There are the usual signs that it is getting closer. The Ashes white noise starts to fade. The Ashes hum starts to die back, wider current of Ashes anxiety to fall away. And suddenly Test cricket begins to pare itself back to the basic, atomic level business of Australian bowlers against English batsmen, Baggy Green in the field against starchy whites at the wicket. Look back and cricket’s oldest two‑hander has so often pegged itself out this way. Hence, perhaps, the strikingly emotive response to Joe Root’s announcement that he will move up one space to bat No 3 for England in Thursday’s first Test at Edgbaston.
It is the smallest of changes, the kind of tweak that might pass unremarked in any other less‑storied sport. But this is not any other sport and Root to three is a shift of England’s own supporting architecture, a pre-series riposte to Australia’s greatest strength, and a move that may well define how the start of this series plays out.
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