Match! Down to the last knockings of a sporting encounter that flowed on unpredictable tides, casting one team in the ascendancy and favourites to win, only for their opponents to snatch back dominance and cross the finishing line ahead. No comprehensive mauling's by an innings and 150 runs or medium total run chases smashed in two sessions and victory by 10 wickets with a day to spare.
2–2 is fair dinkum in anyone’s language, yet there is an argument to be made that England and not Australia should have entered the cauldron of the Headingley circus 2–0 up. I don’t particularly subscribe to that theory and nor do I blame Ben Stokes for his early declaration at Edgbaston, the first of this Ashes’ silly side lines of tittle-tattle. England rather threw away their mid-match advantage and Aussie skipper Pat Cummins played an innings for the ages to guide his team narrowly home. For England to have won at Lord’s, Ben Stokes had to score 220+ runs in their 2nd innings and he came mightily and oh so gloriously close to doing so. Bucking the consensus apparently, but 2–0 Australia heading to Yorkshire was a fair reflection on the series so far to me. The World Champs had played their own game and taken their chances. The pretenders to their crown hadn’t.
Victory in Yorkshire was fittingly sealed by Chris Woakes and Mark Wood but in a game yet again that veered from one team in control and heading for victory to the other, and another Test Match to go down to the wire of storybook folklore. 2–1 entering Old Trafford, England were trailing in the series but as dominant as either team had been over the other and had the rain stayed away, there will always be the fantasy they’d have won comfortably by an innings. The reality was a Marnus Labuschagne century against some tired and weary bowlers before the Mancunian monsoon descended from above. Despite the weight of history, I had Australia favourites entering day 5 at The Oval but there was only going to be one storyteller in South London. Stuart Broad may have lived the sporting fairy tale by taking the final Australian wicket to fall, the unfairly monikered “Public Enemy Number 1” Alex Carey, but Chris Woakes walked away with the awards for a match winning spell of bowling for a team who’d scored runs for fun all around him and all, lest we forget, for another victory against the Test Champions of the World.
So you’ll excuse me if I want just a little bit more. 2–2? A drawn series? After 25 days! Australia return home, custodians of the smallest trophy in all sport, and rightly and deservedly so.
But this Ashes series was one for the ages and in the coming years this will be anointed so.
I agree with England coach Brendon McCullum: “Let’s go round again!”
Great! When can we start?
“Ashes to Ashes”
Out Now! Hot off the Press!medium.com
Act Two: A stylish century under the afternoon sun
After penning a combined XI before the series began it’s only fair I luxuriate into a carefree century of boundary 4’s and 6’s now with an end of Ashes XI
Usman Khawaja
Zak Crawley
Marnus Labuschagne
Joe Root
Harry Brook
Ben Stokes
Moeen Ali
Alex Carey
Chris Woakes
Pat Cummins
Stuart Broad
From the 4 opening batsmen available, Usman Khawaja was an instant shoe-in as the series’ top run scorer with an average a smidge below 50, a top score of 141 and his continual ability to seemingly bat all day, every day. At 36, Khawaja will surely never grace an Ashes series in England ever again and is tipped for retirement in the coming Australian Summer alongside his childhood friend and absentee from this combined XI, David Warner, who accumulated so many starts in the 20’s and 30’s but never scored more than 66 in a series average of only 28. Ben Duckett also misses out for similar reasons and should have turned his 98 at Lord’s into a huge, match winning innings, but he’ll partner Zak Crawley in future Ashes series under the tutelage of Stokes and McCullum. Crawley, on the other hand, flourished throughout the series and with a “licence” to influence and dictate the game by Stokes and McCullum, top scored with 189 and 480 total runs at an average of over 53.
The number 3 slot is rather a moot point and a default insertion for Marnus Labuschagne as his main competitor Ollie Pope was injured in the opening match and all of his temporary opposite numbers (Ben Stokes, Harry Brook and Moeen Ali) figure in their rightful positions. 328 total runs at an average of just 32 doesn’t justify Labuschagne’s inclusion, but perhaps his battling 111 at Old Trafford does as his team needed that innings on a rainy Saturday to stave off another defeat to a now dominant England. Labuschagne’s “chuckle brother” Steve Smith is omitted in favour of Joe Root, but we’re talking about the 3 top ranked batsmen in world cricket here and Root’s top score of 118 and average of 51 easily eclipses another tepid series from the truly great Steve Smith who, doubtful to ever grace an Ashes in England again, averaged a lowly 37 and a top score of 110.
