Are you excited for the biggest royal event since the last one? Have you downloaded your official quiche recipe and your print-at-home bunting? The Spin may not be about to stand in the street shouting oaths of allegiance to a new king, but that’s because The Spin was taught not to stand in the street swearing at anyone. And be you a coronation watcher or dodger, it’s impossible to ignore the prime cricketing omens embedded in this weekend’s celebrations.
The last summer a monarch was crowned, England won back the Ashes by playing an entirely new brand of cricket. Admittedly, the style they adopted 70 years ago was rather less dynamic than Bazball. The 1953 Ashes is mostly remembered for the incredible stonewalling of Trevor Bailey, the dead-bat-dick of England-Australia contests, a man whose face launched a thousand forward-defensives. Bailey’s string of tenacious innings led him to be dubbed The Barnacle, which was an improvement for someone whose previous nickname was The Boil.
As the decades have drifted by, England’s bloody-minded obstructionism has become the defining image of that series. Perhaps it didn’t help that Boilball ushered in a more cussed approach from England’s batters and captains alike and the period of English dominance that ensued was not Test cricket’s most entertaining. Nor does an overall scoreline of 1-0 to England, with four rain-soused draws, shout its merits. You need a closer look to uncover the streaky brilliance of Alec Bedser’s bowling, the captains’ leadership-by-bat, the late-call heroics of Jim Laker and Tony Lock.
“No game ever seemed to run the same way for two successive days,” said John Arlott, who maintained that the second Test at Lord’s was the most exciting draw he watched. The Sydney Morning Herald described the decisive fixture at the Oval, as “the Test to end all Tests” and while Australians debate the merits of their touring party to this day the late John Woodcock, whose cricket-writing career spanned seven decades, said he never witnessed a better England side. The number of books written on the 53 Ashes tells you it deserves a platinum jubilee of its own.
It’s tempting to reach out across the years, with the benefit of all those first-hand accounts, and indulge in a spot of comparison. Was postwar Britain really so different from our post-Covid, post-Brexit version? The cricket writer Jack Fingleton’s first thought on boarding his ocean liner in Australia was that he had forgotten to pack any tinned food. Having experienced the rationing and deprivation of postwar England in 1948, he was nervous enough to telegraph Keith Miller and Australia’s star allrounder joined the ship at the next port with a suitcase full of imperishables. Whether Pat Cummins will be travelling with his own supply of sunflower oil remains to be seen.
And just as today, a crippled economy in no way impinged upon Britain’s ability to host a right royal knees-up. Sid Barnes – who, like Fingleton, had made the transition from Australian Test player to journalist – claimed to be the person who got the tourists’ match against Nottinghamshire reduced to two days so the players could have the day of the coronation free.
Most of the team watched the procession from an open-air stand erected on Haymarket, where they received a special salute from their prime minister, Robert Menzies, as he passed. The rain dutifully held itself in abeyance until the Queen was inside; after that, they all got a bit wet.
The Australia captain, Lindsay Hassett, stayed dry inside Westminster Abbey, Fingleton too. As guests of Her Majesty they were required to leave their central London guesthouse at 5.30am wearing top hat and morning suit, crawl through a mile of traffic and be seated in their pews an hour later. The loyal subjects they passed had camped days and nights on rain-sodden pavements for a chance to see the procession. The invitees spent 10 hours in the Abbey, although it “seemed so many minutes” to Fingleton, who had fallen hard for the pomp, patriotism and even the police, who were “magnificent at everything”.
Those were the days of a decided frisson between the principal members of the royal household and the world of Test cricket. The Duke of Edinburgh, in the prime of his playing days, had been a keen spectator at Australia’s opening tour match in East Molesey, where the players were offered a £500 prize if they hit the ball the 140 yards needed to reach Tagg’s Island in the middle of the Thames (they tried, they failed).
Princess Margaret’s friendship with Miller, if that’s what we’re calling it, had been established on Australia’s previous tour. Now she predicted to Hassett, during a coronation reception at Blenheim Palace, that England would regain the Ashes: “You must admit, Mr Hassett, that it is surely our turn.”
As it happened, Her Royal Highness was right. A few commentators remarked before the series that there was a strong sense of 1953 paralleling the English summer of 1926; Arlott wrote in his diary that if the patterns of wins and defeats since that pre-war series held good, then England should finish up with the urn.
They did and because of a burgeoning television coverage, fuelled largely by people’s purchase of sets for the coronation, more people got caught up in the series than ever had before. There’s an omen to treasure.
