Ashes 2011 (2 page)

What is impressive about the first decade of Anglo-Australian competition is its sheer frequency. Tours were huge, complex, expensive and slow-moving undertakings, yet Australian teams toured England in 1878, 1880, 1882, 1884, 1886, 1888 and 1890, and English teams reciprocated in 1876–77, 1878–79, 1881–82, 1882–83, 1884–85, 1886–87, 1887–88 and 1891–92 – all of it without a single complaint of 'burnout'.

The seminal series was then the five Tests of 1894–95 in Australia, where the England team of Drewy Stoddart prevailed in the final match to secure the rubber 3–2, having won the first after following on. It was noteworthy not only for the drama and quality of the cricket, but the way in which the advent of the telegraph cable between the two countries permitted its following in both hemispheres.

Australians did not learn that their countrymen had won at the Oval in 1882 until ten weeks after the event; English cricket followers, which legend has it included Queen Victoria, knew within hours the fortunes of Stoddart's team. Over shorter routes, the telegraph offered ever more real-time thrills. Official telegraph traffic one afternoon in 1894–95 between the Melbourne and Ballarat stock exchanges consisted of single wire: 'Nothing doing. Cricket mad. Stoddart out.'

This took place against a backdrop of an evolving sense of distinct nationhoods, climaxing with Australia's Federation in 1901. In the nineteenth century, five players represented both England and Australia: Billy Murdoch, Billy Midwinter, Jack Ferris, Sammy Woods and Albert Trott. Murdoch, the first Australian captain to win a Test on English soil, was buried in it, having settled in Sussex; so was Fred Spofforth, his matchwinner in that fabled game, after putting down roots in Hampstead. Since Federation, Australia has chosen only a handful of players born elsewhere, and looked askance at England's partiality to cricketers from far away.

Then, and actually only really then, came the Ashes. As any fule kno, the symbol of cricket supremacy between England and Australia derives from that victory wrung for Murdoch by Spofforth at the Oval in 1882, after which a jesting obituary notice 'in affectionate remembrance of English cricket' was published in the
Sporting Times,
with the coda: 'The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.' The jest was double-edged, conflating two news events: the cricket, and cremation, the legality of which was being hotly debated in England.

This jest was then given physical form in Australia the following year, with the creation of an urn by a group of Melbourne society belles. They presented it to England's captain, the Hon. Ivo Bligh, in appreciation of his team's recent success in Australia. One of them, Florence Morphy, ended up marrying him too: they became Lord and Lady Darnley. But the original idea did not take off at once: it was, as it were, a slow burn. Not until Pelham Warner led an England team here in 1903–04 were the Ashes rekindled. For also en route to Australia aboard the
Orontes
was Lady Darnley, who so charmed Warner with her tale of her husband's cricket exploits that he adopted 'the Ashes' as a motif in the title of his tour book
How We Recovered the Ashes.
Even then, the urn itself did not come into the public eye until Lord Darnley's death in 1927, when it was bequeathed to the Marylebone Cricket Club.

So here's a puzzle. Some breathtaking relics survive from that epoch-making Oval Test 128 years ago. In the museum at the Melbourne Cricket Club, you will find the ball with which Spofforth conjured victory, adeptly scooped up by Australia's keeper, Jack Blackham; you will also find a brooch Blackham had made containing a fragment of the ball. In a sense, these are artifacts far worthier of our veneration than a joke urn inspired by a joke obituary revived by a forgotten cricket book: they are relics of the game that made Australia's cricket reputation in England, not an object twice removed from it. The Frank Worrell Trophy contested by Australia and the West Indies obtains its totemic significance from the placement of the ball from the first Tied Test; as the Ashes urn has never been opened, it could contain crack cocaine for all we know.

And yet … and yet … like I said, the Ashes is mystery as well as history. Perhaps we cherish it because among sporting trophies it is unique: not a dirty great shield or shining metallic art work, but a tiny frail terracotta. Perhaps we covet it because it can't be bought or sold, can't be replaced, can't be replicated. It is, in the original sense of the word, a myth – as mythic as the beast once imagined by an elderly woman who wrote to England's captain Norman Yardley sixty years ago after hearing on the radio that Ray Lindwall had two long legs, one short leg and a square leg: 'Tell me, Mr Yardley, what kind of creatures are these Australian cricketers? No wonder England can't win.'