In the middle order we have two players who were rather “found out” as the saying goes in cricket, their weaknesses exploited to nullify their match impact. One single series run separates Harry Brook from Travis Head, but Brook is given the nod as we compile a batting and bowling line-up heavy in runs! Ben Stokes takes the all-rounder slot at number 6 and had he added to his almost mystical list of achievements by scoring a double century for victory at Lord’s he would have ended the series third and not fourth in the top run scorer stakes and Moeen Ali takes the spinner’s spot at number 7 as Nathan Lyon’s unfortunate injury at Lord’s ruled him out of contention. I watched a lot of Todd Murphy on Australia’s recent tour to India and I like the cut of his jib. With more and more time spent with the team “Goat” Nathan Lyon, I foresee Murphy playing a huge part in future Ashes series.
The wicket-keeping gloves belong to Alex Carey who has been, public enemy number one and pantomime villain apart, deserved of the position and his team’s unsung hero of the whole Summer. Jonny Bairstow comfortably outscored him and took remarkable catches behind the stumps at Old Trafford and The Oval, but I’m plumping for a specialist wicket-keeper and Carey gets the nod. If you think that’s contentious, well there’s no place in my team for the series’ top wicket taker (Mitchell Starc) or his compatriot (Josh Hazlewood) or even the man who arguably changed the entire series with his fast bowling, Mark Wood. But Chris Woakes simply has to be included, even at a lowly number 9 in a long batting line-up ahead of the bowling stars of our Ashes Summer, Pat Cummins and Stuart Broad. The England legend may now be one whole day into retirement but the Aussie skipper most certainly isn’t and I truly hope he returns for one last dance here in England in four years time. Remarkably as I pen these words, there appears to be a whole heap of pressure on the captain of Australia to release the reins back into the hands of Steve Smith, a move perhaps aimed at extending Smith’s stay in the baggy green cap of Australia rather than a mooted possible retirement. Cummins returns home under a cloud of uncertainty despite leading his team to World Test Champions status and still holders of The Ashes.
What larks!
Act Three: Not Out at Stumps
Well it was a fun ride! From England’s easy warm-up defeat of Ireland in their beautifully traditional cricketing whites with Irish green trim through to Australia defeating India to become undisputed World Test Champions, it’s been an Ashes Summer to remember and despite my 3–2 prediction being dashed by the Manchester rain, a whole load of fun it’s been along the way. As I wrote at length in my first cricket book “Ashes to Ashes” (available on Amazon in all formats) I tend to reserve my Test Match cricket watching for the witching hours as nights become mid-mornings via cold Winter’s days with the sunshine of Melbourne or Adelaide, Antigua or Wellington replacing the battleship grey of an England blanketed in the mists and fogs of an English Winter. So it will come as no surprise to admit that I’m rather looking forward to their tour of India in the opening months of 2024.
I’m an old school fan of Test Match cricket as you may have gathered by now. The cut and thrust of a contest heavily dominated by the ball before being usurped by the bat and vice-versa. A team 100–0 at Lunch can soon be 120–5 by mid-afternoon or a team struggling at 150–7 can still see out the remainder of the day before returning in the morning to double their score via their all-rounder batting in tandem with a wagging “tail”. A new ball, as brilliantly demonstrated in the conspiracy theory laden final day at The Oval, can change the course of an innings as often as a bowler can with an inspired spell of bowling or a batsman, doggedly refusing to bend or give his wicket away when he can see the overhead clouds parting and a sunny afternoon’s batting awaits him if only he can thwart and come through the spell of bowling that is mystifying his partners at the other end. Then you have those oh so vitally important opening sessions of play that dictate the two sessions that follow it. The individual battles within a team sport. Declarations. “Dead Balls”. The “Straight One” to someone else’s “Googly” in a language all of its own for the grandest of all games.
I am indeed old school in my LOVE for a game I inherited the passion and insight from my cricket loving parents before growing into a chuntering and miserable fast bowler furious at the wicket-keeper for dropping a simple catch off my bowling! Walking back to my mark, talking to myself, growling at the team-mate at “Mid-Off” as I shined the ball on the backside and thigh of my white trousers before turning at my mark and hurtling in at speed before trying to hit the wicket as hard as I could and on the seam of the ball. That half an inch, often less, being enough for that outside edge through to the Slips, and don’t you dare drop another one off my bowling!
Test Match cricket enchants me and old school or not, I’m also a revolutionary at heart and so fully behind the radical movement instigated by Messrs Stokes and McCullum. Call their brand of cricket whatever you wish, but I’ve often described them previously as two cricket mad kids who just want to push the pun intended boundaries of a game they LOVE as much as we do. They collectively took charge of a sinking ship less than 18 months ago and came within a bucketful of Manchester rain from winning The Ashes and thoroughly defeating the Champions of the World.
Vive la Revolución!
Thanks for reading. Linked below are three articles from over forty written in this Ashes Summer of 2023:
The Ashes ends with the storybook finish it deserved
“Let’s go round again!” jokes coach McCullum.medium.com
Rain, Rain, Go Away. Come Again Some Other Day?
Ashes Day 17: Old Trafford, Manchester.medium.com
Ashes Summer Musings: Vol XI
Seagulls and Church Bells and “Test Match Special”.medium.com