Sign of the times
Laura Wright, last seen by England fans faultlessly executing the nation’s first major public rendition of God Save the King at last year’s Test against South Africa at the Oval, was back on anthem duties, only this time she was not only singing them but signing them, with backing signals from the Knotty Ash Signing Choir and the Liverpool Signing Choir. For the first time the entire build-up to an England Test was signed, with the toss and captains’ interviews accompanied on the big screens (this is being seen as a pilot and will be repeated on the first day of the women’s Test at Trent Bridge, while two members of the England team who brought home the Deaf Ashes last year have pre-recorded toss results to use across the summer). The interpretation of the loud cheer that followed England winning the toss and choosing to bat thus became the day’s first, but certainly not the last, double fist-pump.
Urn your keep
The players enjoyed quite the entry – fireworks, walls of fire, the whole works – as they emerged for the anthems. Just before their arrival Sir Alastair Cook deposited the Ashes urn atop a plinth for the players to file past, a plinth adorned with the four words “we are England cricket”. This is the ECB’s catchphrase, trademarked in 2016 for applications including deodorants, baby food, shoe horns, commemorative goods made of cane, cork, reed, horn, bone, ivory or shell, for “leather picture frames incorporating a clock face” and, importantly, display stands such as the plinth upon which the urn had been placed. The ECB literally is England cricket, so the catchphrase might not be particularly imaginative but it does tend to apply to most situations they need a catchphrase for. But the Ashes have not been won by the English since 2015, and all too infrequently have a close association with England cricket. As any cricketing historian would tell you, if it were possible to ask the urn’s contents they wouldn’t so much say “we are England cricket” as “we are in affectionate remembrance of England cricket, which died at the Oval on 29 August 1882”.
Join the dots
It is a cricketing cliche that maidens bring wickets, and it seems that the rarer maidens are the more potent their power becomes: it took Australia 37 overs to bowl one with Josh Hazlewood, at 2.25pm, lodging the first of the day, match and series. At the time Harry Brook and Joe Root both looked well set, on 32 and 36 respectively, and the score was 174 for three. Ten minutes later it was 176 for five: there was a wicket in each of the next two overs, with Brook succumbing in freakish fashion to the post-maiden curse at 2.27pm and Ben Stokes following eight minutes later.
Drink in the atmosphere
The Ashes started under a beautiful, blue Birmingham sky and cricket can be thirsty work, so nobody can criticise the players for staying hydrated. Still, the Australian wicketkeeper Alex Carey might have broken some kind of record by beckoning a drink-bearing colleague onto the field after just six deliveries. Still, in a way he was just getting into the spirit – by then many of those in attendance were not just getting into the spirit but the beer, wine and occasional bucket of Pimm’s as well. Australia’s bowling line-up of (in order of appearance) Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Scott Boland, Nathan Lyon and Cameron Green offer a great variety of deliveries, but it is nothing compared with the different ways of dispensing alcohol offered around Edgbaston.
In one part of the ground there is, within a matter of metres, various standard staffed bars, a self-service ebar (where your pint is pumped out by a machine) and a click and collect bar, as well as both a self-service bar and a pour your own bar, which are not the same thing. By midday queues snaked so far from some of these outlets that behind the Hollies Stand (inevitably) there was a queue just to join a queue. Behind the Press Box Stand, so called presumably because it is almost exactly as far as you can get from the press box, there is a craft beer bar and, a few paces away, a craft beer and gin bar, which together look the first two shots in an alcoholic arms race. If you wanted really fast service, though, there was one low-demand bar. As it happens, it was also the low alcohol bar.
