Ashes 2019: ‘Momentum’ theory dispelled in summer of surprises

Joe Denly has bounced back from a drop in form this Ashes series. Picture: Getty Images

It’s been a bad summer for lots of things: David Warner, James Anderson, Joel Wilson, boundary counts, Fortress Edgbaston etc. But it’s been still worse for the vogue of applying to cricket the concept of ‘momentum’ — the popular assumption that the game is somehow Newtonian, and that one ascendancy will inevitably bring others in its train.

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This notion, to be fair, has had some good days, notably in Ashes down under: think 2006-7 and 2013-14, even before the Smithmentum of 2017-18. But while it’s become conventional wisdom to define the summer of 2019 as the duel of two ordinary teams smattered with outstanding players, it’s also worth saluting those same cricketers’ resilience.

In the World Cup, Australia won at Lord’s, England at Edgbaston. In the Ashes, Australia came back from eight for 122 to win in Birmingham, England from being bowled out for 67 in Leeds. Having suffered heartbreak in that Test, Australia dominated the next. England failed to regain the Ashes, but must now be fancied to fight back from a series deficit twice.

This bouncebackability has been personified here by the hosts’ ersatz opening batsman, who almost seems to deserve a pugilist’s tag: Battling Joe Denly would be the kind of scrapper who kept coming until he needed steaks over both eyes and more stitches than Badou Jack. He scrounged fewer than 100 runs from his first five hits in the series; he has since raised his bat for three fifties, and was unlucky yesterday not to double it.

‘It’s an easy game when there’s no pressure on, eh?’ Steve Smith chipped him audibly early yesterday, and a bit absurdly: the urn might no longer be in dispute, but the Australians themselves have been insistent on the liveness of this Test. It was hardly junk time.

If Denly has never exactly suggested permanence this summer, he has implied growing conviction, a determination to outlast if he cannot outplay. He gets bogged down; he gets beaten; he uses all the bat, the middle every so often.

Yesterday he outside edged just short of the keeper, inside edged just past the stumps, was almost bowled, almost caught and bowled, almost caught at mid-off. But compared to the player so flustered at Edgbaston that he reviewed a bat-pad catch he must have known he hit, Denly remained laudably unperturbed; he finishes these Ashes without a century but having faced more deliveries than his captain.

On 54, Denly also survived an lbw appeal rejected by Marais Erasmus that ball tracker concluded would have hit the stumps, but which the Australians elected not to review; later the Australians similarly declined to seek video adjudication for an lbw appeal against Jos Buttler when the batsman was 20.

These added to the catalogue of Australian misadventures with the Decision Review System, even if it’s hard to chalk them against Tim Paine unless he is suddenly credited with X-ray vision. Perhaps they were more comments on the diminished expectations of the bowlers, Mitchell Marsh and Nathan Lyon respectively.

The afternoon featured proper Test match batting, 105 in 30 wicketless overs, in a series in which this has been more a solo than a joint phenomenon. Ben Stokes has fitted number four so snugly here, and so much more substantially than Jason Roy, that there seems no reason for his not to be a permanent promotion. After tea, Buttler played a useful counterpunching innings, too late for the Ashes, but hearteningly for the series.

Steve Smith is as powerful a force as you’re likely to see on a cricket pitch. Picture: Getty Images

Striving to contain the ever-growing deficit, the Australian bowlers went about their work tidily and perseveringly, without much encouragement from the conditions, which confined Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood to one wicket between them. Peter Siddle, likewise, had one of those days that recall Jack Nicklaus’s line: ‘The older you get, the harder the wind gets — and it’s always in your face.’ After tea, Paine came up to the stumps for him without discomfort.

Having mysteriously bowled only seven of the first 114 Australian overs in the match, Lyon settled into a decent spell, occasionally going on his haunches to issue a beseeching appeal, occasionally raising an arm like a schoolboy volunteering to answer a question in class when the ball turned pleasingly. All things considered, including the incidence of 22 days of cricket in the last 41, Australia had a good day in the field, Smith expertly pouching four catches, Marnus Labuschagne making a difficult dive look easy at backward square leg.

So a two-all scoreline looms, which would not be an unfair reflection of the balance of talent and the apportionment of luck, England having suffered the loss of James Anderson, somewhat off-set by the strides of Jofra Archer, Australia having been forced at Headingley to do without Smith, who might have put the result beyond even the irrepressible Stokes. There have been moments for both teams to rue, such as England failing to bat Australia out of the match in their first innings at Birmingham, Australia’s failure to do the same to England in their second innings at Leeds. But to accentuate the positive, there has also been a good deal of grit around.

Having said that, of course, there remains a powerful force to factor in, the one-man momentum of the aforementioned Smith, an equal and opposite reaction to everything England have thrown at him this summer. The fourth day is an intriguing prospect.