An Ashes so close even McGrath is on the fence

England should by rights be strongly favoured to regain the Ashes but it’s much closer than that.

Cameron Bancroft, centre, with Matthew Wade, left, and Travis Head at the Edgbaston nets

It’s always slightly sad when a tradition goes by the board. And when the English media approached Glenn McGrath for his patented, lipsmacking “5-0” prediction a few days ago, they came away disappointed: he announced himself to be “sitting on the fence for this one”.

A concession? Maybe; maybe not. Fourth versus fifth in a nine-team competition certainly sounds like the proverbial “too-close-to-call”. But there’s also just a hint of confidence. In their own climes and coming off a World Cup victory, England should by rights be strongly favoured to regain the Ashes. But the narrow difference in odds — England evens, Australia 8/5 — reflect both local doubt and visiting forethought.

There can be few sporting rivalries where geography is so influential as the Ashes. It is never easy to win the trophy; winning away is an achievement close to generational.

Alternating hemispheres, the antagonists have worked themselves to an exquisite near-parity. Of 70 series, Australia have won 33 and England 32 with five drawn. In 37 full-dress, five-Test series over the last three-quarters of a century, the away team has prevailed only 11 times.

Australia’s well-remembered hegemony in four consecutive series in England between 1989 and 2001 may have caused us to overlook this. But even that team of the talents — Waughs, Warne, McGrath, Taylor et al — gave up four Tests to England against the run of the play.

To beat England the team, then, you must beat England the country, which is not simply a matter of juicy green seamers and irregularly-shaped playing fields but overhead conditions uniquely changeable in world cricket. Batsmen are challenged to make hay when the sun is out, then store it up when the sun is in; bowlers have the opposite strain; captains need a sixth sense of clutch moments.

If much else has changed about English cricket, in this sense it is ever more like itself. The commendable commitment to maximising playing time for spectators, involving such measures as enhanced drainage and artificial illumination, has play proceeding in conditions that even a decade ago would have confined teams to their dressing rooms.

Once upon a time in England, you had to factor in to your predictions at least one and maybe even two rain-affected stalemates. No longer: England have drawn just one of their last 33 home Tests. Worst fate of all is to be ambushed batting under lights with a bit of mizzle about — just ask Ireland, bundled out in 94 deliveries a week ago at Lord’s. As this series wends its way into September, such scenarios grow likelier.

On their last two visits, Australia took contrasting approaches to adaptation. In 2013, the team were vaguely intimidated by the conditions, chafing against the desiccated surfaces, falling apart noisily at Lord’s, throwing away a strong position at Riverside.

Four years ago, they rather swaggered into town, buoyed by a World Cup, doubling down on the investment in left-arm speed that had served them so well down under, boldly going a batsman short in the desire for a fifth bowler — a better formulae for Australia than England.

Australia are now in search of a third way, working with the grain, as it were. Selectors Justin Langer, Trevor Hohns and Greg Chappell have exhibited a preparedness to make quite bold calls in order to do so.

In Australia’s last Test outing, Joe Burns and Kurtis Patterson made centuries and Mitchell Starc took 10 wickets; their exclusion for Cameron Bancroft, Marnus Labuschagne and James Pattinson shows a weighting towards more recent performances in English conditions.

Peter Siddle, who could hardly get a look-in four years ago when airspeed was all the rage, has bounced back into calculations by dint of hardworking seasons with Essex, Lancashire and Nottinghamshire, and also his coach’s unstinting regard. Matthew Wade’s improbable revival, meanwhile, is based on his finding a way to counterpunch runs on dicey surfaces at Bellerive Oval.

It’s not quite horses-for-courses — the stables aren’t strong enough for that. But through it can be glimpsed a set of simple principles — that because bowlers can rely on the Dukes ball to generate a steady stream of chances, an attack should above all be thrifty; that because batsmen need luck to get by, batting orders should be as long as possible.

The Australians have even gone about their public relations with a hint of humility and circumspection. Bancroft, Steve Smith and David Warner have been kept from view, Langer providing a cordon of garrulity.

There was a rather desperate attempt to build up Josh Hazlewood’s passing remarks about Jason Roy — “He has only played one Test match and it is a lot different batting in a Test than in a one-day match” — when it was really an entry in the Sir Kim Darroch Award for telling us stuff everyone already knows. The effect is that Australia look almost more “English” than England, given the home side’s lick-and-a-hope top four and partiality to blue sky speculations on flair and impact.

Despite being heavily beaten at their last Ashes head-to-head, it is England who find themselves dealing with the burden of expectation, England trusting to fortune, striving to shift gears and dealing with attrition, Mark Wood and Jofra Archer having already given a good deal of their all in the World Cup.

It’s not that Australia enjoy an edge so much as that England lack the edge that might conceivably have been expected, given the presences of James Anderson and Ben Stokes. A fence can be an uncomfortable place to sit. But as these Ashes loom, it looks like a reasonable vantage.