England providing the style and substance, Aussies the comedy capers

A good Ashes series starts before it starts, like feature movies used to, with half an hour of teasers and cartoons. Right now, England are providing the teasers, Australia the cartoons.

Set 371 to win in the fourth innings to beat India at Headingley, England achieved the 10th highest chase in men’s Test cricket history with 14 overs and five wickets unneeded. It was the highest successful chase in Leeds since Don Bradman’s Invincibles, and England cruised home with similar ease.

The style was more modern, Jamie Smith finishing the game by whacking Ravindra Jadeja over the long-on fence, watched by the same Jasprit Bumrah whose stiff arms and jangling bangles haunted Australia’s sleep a few months ago. Bumrah went wicketless that day. England had found, as Australia had, that stopping Bumrah meant stopping India. The difference was it only took England one game to figure out how to do it.

England also became the first team to win any Test match after conceding five centuries. Two were scored by Rishabh Pant, which, in England’s favour, meant that the Indians did waste much time amassing their 835 runs (the fourth-highest aggregate by a losing team in Test history; this game was a statistician’s playpen).

While India’s mountain of runs might not speak too highly for England’s bowling, the tenor of England’s cricket under Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum has been not to worry too much about the target, anything is chaseable, leave it to the batsmen. “We’re a very simple-minded pair,” Stokes said. “Everyone knows what cricket’s about: it’s about scoring more runs than your opposition.”

Jamie Smith finishes the Test against India with a six.Credit: Getty Images

Australia, on the other hand …

Australia gave England a box seat to view their frailties at Lord’s earlier in the month. Australia’s cricket is also simple-minded: it’s about their bowlers taking more wickets (and maybe also scoring more runs) than the opposition. It didn’t work in the World Test Championship final, where South Africa’s collective discipline and enthusiasm were too good. In the fourth innings, Aiden Markram provided (or copied?) the England template, making a fourth-innings chase look easy after Australia’s top four batsmen contributed 126 across both innings at an average of 16. In Barbados, the Australian top four contributed 105 runs at an average of 13.

The Ashes outlook is complicated for Australia, which is engaged in a race against its chickens coming home to roost. Can the four mighty bowlers sustain their potency for one last summer? Can Usman Khawaja hold body, soul and reflexes together past his 39th birthday? Is this when the bell finally tolls on the selectors’ long-proven methodology of crossing their fingers, closing their eyes and hoping for the best?

The finish line is this summer’s Ashes. England will be coming to play Australia, while Australia will be facing England from one end and Father Time from the other. Australia need two contradictory things from the clock: enough time for batsmen like Sam Konstas and Cameron Green to come good, but not so much time that their veterans give out.

To be fair to the Australian batting, they have played on bowler-friendly pitches. But the stats begin to create their own reality. In Bridgetown on Wednesday, Shamar Joseph and Jayden Seales dismantled Australia for 180, their lowest first innings against the West Indies in 16 years. Joseph is only playing his ninth Test match and averages 34.44 against teams who are not Australia. Seales took as many wickets on Wednesday as he did in an entire three-match series against England one month ago. It’s exciting for the West Indies to produce a promising pace pair, but Ambrose and Walsh they ain’t.

Australia’s Ashes hopes are heading south.Credit: Simon Letch

West Indies conditions are very different from Australian, so we will be told that there is limited relevance in how Australia perform there. But if their batsmen keep failing to a second-division Test opponent, those chickens coming home to roost will be headless ones.

In a clear contrast to Australia’s increasing anxiety, England have a simple Ashes formula: aggressive batting and several bowlers who can deliver at more than 140km/h. They have built a pace battery of Brydon Carse, Josh Tongue, Gus Atkinson and Matthew Potts, and are saving Mark Wood and possibly Jofra Archer for special occasions.

Injuries have stopped Archer playing Test cricket since 2020-21, but on Tuesday he took his first first-class wicket in four years and completed 18 overs with the red ball. He has been texting Stokes, impatient to come back. Stokes said, “It’s really exciting for England, but also more exciting for Jof that he’s in a position now where we’re able to have a plan in place and hopefully him get through something to actually be considered for selection for Test cricket.”

Anyone who has seen (let alone faced) Archer in his recent limited-overs appearances knows that he is one of the best fast bowlers in the world and, potentially, the key to the Ashes result.

Australia's Josh Inglis is bowled by West Indies' Jayden Seales.Credit: AP

For England to win in Australia, pace has traditionally been necessary. Their rare Ashes wins here in the past century have been generated by extreme pace: Harold Larwood, Frank Tyson, John Snow and Bob Willis. (The exception was in 2010-11, when they had peak Jimmy Anderson.) They have seen Australia’s top order vulnerability to pace bowling twice this month, and if they think they’re onto a good thing, the Australians have done nothing to dissuade them.

There’s a clear contrast in the trajectory of these teams. England have directed their planning at this Ashes series for four years, more tightly in the last two. Archer’s entire handling has been, like an Olympic athlete’s, focused on this one event.

Meanwhile, Australia have been living from match to match. They will be hoping to send off Khawaja, the bowlers and maybe Steve Smith with a last Ashes win. It’s an entirely different way of thinking, it’s finish-line thinking, a team moving in two directions at once.

Anyway, the teasers and cartoons have only just started and it’s five months until the main feature. We outside speculators have a consistent record in being wrong. England are accomplished at talking themselves up and have over-promised and under-delivered for a decade and a half. Right now, though, England are playing like they’re building up, Australia like they’re just hanging on.

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