All cricketing common sense said the Herculean task — needing to make the fourth-highest score in the last innings on this ground, and the fifth-highest successful run chase in the history of Test cricket — should have been beyond them. There are so many flaws running through this Australia batting line-up, but who could discount the possibility with the extraordinary Smith in their ranks?
Not surprisingly, it took a stunning piece of intuitive cricket from England’s man of the series, Ben Stokes, to bring Smith’s record run of half-centuries against England to a close and despite a wonderful, battling hundred from Matthew Wade, Australia’s hopes disappeared with their lodestar. The victory that had always seemed likely after Tim Paine had gifted England first use of what turned out to be an excellent Test pitch, came to England deep in the final session, so producing that rarest of sporting outcomes — a drawn Ashes series.
Not since 1972 has that happened. It was a result that will have taken some gloss off Australia’s retention of the urn, and provided Joe Root with a significant boost ahead of the start of what is effectively a new four-year cycle. Whether Root will have the energy to last that course remains very much open to doubt, but his immediate future is secure. He expressed a desire after the match to have a third crack at the Ashes and he will feel, with the performances of Rory Burns and Joe Denly here, that some holes in a flawed team have started to be filled.
Root could be thankful to two of his key lieutenants, Stuart Broad and Stokes, for their part in ridding him of Smith for a low score at last. They have both been mighty performers in this series, two competitors who rarely shy away from an Ashes contest, and for whom ending up on the losing side would have been an injustice. Broad has been immense with the new ball; Stokes has been so in every sense and he ended Smith’s stay with a superb catch at leg gully off Broad in a leg trap deliberately set. It meant Smith ended the series with a remarkable 774 runs, having induced more head-scratching among England’s think-tank than any player in recent memory.
Broad’s day had begun with the bat, slapping two sixes into the crowd to inch England towards a lead two runs shy of 400. Then, in what has become a ritual, he dispatched both left-handed openers in double-quick time, sending Marcus Harris’s off stump cartwheeling and bringing David Warner’s series to an end via an outside edge. Rarely can such as fine a player as Warner have endured a worse run: fewer than 100 runs for the series, seven times out to Broad and eight scores of ten or fewer. The crowd almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
With the wickets of Smith and Pat Cummins to come, Broad finished an excellent summer for him with more than 20 wickets — the first England bowler to do so in four Ashes series — but after the new ball he gave way to Jack Leach, who we thought would be England’s main threat on a wearing pitch. Other than luring Marnus Labuschagne from his moorings with a lovely flighted delivery, Leach did not threaten unduly, although his rewards for persistence and patience came late in the day. With four wickets, he will be relieved to have a chance to talk to his teammates about his bowling, at last, rather than his batting.
When Wade came to the crease, England’s fielders turned up the volume in recognition of his voluble efforts from short leg, but this combative cricketer looks the type to enjoy a scrap, and they might have been better advised to hold their tongues. He has had a curious series, with a hundred at Edgbaston but not much since, but now he showed his appetite to finish on a high, by using his feet frequently to nullify Leach’s threat and attacking at every opportunity.
In the 20 overs that Smith spent compiling 23, there were signs that the all-consuming nature of the way he plays was catching up with him. He was still suffering the after-effects of a heavy cold, and he has admitted to sleeping fitfully during Test matches. He didn’t look vulnerable but didn’t look at his sharpest, hitting the field more often than usual and showing signs of frustration at his inability to get on top. Finally, one of the many tried and failed plans came to fruition when he steered Broad to Stokes, and he left to a rousing standing ovation. It was good to see an English crowd recognise genius when they see it.
These protagonists, who have been at heart of what has been a thrilling series, then stepped aside to allow Jofra Archer and Wade to take centre stage after tea in a passage of play that will remain long in the memory, with Archer throwing everything at Wade in an eight-over spell that touched the speeds he produced at Lord’s. These two players know each other well from their time in the Big Bash League, not that you would know it, given the hostility with which Archer bowled. He hit Wade with bouncers; he stared at him, there was enough chat for the umpires to call Root and Paine together but Wade survived the barrage to bring up a fine hundred, the fourth Test century of his career, which he registered with a guttural roar.
Wade, though, was running out of partners. Paine fell to Leach leg-before, and Cummins feathered an outswinger off Broad. Wade felt he had no option but to try to attack Root, even though the extent of the rough made that almost impossible. Jonny Bairstow missed a fiendishly difficult stumping, when Wade charged and missed a ball that spat from it, and Stokes dropped an equally difficult chance at slip. It did not come as a great surprise when Wade was beaten on the charge again, Bairstow this time effecting a much more straightforward stumping. It was a matter of time, now.
Having dismissed Wade, Root took the final two catches, both of which were good enough to merit mention, to leave Peter Siddle as the last Australia batsman standing. Siddle, a fine performer for a long time but a mistaken selection in this match, first came to England in 2009, and has seen the Ashes swing violently this way and that since. This series has been the closest of them all in that time, only the sixth drawn Ashes series in history, with two flawed teams playing flawed, but never less than compelling, cricket. For Root and England, it is a case of what might have been.
The Times
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