Ashes 2023: England is in the entertainment business, Australia is in the winning business

England is a meme of a cricket team. They are easily digestible, they are unapologetic and they are losing. They might be in the entertainment business but they aren’t in the winning business.

A little over a year ago, as England prepared for the third Test of Bazball’s maiden voyage against New Zealand, Ben Stokes implored that his team was “in the entertainment business, not the sporting business.”

If this truly is the raison d’etre of the English side, then Stokes and his men are succeeding.

The first Ashes rubber at Edgbaston yielded the highest ever broadcast numbers on Sky Sports for a Test match, with viewers peaking at 2.12 million on day five.

The home side has routinely made the play during the Ashes so far. England has won both tosses, forced Australia into unorthodox fields, declared on the first day of the series.

It has picked a spinner out of retirement and then had that player fined for placing a non-approved substance on his hand. It then drafted in a teenager once filmed with Shane Warne as his cover, and then didn’t pick him anyway, preferring instead to make the world’s No. 1 Test batter its No. 1 Test spinner.

The hosts have played reverse scoops, come dancing down the wicket and given a send-off. Their celebrappealing veteran bowler has coaxed them into unwise reviews, and then not reviewed one that really was out.

They’ve dropped catches and hooked themselves silly when it was all Australia wanted them to do.

Joe Root and Ben Stokes react in frustration during day three. Picture: Getty Images

They’ve had their injured vice-captain come back on the field and injure himself again.

They took five full days off after a gut-wrenching first Test loss, spending a fair bit of that time talking about it felt like they’d won anyway.

They worked themselves back into the contest, had Australia right where they wanted them, down their mainstay champion spinner … and then handed the game back to the Aussies.

They are a meme of a cricket team. They are easily digestible. They are also losing.

Yet they are unapologetic.

“We‘ve always said that we want to play an aggressive brand. It’s not always going to come off and that’s not a cop out. It’s just reality,” England spin bowling coach Jeetan Patel said.

But reality is biting against an Australian side that gnaws away at you. It is death by a thousand cut shots.

At lunch on Friday at Lord’s, Alex Carey and Cameron Green headed into the nets for some throw-downs with the Australian coaches. Carey had just kept for a day, Green had bowled nine overs and taken another brilliant catch.

These Aussies don’t rest on their laurels. They do the hard things, the things that you don’t see. They graft. They play the long game. They did it in Pakistan, in the World Test Championship final, and are doing it here.

Travis Head celebrates after the dismissal of Ollie Robinson. Picture: Getty Images

“England are gonna play the way they’re gonna play,” said Aussie paceman Mitchell Starc.

“It’s for us to counter that and come up with plans. They’re obviously going to try and take the game on which they’ve said and then shown throughout the first three innings of this series with the bat for them. For us to continue to continue to adapt to the way they’re playing and find ways to continue to make chances with the ball.

“They’re playing aggressive cricket. Their approach is their approach, you would have to ask them how they want to go about it. We saw an opportunity there to create some chances (with short-pitched bowling), which obviously we did. But it doesn’t always go that way. Thankfully more went to hand than to ground which was a good for that.”

Australia is best embodied so far this series by Usman Khawaja, comfortable in the belief that over the long run, their method will succeed.

By stumps on day three he had already faced 711 balls for the series. That’s more than three times as many as any England player.

England is in the entertainment business all right. And Australia is in the winning business.

Originally published as Ashes 2023: England is in the entertainment business, Australia is in the winning business