Drained England face up to series defeat
Paine sets his sights on 3-1 win for Australia Root will struggle to lift side after long summer
It would have been nice, so deliciously nice, if this cricket season had ended with the greatest climax that English cricket had ever enjoyed.
There have been great finales to individual careers at the end of an Oval Test, like the farewell of Don Bradman in 1948 and Alastair Cook
last summer. There have been great outpourings of joy and relief, as when England regained the Ashes in 1926 and 1953 – for the first time since the World Wars – and in 2005, when England regained the Ashes after a similar lapse of 16 years.
But on this occasion the two elements could have been combined, and yet more besides. James Anderson could have walked off the field for the final time and held aloft the ball that had taken his 600th Test wicket, while Joe Root lifted the urn which he lost in Australia in December 2017. All these triumphs, and England’s first World Cup, would have made it the cricket season of all cricket seasons.
Instead, it seems highly unlikely that the result of this series will be anything other than 3-1 to Australia if the eve-of-match press conferken, ences by the two captains were anything to go by. As the Old Trafford Test did not finish until Sunday evening, both at the outset appeared understandably tired, Root due to sleepless nights of selfcriticism, Tim Paine as the result of celebrating with so many cans of beer that he could have been renamed Tin Paine. He likes to seem an ordinary bloke, but is very clever at being one of the boys, while not one of them.
No wonder both captains named an all-rounder to replace a batsman to spread the load. Root started out softly spoand by the end he could hardly put one word in front of another. Paine, however, switched into gear swiftly, his eyes focused, and was soon restating Australia’s purpose: that this Test match is just as important as the four previous ones, and retaining the Ashes is one half of their objective. Winning the series the other half.
Root, of course, is a World Cup winner; Paine did not even play in the competition. All the Australians have been concentrating on the red ball this summer except David Warner, Steve Smith and Pat Cummins, if Mitchell Starc is replaced here by Peter Siddle. All the England players
were engaged in the World Cup except the openers Rory Burns and Joe Denly, Stuart Broad, Sam Curran and Jack Leach.
With the two teams rapidly approaching the end of their tethers, after the emotional heights and depths since Aug 1, or since May 30 in the majority of England’s cases, it boils down to the fundamental difference between English and Australian cricketers since their first encounter in 1877: the English cricketer plays cricket to earn a living, the Australian to beat England.
England’s players have never been as ruthless: they have never won four Tests in an Ashes series in England, whereas Australia have, four times.
They have never won 5-0 in Australia, as Australia have three times. Paine’s players are going to rub England’s noses in it barring another batting miracle by Ben Stokes; and nothing is so draining as losing.
World Test championship points are at stake, as never before. But why on earth you gain 24 points for defeating Australia – with Smith and three top-class fast bowlers, now backed by Mitchell Marsh – but 60 points for beating Bangladesh (as Afghanistan did earlier this week) in one match of a two-test series is beyond rational explanation. Root, as decent and diplomatic as ever, even in his fatigue, merely went so far as to say that “kinks” in the system needed sorting out.
At Old Trafford, Sky did a funny sketch of their commentator David Lloyd wandering around the ground to find someone who knew how to dismiss Smith. “Any idea how to get Steve Smith out?” And, as from the oysters in Lewis Carroll’s The Walrus and the Carpenter,
“answer came there none.”
Therein lies the perhaps unique quality that Smith possesses: the ability to throw people off the scent. He plays and misses outside off stump like a normal human being, but then leads everyone away from the scene of the crime by following through with his bat in an extravagant arc and marching off to square leg.
England’s players become so absorbed in Smith’s pantomime they promptly set a eight-one offside field, or a one-eight leg-side field, and try everything except banging away on fourth stump with a bit of outswing on a fullish length.
Brilliant, really. It has worked every time.