A SCRAP BETWEEN ASHES ALSO-RANS
Tim Wigmore questions the validity of the hyper-coverage given to two teams who are well off the world No.1 spot
And so it begins, again: the hype and phoney war that is the prelude to every Ashes series, home and away. In a sense it is all justified: the Ashes is the last series that is always played over five Test matches and, for lovers of the longest format, a unique event to savour.
All of this is well and good, but it cannot obscure what the Ashes is, when you strip back the hype. It is a mid-table clash between two eminently flawed teams. Even in a distinctly underwhelming era in the quality of Test cricket throughout the world, neither side possess any consistency.
Just take a glance at the ICC’s Test rankings.
First there is England, lying in third place. That sounds respectable enough, but the rating calculated by the ICC’s bots perhaps provides a better indication of England’s true quality: they have 105 points, a world away from the 125 of India at the top. Indeed, England are closer to Pakistan, in seventh place, than India at No.1, which is a fair indication of their true quality today.
Then glance a little further down the table.You will see Australia, they of the much-vaunted pace attack, all the way down in fifth place – fractionally below New Zealand, their Trans-Tasman cousins, who have one-sixth of Australia’s population and cricketing budget. Suddenly, it becomes impossible to sustain the hype.
Yet this malaise is nothing new. Not since 2005 has the Ashes genuinely been a contest between the best two teams in the world; not since the Fifties has it been consistently so.
Ever since 2005, at least one team has had palpable flaws; more often, both have. The quality of cricket, even from the side who have won the series, has often evoked Andrew Strauss’ memorable encapsulation of England’s victory in 2009: “When we were bad we were very bad. And when we were good we managed to be just good enough.”
The obvious question this all provokes is why? For all the differences between Australian and English cricket culture, there are commonalities that can explain why the cricket itself has been so consistently underwhelming. Not since Trent Bridge 2013, the first Test of the 2013/14 mega-Ashes, has there been anything like a classic Test. In the subsequent 14, one side has collapsed meekly.
In Test cricket the world over, recent years have witnessed the demise of the draw. And nowhere has that been more apparent than in the Ashes, where the last 10 Tests have all had a positive result, and most in well under five full days.
It points to how teams increasingly lack the technique or mental resilience to come from behind in matches, to fight steadfastly when victory is an impossibility. Instead, the 2015 series embodied far too much of the recent Ashes – wildly oscillating fortunes of the two teams, but from match to match, and not session to session or day to day. The upshot was a series of onesided Tests; the flawed opening salvo at Cardiff, when England bested Australia by 169 runs, proved to be the closest game of the summer – or, indeed, any of the last two series.
The apparent disintegration of techniques may be a little overblown – the actual average length of Test innings around the world has changed little in recent decades. But in both Australia and England, first-class domestic cricket has been pushed to the margins in recent years. The prioritisation of domestic T20, which has undeniably helped to engage new audiences, has pushed first-class cricket to the margins of the summer, with the result that aspiring Test batsmen have far less experience building innings in high summer – in the fine batting conditions that are generally the norm in Test cricket. The seeming inability of both Australia and England to fight from behind in Test matches may be one unwelcome result.
And what of the wider mediocrity of Australia and England on the Test scene? Spin – playing it and bowling it – has been both teams’ biggest impediment in recent years. Both have frequently been risible on the Sub-continent, capable only of a series of comedic errors.
The roots of this malaise run deep but, once again, the marginalisation of first-class domestic cricket is an undeniable factor.
Less multi-day domestic cricket in high summer, especially in England, inevitably marginalises spin bowling. It leaves batsmen less well-equipped when confronted by it in Asia, and bowlers less well-versed in being expected to dominate matches from the opening over, and not merely perform a containing role until the last throes of the match.
But back to this winter’s looming main event. We can expect controversy, intrigue, drama and, yes, some pulsating cricket, too. Just don’t mistake the Ashes for a genuine heavyweight tussle in Test cricket.