rom the summer that was, to a winter still a world away and a rare lull — with all respect to the Hundred — in cricket’s mad schedule that affords us all time to soak in what has just gone.
It has been the most extraordinary seven weeks, a men’s Ashes series that could not possibly live up to billing, yet somehow did, quite literally from the first ball to the last, from Zak Crawley’s jaw-dropping wallop for four, to Stuart Broad’s fairytale goodbye.
The lack of an outright winner and, in particular, Manchester’s decider-denying downpour might grate but both Ben Stokes and Pat Cummins yesterday declared a 2-2 final score a fair reflection of five tit-for-tat Tests and if the central participants can get on board with that theory then the rest of us might as well.
When there are this many sliding doors moments on each side, perhaps you have to hold your hands up and simply acknowledge two outstanding teams extremely well-matched. All four settled Tests were won by fine margins, fewer either than 50 runs or three wickets. The only game in which one team comprehensively outplayed the other finished in a draw.
Due to the calibre of opposition, the entertainment delivered and the manner of the fightback, though this was a triumph for Bazball, which has come through its stiffest examination with close to flying colours, there being simply no way this group of players could have gone toe to toe with the world’s best team, never mind come from 2-0 down and finished the summer firmly on top of them, under the previous regime.
The Urn has not quite been wrestled back but this is an England team still so clearly on the up, a better one, in fact, than started the summer.
An approach has been fine-tuned, Bazball in evolution, and after the unfortunate injury to Ollie Pope, a better balance in personnel found. Individuals have flourished, Harry Brook getting better with each Test, Joe Root more prolific than in any Ashes for which he was captain, Chris Woakes and Mark Wood turning the series from the Third Test.
None, though, have come on in these two months quite like Crawley, a player who had become something of a personal project for Brendon McCullum, picked for his best days and delivering several all at once.
“480 runs at a strike rate of 90 against the best bowling attack in the world, against the Dukes ball in an Ashes series,” said McCullum. “People don’t do that, you know?” Except now, apparently, they do.
With the Urn still in Australia’s hands, though, this era’s first shot at a marquee triumph has gone, the next coming in six months in India, where no team has won a series in more than a decade and where this England may, by necessity, have to look quite different.
England finished this summer with their No3 and frontline spinner wrapped up in one Moeen Ali and his return to retirement leaves two voids to be filled. Jack Leach and Ollie Pope should both be fit again, but on turning tracks, a second spinner, or spinning all-rounder, will be needed as well and the numbers simply don’t go without sacrifice. Broad is also off into the sunset and Woakes, the player of these Ashes, has said he would happily never play another Test away from home having toiled for so long overseas, while the balance of England’s attack in Pakistan last winter only worked because Stokes could bowl.
Lots to ponder but, for once, lots of time to, headaches left for another day as we savour this one.
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