After awful Ashes defeat, will England ever be good at Test cricket again?-by
Jonathan Liew
Jimmy Anderson sees a Cameron Green delivery clatter his stumps as England’s second innings ends on 68 to complete their innings defeat. Photograph: Darrian Traynor/Cricket Australia/Getty Images
It’s vaguely amusing to recall now that for much of the year, the very existence of this Ashes series was the subject of fraught, board-level speculation. Tense negotiations were conducted between Cricket Australia and their counterparts in England. State governments, federal government, public health experts and players all had to bestow their approval. Would the 2021-22 Ashes happen at all?
Well, as it turned out, not really. Around 850 overs separated the dismissal of Rory Burns on the first morning in Brisbane and the dismissal of Jimmy Anderson on the third morning in Melbourne: the series decided in a little over nine days of cricket. And so as the victorious Australians celebrated wildly on the MCG outfield, it was possible to wonder whether they were overdoing things a touch. Was there any real satisfaction to be taken in despatching an opponent this easily? Did it not all feel a little hollow? A little comfortable? A little embarrassing?
But then perhaps we are guilty here of reducing the contest as a whole to England’s desiccated level. After all, to play Test cricket for Australia in 2021 still essentially means something. Winning Test matches for Australia still means something. The Ashes still means something, and not just as a rivalry or as a commercial concern but as a basic test of sporting ultimacy, a seeker of truth, a gauge of character.
Nobody exemplified this better than Scott Boland, the country’s newest cricketing hero after taking six for seven on debut. Boland is a fine bowler and a lovely story to boot, but he will be the first to admit that none of this really made sense. Never again will he enjoy the serendipity of being able to face this opposition, on this ground, at this point in their sporting trajectory. All he really had to do was turn up on time, put his socks on and not get no-balled for throwing. And yet in running in hard and doing his best, Boland accorded this contest a measure of respect that England had long since mislaid.
Joe Root, one of only two England batters to reach double figures in their second innings, endured a painful day all-round and may now lose the captaincy. Photograph: Joel Carrett/EPA
Naturally, there is a certain sense of climax here. Joe Root and Chris Silverwood will probably pay for this latest debacle with their jobs. Silverwood is clearly a capable coach, but something about this team and this moment appears to have detached him from reality, like a waiter in a restaurant talking you through the specials while the kitchen slowly catches fire behind him. Root is approaching five years as captain and either there’s nothing more he can do, or he’s actually making things worse. Either way, best to move on and concentrate on the one skill in which he genuinely has a claim to greatness.
And yet, what is the wider aim here? Where is the institutional will to turn this team around? Will it really come from the England and Wales Cricket Board, which derives the vast majority of its revenue from selling home Tests and short-form cricket to punters and broadcasters? Producing Test teams that win big overseas series may be very nice, but it doesn’t keep the tills ringing. Staging a high-quality County Championship at the height of summer may produce better cricketers, but it won’t keep the bonuses flowing.
Besides, if you think about it, England really has no divine right to be good at this. It is by no means inevitable that England will be good at Test cricket again. This isn’t Pakistan or India. The game does not live and breathe in our streets or our public spaces or our school system. History and tradition aside, cricket does not flow through the national bloodstream any more than judo or surfing or esports.
Perhaps a close parallel is with the West Indies around the turn of the century: powered by one of its greatest batsmen (for Brian Lara, read Joe Root) and two of its greatest bowlers (for Ambrose and Walsh, read Anderson and Broad), and yet infected with a basic, complacent decadence. Over time they would recover their dignity. They would be competitive. They would occasionally even win. But their true calling –driven largely by commerce and circumstance – would be to produce brilliant short-form cricketers for the global marketplace. As for Test cricket, the sun had already set and risen somewhere else.
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