The Mancunian weather might have ended England’s chances of actual victory in the Ashes series but they go into the final match seeking the next best thing: moral victory. They remain 2-1 down but if the commanding position they earned at Old Trafford was rendered irrelevant by the subsequent rain it has not been forgotten by the players.
“We were dominating the game and if it had played out I would like to think we would have won,” Harry Brook said. “So if we can win this week, it almost can make it a moral victory.”
This is a team trained to always see the upside, and those skills could be tested as much as their cricketing ones at the Oval this week. But, after three compelling, dramatic and closely contested Tests were followed by England dominating three-fifths of a game in Manchester, there could be one to be found even if the series concludes with them on the wrong end of a 3-1 scoreline.
“The whole mantra is that we’re trying to excite people, we’re trying to enjoy ourselves and we’re trying to bring new crowds to the game and get Test cricket alive again,” Brook said. “I think we’ve already done it this series. Whichever way the result goes this week, I think we’ve had a good series.”
England should be surfing into this game – and there were patches of the Old Trafford outfield on Sunday where they could have given it a go – brimming with confidence and powered by pure sporting momentum. But the feeling even among the players seems to be that two days of rain washed all that away.
“It’s a shame that the weather ruined it for us because I think we would have been very confident going into this game had it been 2-2 – and they could have been a little bit different going into it,” Brook said.
Brook has scored half-centuries in each of the past three Tests and in his two most recent innings, 75 at Headingley and 61 at Old Trafford, appeared to have adopted a more measured approach to that with which he started the series.
“I’m learning every day. There are so many things I’ve learned this series,” the 24-year-old said.
“I feel like a couple of times I have been a little bit reckless in this series, especially the first innings at Lord’s. Then there have been times when I have been a little tentative and not looked to score.
“It is about getting that measure there and getting it right most innings. There is a fine line between aggression and recklessness. I’d probably rather be on the recklessness side than the tentative side – always looking to score, and not just there to survive.”
Brook said in their extensive downtime in the Old Trafford dressing room England’s players had admitted to feeling they deserve more from the series than they are going to get: “We were thinking that when we were watching the rain pour down.”
Meanwhile Jimmy Anderson has insisted he has “no thoughts about retirement” from Test cricket. England’s record wicket-taker, now 40, has struggled in this Ashes series, prompting speculation that the Oval match could be his farewell Test.
Writing in the Telegraph on Tuesday, however, he said: “It is the Oval, the end of a series and a time for speculation. I keep talking to the coach and captain. They want me around, so as long as I am still hungry, want to put in the work then I will keep trying to give my best for the team.
“I love playing Test cricket as much as I ever have and this is my favourite period as an England cricketer. Just being around this group, the way we play and how we enjoy ourselves on the field. There are no thoughts about retirement.”
After the Ashes, England’s next Test series is not until January 2024 in India. The tour schedule was released on Tuesday, with England to play Test cricket in Dharamsala for the first time. The city, which is home to the Dalai Lama and sits on the edge of the Himalayas, plays hosts to the fifth and final match of the tour, which runs from 25 January to 11 March.
Many of India’s best-known venues, including the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, Delhi’s Feroz Kotla Stadium, Eden Gardens in Kolkata and Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi Stadium, are not on the itinerary.
2024 India tour First Test 25-29 Jan, Hyderabad, Second Test 2-6 Feb, Vizag, Third Test 15-19 Feb, Rajkot Fourth Test 23-27 Feb Ranchi, Fifth Test 7-11 Mar, Dharamsala.
Meanwhile, the Australia team were having a very different conversation. “We wouldn’t be saying that we weren’t pretty chuffed to see the rain fall for two days, so the feeling around there was, yes, we got away with one,” Travis Head said. “But ultimately we’ve come here to win the Ashes. We’ve gone a huge way in that, and we’ve got an opportunity to do it this week.
“We played really nice [in] three Test matches, maybe not the best last week, and if we can try and shut that out and think about what we did really, really well in the first three Tests that would put us in good stead.”
