History doesn’t care about caveats. The record will show that England won an Ashes Test.
It’s taken 15 years, but they have finally triumphed down under. “We had a little hug,” Ben Stokes said of him and Joe Root, two England greats who were, until this point, remarkably, winless in Australia. “And said ‘finally, finally, we’ve won one’.”
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It was a contest littered with statistics. The fewest number of overs Australia had faced in a Test match ever, and the first time in the era of five-day Tests that a series had seen multiple two-day matches.
“When you go out there and face those conditions,” Stokes summarised, “you’ve just got to crack on and deal with it.”
Thirty-six wickets across two days. A crapshoot where England Bazzed and Australia bawled, it was magnificent – but was it war?
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“Being brutally honest, that’s not what you want for a Boxing Day Test,” Stokes said. “I’m pretty sure if that was somewhere else in the world, there’d be hell on.”
Stokes was relieved to finally get an Ashes win down under (Getty)
An important distinction needs to be made. This was not Test cricket at its best, far from it. But for the sunburnt fans in the stands, and the freezing cold ones at home, that’s not the point.
A lottery adds drama and, on a day where Australia were at one stage effectively 124-3 and threatening to take the game away from England, for the tides to be turned and the visitors to win later that very same day was magic.
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“Bazball is back baby,” read one WhatsApp message from a friend in the stands. “F**k me we’ve won a game,” read another. “It’s genuine torture,” wrote a third. “But if we win it’s all good.”
An 18-match winless streak, over.
History weighs heavy in Australia. That much has been made clear by an England team, used to the bright lights of Birmingham but not of Brisbane, who came to Australia and buckled. Now, however, that same team leaves Melbourne as the first English victors for 15 years, and the next England team to tour here will arrive absent of the baggage that they haven’t won at the MCG in almost two decades. That is no small thing.
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“That goes back to zero now,” Stokes said with a smile.
The Barmy Army turned out in force in Melbourne… (Reuters)
…and the England fans were happy to celebrate a long-overdue victory in Australia (Reuters)
On a wicket where the highest score of the match to that point had been 152, England’s chase of 175 was far from a sure thing. “You could almost say it felt like 340,” according to Stokes.
But with the danger put in front of them, for the first time this series, England were able to run towards it as they’ve promised to do for so long.
Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley swung from the off, the final destination of 175 providing the clarity they so often speak of.
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They went hard at width, they scooped and reverse scooped, they charged down the track to challenge length, and clipped off the pads to capitalise on any miss in line. They even batted Brydon Carse at No 3. An acknowledgement that this was no ordinary day, but an application of method to the madness nonetheless.
When the opening partnership reached eight, it was their third highest of the tour. But better late than never, the opening pair that give so much of this England team their gumption, delivered.
A three-ball stretch to Duckett summarised it best. A wild charge and hack saw a four fly over the slip cordon, which was cheered. A scoop for six was celebrated, before a forward defence was roared.
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When Duckett eventually went, for a brisk 34, he and Crawley had added 51 and knocked off close to a third of Australia’s total. Australia captain Steve Smith credited their approach for breaking the back of the game. Their aggression softened the seam through sheer brutality, resulting in the ball moving less off the pitch and thereby making batting easier.
Steve Smith and Stokes both agreed the green pitch was a bad thing for the game (Robbie Stephenson/PA Wire)
The counter to all this is the sheer frustration of why only now? No doubt, Australia will point to a two-day victory where England won a good toss and ultimately had the tools for the job as no cause for real celebration. And so too will a number of frustrated England fans who waited years for the series of a lifetime, only for a humbling anti-climax to be delivered.
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Those points, of course, are valid and deserve further examination. If what England needed to make this a competitive series was a few practice games beforehand, the decision to make them Tests one and two could come under further scrutiny. The more England win, counterintuitively, the more the levels of frustration increase, rather than lessen. Those in charge will say that’s unfair, but when you’re 3-0 down, the realities in front of you are lose-lose, whether you like it or not.
Furthermore, the rise of two-day Tests, now sitting at eight in the last eight years, compared to eight in the previous century, is unquestionably a bad thing. Wobble-seam bowling, changing batting techniques and more extreme pitches are all contributing factors to that. They should be a novelty, not a fixture.
But let’s do that tomorrow. For one day, amid a sea of misery, it’s time for England fans to enjoy a shred of success.
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