That ineffability has survived enormous change in England, Australia, their relations, and in cricket itself. For in the century or so since it was successfully relaunched by Pelham Warner, the essence of Ashes competition has reversed, going from being regular because it is important, to being important because it is regular. But somehow the Ashes makes its own time, always coming up, even when it is over. And when it is happening you wouldn't be anywhere else.

Cricket administrators nowadays are always prattling on about 'the three versions' of the game, trying to make it sound like evidence of marketing super-genius rather than of a Baldrickian cunning plan. You see, those clever johnnies in marketing know all about this stuff. There are Test matches, right? These appeal to … well, you know, the chap in the egg-and-bacon tie. Then there are your one-dayers. These appeal to … errrr, your average thirty-something binge-drinker. Finally, there are your T20s. These appeal to ten-year-olds – and doesn't cricket just love ten-year-olds at the moment? Complicated, eh? Are you still with me?

Of course, this is mainly cant, even without making a pedantic point about the regional variations in one-day cricket between 40-over, split-innings formats etc. For one thing, four-day, first-class cricket is always left out of these vauntings. Why? Probably as much of it is played as any of the foregoing. But somehow, cricket administrators keep forgetting about it. The impression you get is that they would just as soon it was not around, standing as it does inconveniently in the path of wringing the maximum money from everything. The other variation that has stealthily peeled off is Ashes cricket: the idea of five five-day Test matches, once the summit format of international competition, now kept alive only by Australia and England.

It's probably India who tolled the knell on this form of the game following the 1987 World Cup. Soon after, India hosted West Indies in a five-Test series, which while it was under way was reduced, over the visitors' protestations, to a four-Test series, for the sake of adding two further one-day internationals to a scheduled five. India has not staged a five-Test series since.

The West Indies' long-running Test supremacy fanned its interest in the five-Test series. They played South Africa at home in 1998–99 and away in 2000–01, Australia away in 2000–01 and India at home in 2001–02. But as its stock of talent dwindled so did dedication to the genre (five games were scheduled in the Caribbean early last year, only for the one on the ground better suited to cows than cricketers to be cancelled). Which left South Africa, until it lost to England at home in 2004–05. Since then the only countries to pursue the five-Test series have been its originators.

Why would one want to argue for five Tests as a variation distinguishable from the two- and three-Test series that have since proliferated? Short Test series are too apt to hinge on one-off performances or particular sessions to be completely satisfying; the Tests are often held on top of one another after minimal preparation, so that the possibilities of regrouping after a defeat, or significantly rethinking selection, are minimised; the chances of a player having impact are likely as not to be a factor of conditions rather than of all-round skill.

Yet India, the world's number one Test nation, likes its Tests in couplets – they are hardly worth the name 'series' any more. In order to keep its ICC rank, it squeezed couplets in against South Africa, Bangladesh and Australia, plus a three-Test series against Sri Lanka. All contained good cricket; all hardly seemed to start before finishing. What one would have given for more of the first encounter, after the rivals had taken turns knocking the stuffing from each other.

The five-Test series, by contrast, gives a cricketer's temperament, technique, endurance, versatility and resilience the most thorough work-out possible, in all conditions and match situations, against all skills and variations, as an individual and a member of a collective. To be genuinely consistent over this longest of courses, to maintain a positive frame of mind far from home through a campaign of such duration, is to achieve something genuinely rare. On the evidence of last year's Ashes, in fact, modern cricketers are struggling to meet the challenge.

This summer in Australia, furthermore, you may very well witness this event's last efflorescence: that is, five five-day matches as a season's centrepiece. If Cricket Australia has its way, by the time England is scheduled to return in 2013–14, international fixtures will be in competition with, if not overshadowed by, a supranational T20 competition. And that aforementioned Holy Trinity of formats might be looking more like the Odd Couple.

