As the light fades on my journey – from Lauren Filer on another plane to Stuart Broad’s Oval exit – joy at an epic series lingersYou know you’re getting on a bit when you gesture towards how things used to be. It doesn’t have to become that special mix of nostalgia and resentment that can distil in later life, just a measure of distance. You’re farther along the line, looking back at youth as something that happened rather than living within it as the only state you’ve known.My first Ashes tour was in 2013, and it was shoestring deluxe, from random couch-surfing hosts to the floors of backpacker friends, stashing free sandwiches at tea breaks and scanning the pub for...
Alex Carey and Todd Murphy revived the chance of another miracle until probability finally caught up with the touristsOnce more with feeling. Of course, it had to come down to this. Another dramatic session, another bright streak of energy fizzing end to end through an afternoon. Another hour of insides squirming and crawling into knots, a prickle in fingertips and a jiggle in knees. Australia and England, the fifth afternoon of the fifth Test, runs ticking down as wickets crashed, another of those finishes, the possible and the impossible blurring in and out of focus.After the half-formed belting at Manchester, a fourth-Test disaster for Australia averted by rain, some supporters piled in. Others were ready if a loss followed at...
For all his ups and downs across the series, the captain has given his teammates fresh bravery and beliefThey say it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert. It took Ben Stokes so many more than that to get here, to the fifth day at the Oval, England captain, 2-1 down in the Ashes, 50 or so overs left to go, Steve Smith in, and his team still needing seven wickets to level the series.All those matches he has played, for schools, clubs, county and country, through the age groups in Christchurch and Wellington and Cockermouth, for Cumbria, for Northern Schools, for Durham’s academy, their firsts and seconds, for England’s Under-18s, Under-19s and Lions, T20, Test, and ODI...
The least Bazballish player ultimately saved this summer of high-stakes jeopardy for the Stokes-McCullum experimentAnd so as England’s cricketers looked back across their trek through the endless Bazball summer, as they peered more closely at their moments of most profound struggle, adversity, and almost chucking it away like a bunch of Jägerbomb-sodden teenagers, they noticed that where there were previously 22 footprints in the sand, in those moments of greatest tension there was only one. Yes, England cricketers, the Spirit Of Cricket answered. That was when Chris Woakes carried you.Well, that was unexpected. Of all the turns and twists, the throbbing narratives available to this epic Ashes series, to England’s moreish, thrilling, occasionally infuriating attempts to reinvent how this austere...
After spending the third day sleepwalking round the Oval, Australia grew more decisive before the rain stopped playIt should have been too much. Five Ashes contests, six Test matches, just over seven weeks, right at the tail end of all, a visiting team that was done. The Australians had spent the third day groping around the field like sleepwalkers headed to the fridge who ended up in the laundry closet, and early the next were set 384 to win. England had enjoyed the emotional burnish of Stuart Broad’s retirement announcement, having been given the entire third evening and fourth morning to polish the idol.Australia played ball, lining up in a guard of honour as he came down the steps to...