England may play entertaining cricket, but they failed and only have themselves to blame

It’s time to stop it with the sob story, England. Yes Baz Ball is good to watch, but we’ve got the Ashes and you can only blame yourselves, writes Ben Horne.

It’s hard to tell when the rain stopped and the tears started but this much is certain – England’s Ashes bellyaching has just become too much.

The whole sob story has got out of hand, and while Australian captain Pat Cummins was right to be low key about retaining the Ashes in the circumstances of a washout, the reality is England has no one to blame but themselves and Australia don’t need to apologise to anyone.

It’s time England stopped acting like the urn has just been stolen from their back pocket by a thief in the night, and ponder how they put themselves in a predicament where rain at the rainiest venue in Test match cricket has blown up its Ashes comeback hopes on the tarmac.

There is no such thing as moral victories in top level sport, not even when you play an attacking brand of cricket and swear your primary objective is to entertain not to win.

England may be playing good cricket, but they still lost the Ashes. Picture: Getty Images

The best thing about this enthralling series, by far, has been Baz Ball. It is captivating and brilliant.

But the most tedious thing has been how in love England are with themselves about Baz Ball.

Scoring runs at seven an over is breathtaking to watch, but it’s not ending world hunger or reinventing the wheel and at some point England needs to face the fact that for all their trailblazing bravado, they have, for the second time running, failed to win the Ashes on home soil.

They failed, because in the heavy duty early rounds on which so much relies, Australia were better when it mattered.

There is no denying rain saved Australia from humiliating defeat at Old Trafford, but if superman Ben Stokes and super fan Piers Morgan want to talk about rub of the green, consider this:

Australia has retained the Ashes after losing the toss FOUR times and having the worst of the conditions in at least the first three Tests.

How often in Ashes history has a team lost every toss (as could happen here)? And how many of those teams have gone on to win the series?

Australia’s most influential player Nathan Lyon broke down with injury midway through the second Test, yet the visitors were still good enough to win at Lord’s with 10 men.

Nathan Lyon bravely batted in the second Test, but has missed the rest of the series with injury. Picture: Getty Images

Copping two days of rain is unlucky, but you know what’s not? Picking a wicketkeeper who can’t catch.

England selectors took a gamble in refusing to select their best gloveman in the name of Baz Ball, and unfortunately it backfired spectacularly with Jonny Bairstow’s blunders behind the stumps in the first two Tests compared to Alex Carey’s tidiness, very close to the difference between the two sides.

There is a reason why teams who go 2-0 up in a five-match series have virtually never lost, and England can’t suddenly claim they were unlucky because they finally found their stride when it was too little too late.

In fact it makes them even more culpable for the opportunity they have butchered.

Baz Ball doesn’t absolve England from answering questions about why they played more golf than cricket in the lead-up to the first Test and then were so loose with their fielding and bowling. Or why an ill-conceived declaration at Edgbaston gifted Australia a saloon passage back into the Test.

Through their own recklessness and tardiness early in the series, England put themselves in a situation where they couldn’t afford anything to go against them from that point on.

England can only blame themselves. Picture: Getty Images

Not even matters outside of their control – and rain is hardly a new concept in cricket or in the UK, especially when it was forecast days’ in advance and, perhaps foolishly, influenced how Australia picked its team and approached the game.

Rain saved England from being whitewashed 5-0 in the last Ashes series in Australia, but for some reason Joe Root wasn’t pounding the pulpit about how the laws of cricket needed to be urgently rewritten so teams can play all hours of the day and night to get a result.

As former Australian coach Darren Lehmann pointed out, England clinched the 2013 Ashes with a washout – and celebrated regardless. Stuart Broad didn’t seem to think that was “unjust.”

But the Baz Ballers who supposedly no longer care about winning or losing are suddenly having a hard time accepting that the scoreboard never lies.

England are trailblazers and Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum deserve to be recognised as such.

But it doesn’t make them Ashes winners, not even in a moral sense.