Soon after arriving in Australia to follow Walter Hammond's English team of 1946–47, E.W. Swanton hailed a taxi. Swanton's plummy accent immediately gave him away. From England, eh? The cab driver was off. Well, Swanton simply had to do this. He must be sure to do that. He must go here, and be certain to visit there. In the course of the journey, Swanton barely slipped a word in, such was the torrent of information and recommendation. 'Yeah, it's a great country,' said the cab driver at last, setting his passenger down. 'Remember, it's yours as well as ours – and if you don't enjoy it here, it'll be your own ruddy fault.'

Swanton's story came to mind this week as England foregathered for its long flight to the other side of the world. 'There is nothing to be afraid of in Australia,' argued coach Andy Flower. 'It should be welcomed as one of the highlights of a cricketing career. Enjoying it means, yes, enjoying the challenges on the field, but also enjoying seeing another country, culture, and meeting new people. It is one of the best places to go. It should be a lot of fun.' It's almost a shame Flower felt obliged to enunciate something so screamingly obvious but it was a helpful point nonetheless. Australian cricketers exhibit an impressive unanimity in pronouncing England the best tour of all. English cricketers seldom display a reciprocal enthusiasm about Australia.

In one respect, this is easily explained. Australian cricketers have savoured a great deal of success in England, and enjoyment comes more naturally in such circumstances. English teams have achieved little in Australia for a generation, and there have been some spectacular misadventures: Phil Tufnell's panic attack in Perth sixteen years ago, Marcus Trescothick barely getting off the plane before he was back on it four years ago, and, perhaps ugliest of all, John Crawley being set upon by an unknown assailant as he returned to his team's hotel in Cairns in November 1998.

Yet other factors seem to play a part here. Australians are big travellers – they have to be, if they're to see any of the world. The English are accustomed to shorter distances, cosier ambiences. The gap year might be to the 21st-century student what the Grand Tour was to the 19th-century man of letters, but aspiring professional cricketers, in their hurry to get on, deprive themselves of such experiences. To indulge in some national stereotyping, too, Australians have a more extrovert culture, while the English are identified with reserve and understatement – well, in the books of George Mikes anyway.

There's reason to expect better of this England team. Seven players have toured before. Four have played first-grade cricket here, and the coach and his deputy have played Sheffield Shield cricket – the latter, David Saker, is, of course, Australian. Flower's seriousness about breaking past bad habits, of English players shuttering themselves in their hotels and socialising only among themselves, can be judged from his decision to delay the arrival of the team's wives and girlfriends until after the Second Test. And although such commandments always seem rather pettifogging where grown men and women are concerned, some evidence exists of their wisdom. When the Australians of 2005 placed no restriction on the comings and goings of partners, and even allowed players to set up separate lodgings outside the team hotel, the result was deep discord.

The other reason to expect better of England this summer is that the behaviours of previous teams are not bred in the bone. On England's last four Ashes tours, their fans have had a wow of a time. Say what you like of the Barmy Army, and many do, they know how to enjoy themselves, and their dedication has been unflagging: the way they roared England to victory in the 1998 Boxing Day Test remains for me a special sporting memory. They have taken their setbacks, like Cricket Australia's killjoy diktats, in good part too. And they have experienced the sincerest form of flattery in their emulation by Australia's Fanatics.

Sadly for the Barmy Army, the days of 'We're fat/We're round/Three dollars to the pound' seem a thing of the past, and word is that their numbers will be down. But England's cricketers should take their example to heart: the Barmy Army has always
paid
for the privilege they are about to be
paid for.
It is also hard to imagine a member of the Barmy Army remaining as mute as E.W. Swanton in the presence of a cab driver extolling Australian virtues.

Just as no battle plan survives contact with an enemy, few cricket predictions survive even a day of actual play. But the augurs of the forthcoming Ashes series are worth recording: England enter the series in the decidedly unfamiliar position of overdogs, forecast to ratify the possession of the urn they regained fourteen months ago.