You learn as you go that cricket in England has moods. Like some figure from myth whose face changes with angle and light. The first day of the Edgbaston Ashes Test was one mood, the bucolic English summery kind that justifies the work of pastoral poets. On the second, jaunty scoring gave way to a half-overcast grind under high cloud. The third, after England had bowled to a seven‑run lead, a sudden darker mood flashed at the home side in a window before rain.
Rain, cloud, darkness. Few sports make you think so much about light. All countries have sun, but there is a hard clear sunshine that only derives from an Australian summer, streams of photons hurtling on their long trip through space and smashing into cricket fields, bouncing back with such force that you’d swear you can hear them ping like stones off glass. Turn on a television anywhere in the world and see Australia’s summer, so bright it washes out the blue of sky and green of grass into variations of white.
By contrast, England’s proprietorial light is defined by absence. All countries have cloud, too, but when the massed ranks of grey bunch overhead like wet wool blankets, the product of a deluged military ration store, it’s something else. See that on your television and you equally vividly know where you are. An attritional fight at a storied ground. In person, the elements are even more visceral, clouds heaving into vacant airspace like invading spaceships. Nowhere has that dimness, that dankness, while players blink and strain their eyes trying to pick up hints of dark red leather.
One of cricket’s accepted truths is that cloud creates swing. A report in 2000 from Nasa’s experimental physics branch into cricket ball aerodynamics found no plausible reason that this should be the case. Maybe there is a factor that we haven’t determined, maybe it’s a collective delusion. And yet, from basic observation, players find it far more difficult to bat in those conditions. Perhaps the light is what really makes it so.
Through a Test, moods make moments. Australia had one go decisively their way. After bowling 6.5 overs in which England scored comfortably, rain took them off for an hour and a half. When they returned in genuine gloom, it was for 22 deliveries before more rain. That included the wickets of both England openers, ending the day with the score on 28.
It was a bonus for Australia, who earlier had let slip their grasp on the match. Usman Khawaja and Alex Carey had done superbly the previous day from five wickets down to get Australia’s score into the same postcode as England’s 393. When they resumed on the third morning, on 126 and 52 respectively, the chance was there to wipe off the remaining 82-run deficit and use the lower order to build some sort of lead.
Instead, Carey was dropped in the first over of the day, nicked another ball for four, smacked two boundaries, then lost his stumps to Jimmy Anderson. Khawaja looked in supreme control but barely scored, adding 15 runs in nearly two hours, letting Pat Cummins outpace him by a distance. A ball good enough is inevitable eventually, and by the time Khawaja was bowled by Ollie Robinson, he hadn’t moved the score along.
Nathan Lyon loves to say that he can’t bat, but that isn’t really true, so his effort reached new levels of daftness. Six men out for the hook, six balls faced, five of them short, five pull shots, two hitting the body, one missing the ball, one top-edged safely to a gap, one into the hands of deep square leg. It was a surrender as cavalier as any Ben Stokes innovation. Scott Boland could not handle the short stuff more than a minute, and Cummins after a good 38 didn’t trust Josh Hazlewood enough to resist trying to reach 44 in one hit.
From looking at a lead, Australia’s last four wickets fell for 14, and a long tail was exposed. Where Tests can turn on moments, England’s current Stokes-McCullum method is about trying to create them. They did so with the reverse umbrella field to Khawaja that made him look to score through point, opening Robinson’s path to the stumps. That let them wrap up the rest.
That early finish though gave Australia their own moment. Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley ended up where they did not want to be. Cummins found his most dangerous line and length, and as a player who is remarked upon for never leaving the ball, Duckett was out once again playing what he didn’t need to. Another Cameron Green stunner in the gully had no one questioning the replay.
Crawley three balls later got a Boland special, that minuscule movement away from the right-hander from a hard length, a line he had to play, bat half behind pad but ball tapping edge on the way by. A few dicey shots from Joe Root later, and the day was done before 4pm. With two more days to go, it’s a question of what sort of moods will strike, and when.
