While ever more hostage to Twenty20’s global carve-up, cricket will take a breath from next week to indulge its most time-honoured rivalry as Australia and England battle in the Ashes.
For more than 140 years the bilateral series has kept the heart of test cricket beating even if the five-day format appears on life support in certain nations.
Attention spans have shortened in the era of smartphones and social media, making long-form cricket with its lunch and tea-breaks seem something of an anachronism.
But generations of fans remain enthralled by the Ashes, a sprawling, five-test grudge match steeped in tradition, myth and cultural identity.
Huge crowds will pack out Perth Stadium when the series launches on November 21 and thousands of British fans will cross Australia’s vast expanse through to the New Year to take in every game.
England great Ian Botham, whose Ashes feats are cricket legend, will be among them in his role as a broadcaster, one of many former players who grow misty eyed with nostalgia.
“Historically, everyone in the cricketing world watches the Ashes,” Botham said near the 100,000-seat Melbourne Cricket Ground, venue of the fourth test.
“It’s tradition, it’s the competition. You know that it’s all flat out.
“The Ashes is a very healthy place to be if you want to play cricket because you will fill houses.”
DEATH OF ENGLISH CRICKET
Most sports boast a fierce rivalry or two, and some date back over 100 years.
But of contests between two nations, none match the Ashes’ continuity and consistency.
Arguably, none can match its origin story, either, nor the mysterious appeal of the little terracotta trophy that remains cloistered at Lord’s, the game’s spiritual home in London, regardless of who wins the series.
The series’ name has its origins in a mock obituary in a British newspaper that mourned the death of English cricket following a loss to a touring team from Australia in 1882.
“The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia,” it lamented.
England captain Ivo Bligh fulfilled a pledge to “recover those ashes” when he led the team to a 2-1 series win in the Australian colonies a few months later.
The terracotta urn’s provenance has competing accounts, but most agree it was a jokey prize presented to Bligh by Australian society ladies following the series win.
COLONIAL UPSTARTS
While the urn was offered light-heartedly, the Ashes have been contested furiously every two or so years, with Australia winning 34 series, England 32 and seven drawn.
The play is often fierce and riven with controversy, rooted in Victorian-era class wars waged between an imperialist power and its colonial upstarts.
The 19th century English cricketers with the means to take the long boat to the Australian colonies were invariably “gentlemen”.
The hosts could be anything but.
Australians loved their cricket then as they do now, with gambling adding fuel to an aggressive, win-at-all-costs mindset forged in domestic clashes between rival colonies.
Touring England teams would find a hostile media and rowdy crowds laden with chancers, gamblers and the children of transported convicts keen to see them fail.
And so it continues.
Brutal headlines have greeted the current England team in Perth, with Ben Stokes branded “Cocky captain complainer” and star batter Joe Root a “pretender” for not having hit a century in three series in Australia.
England lost the urn in 2017/18 and have not won a test in Australia for nearly 15 years but dominance by one side or the other has never hurt ticket sales.
With the last series in Australia hampered by COVID rules, the pent-up demand is delighting the hosting board.
“It’ll be one of our most strongly-attended test series of all time,” Cricket Australia executive Joel Morrison told Reuters.
“It just shows the Ashes resonate so strongly … It’s still one of the pinnacle contests in world sport.”
As much as the sport captivates purists, the theatre arouses casual fans.
Media scrutiny is relentless and careers are made and ruined by how players perform under stifling pressure.
Heroes are anointed and villains condemned for unsporting acts that violate the “spirit of cricket”, a fuzzy idea of fair play that sits, confusingly, above the rules.
Australia wicketkeeper Alex Carey was the villain of the last series in England when he threw down the stumps of Jonny Bairstow as the batter wandered out of his crease at the end of an over.
The dismissal was legal but considered poor form by many, including then-British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The Australians were heckled by the cream of the British establishment as they returned to their dressing room through the “Long Room” at Lord’s, and Carey was abused by crowds for the rest of the series.
Test cricket may be struggling in several cricketing nations but no one is prepared to let the Ashes expire, as former Australia captain Greg Chappell told Reuters.
“I can’t imagine it disappearing, and I think that the authorities are conscious of maintaining its relevance,” said the 77-year-old.
(Reuters)