Split series could save Ashes
OPINION: As another Ashes whitewash looms, it is time for a revamp. A home and away split series could help to stop the onesided contests that deprive touring fans of the spectacle they came a long way to see
Any event that asks fans to fly for 24 hours or stay up until 2am at home to see the first ball bowled needs more than tradition to keep its audience happy. In their current imbalanced state, the Ashes are asking too much of their audience. In this age of wandering interest in sport, predictability is not a great look.
Across Tests in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, I found myself making mental notes of how the Ashes might evolve to counter-act the modern pattern of Australia winning in Australia, and England winning in England.
At the Ashes out here, you see an older, settled section of society who are content with the way things are. Their memories stretch back decades, their tastes are set. There is more to the Ashes heritage than mere results. If the kids want a smartphone-shaped, digitalised, neon night out, they can go to Big Bash cricket, which steams on to Australia’s menu just as Australia and England prepare for dead-rubber tests in Melbourne and Sydney.
The first thing to say about the Ashes is that they are intoxicating. They inflict almost sadistic pressure on the players (and from that, frankly, flows much of the drama). If in doubt, consider Joe Root, Mark Stoneman and especially Jimmy Anderson having their lids smashed by Aussie bouncers, Steve Smith’s annexation of the crease, or the unplayability of Josh Hazlewood during his best spells.
Each Ashes test is a supreme collective effort but also a raucous trial of 22 individuals, with no provision for mercy, and the looming threat that each might lose his credibility and his test career. All this, against a whole library of memories and history, while the legends of past confrontations pack into commentary boxes or circulate as grandees. In Australia, especially, Ashes cricket expresses the country’s resistance to colonial domination but also the pride of state, city and community.
Secretly, the English envy this Australian unity, the clarity of their mission to smash the Poms. Our phones boil with news of the latest Brexit battles or freeze over with weather reports from home. England’s fans are having a nice holiday, of course, but escaping an English winter was not their reason for coming. They came to see a contest, just as people back home have turned themselves into sleep-deprived zombies to observe a competitive series.
What they are watching instead is each country capitalise on the benefits of playing at home. If England lose this series 5-0, it will be a third whitewash in four visits, with only the ‘‘miracle’’ of 2010-11, when England won 3-1, to break the sequence. As South Africa showed here last season, Australia can be beaten at home by visitors with good, quick bowling attacks. But England, travellers from a wet and cloudy land, are without that weapon, just as modern Australian sides have lacked the capacity to master English conditions. Remarkably, Australia have not won in England since 2001.
Are we happy then for the Ashes to be a futile lunge by the tourists, with a predictable outcome, or does the event itself need to change? Certainly England will not be opening quick bowling factories all over the shires any time soon. Nor will Australia be surrendering their most natural asset for the sake of a tour to England every three or four years.
As the game hurtles in new directions, the Ashes would need a spectacularly elevated view of itself to stay exactly as it is. This much was clear from the swathes of empty seats from the Sunday onwards in Brisbane. Even the Waca was half-empty on the day Australia had their chance to reclaim the urn - though the Adelaide day-night test was packed, as Melbourne and presumably Sydney will be. The most radical idea would be to make the Ashes a home and away affair, with six Tests in all every two years, with alternating home advantage for the first three.
So, after a trio of matches at English venues (to be rotated, to stop counties rebelling), the circus would decamp for three in Australia. Or vice versa when it was Australia’s turn to start at home. This would change the dynamic, turning the Ashes into a two-chapter showdown, though seasonal barriers would be hard to overcome. The Ashes would cease to be a high-summer festival.
At the very least, more daynight tests in Australia (at least three per series) would open the door wider to English teams, as well as enlivening the TV spectacle. Adelaide, on this tour, was a success. It would also make sense to let the visiting team bring their own ball to lessen the home side’s bowling edge: a Duke ball for a series in Australia, a Kookaburra in England. Similarly the order of venues could be determined by a draw. That way, the hosts could be stopped from picking grounds in the sequence that most suits their team.
As the Australian cricket writer Gideon Haigh wrote on Monday after the urn had changed hands: ‘‘After one series whitewash in the first 130 years of Anglo-Australia competition, there have been two in the last 11 years, and one would not bet against us watching the third.’’ And: ‘‘Only once in the last 15 years, moreover, has an away team won, as tours have grown more crowded, less forgiving.’’
Time to at least start the conversation.