Ashes diary: England’s all-action approach keeps fans in their seats
The price of Bazball
As well as being the start of the match and indeed the series, Friday was opening day for Edgbaston’s new hospitality area, the Skyline Terrace. This zone on the top of the South Stand is billed as “a fun, interactive and modern cricketing hospitality experience … where there are not only exceptional pitch views, but where food is plentiful and space is fun and lively”, and boasts “a softer palette of materials and well-designed lighting along with informal buffet spaces within relaxed and varied seating zones”. Ticket-holders are offered a premium street-food buffet, a complimentary bar and a live DJ, but for all its facilities on Monday it was completely empty – and Bazball was to blame.
This kind of experience doesn’t come cheap, and Skyline Terrace tickets for this Test cost £899 on the opening day, decreasing daily from there to an advertised £491 for day four on Monday. But this England side seems to play cricket on fast-forward and the result is that big-money tickets for the last couple of days, when there might be little or no play, have become very hard to shift. Edgbaston officials eventually decided not to risk displeasing their big-spending customers by charging high prices for potentially little action, while the facilities are considered too luxurious to open it up for general admission. Odd as it seems to have a completely empty section in a sold-out ground, that was the upshot.
“We launched our new rooftop Skyline terrace shortly before the Ashes series to offer hospitality clients a fantastic new matchday experience,” a spokesperson said. “We opened the terrace on days one to three of the Ashes. We sold around 1,000 covers in total and received great feedback from customers who entertained friends, family and business clients. We took the decision not to open on days four and five.”
Meanwhile anyone who considers those prices unacceptable for the simple pleasures of a day’s cricket should sit themselves down, pour themselves a stiff drink and look up the brand new offering at Lord’s for the second Test next week, the Ashes Lounge.
You sixy thing
Joe Root has already hit 13 sixes in Tests this year, having played only four games. That is one more six than he hit in the entirety of 2012 – the year of his debut – 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 combined, when he played 83. Of Root’s 131 Test appearances there have only been four in which he has hit at least one six in both innings of the game (3% of all his games). But there is something about these opponents and this venue that gets his synapses twitching: of Root’s three Test appearances against Australia at Edgbaston he has now hit at least one six in both innings of the game twice.
Sod steward
Cricket fans are an appreciative bunch, and it is not just outstanding efforts in the classic parts of the game – bowling, batting, catching, running quite quickly, that kind of thing – that earn their approval. Mitchell Starc, not in Australia’s team for this game but on the field temporarily as a substitute fielder, got a generous round of applause on Monday for doing nothing more than a spot of gardening. In the previous over Marnus Labuschagne, running back from mid-off, had slid to field a ball heading towards the boundary and dug up a significant divot in the rain-softened turf with his left knee. It was the last ball of the over and he promptly fled the scene of the crime with no attempt to make good the damage but Starc, arriving at what was then fine leg, picked up the stray sod, carefully returned it to its place and basked in the locals’ appreciation.
Reviewing the action
At one point in England’s second innings on day four it felt easy to lose count of the number of reviews and overturned decisions. So, for clarity, the Diary can confirm there were six reviews, two by Australia, both of which were incorrect and four by England. Only two resulted in an overturned decision, both in England’s favour, saving Jonny Bairstow and Stuart Broad. The other reprieve for England came from a referral when Ben Stokes was adjudged out caught off Nathan Lyon, but replays checking the catch showed Stokes had hit it into the ground first.