Here we are then at the Oval, a mighty cricket ground these days and the traditional scene of summer’s end. That it comes in the final week of July comes down to a schedule designed to give the Hundred its own window in August, crunching down the men’s Ashes to make it as exhausting for the players as it has been exhilarating for onlookers.
Australia sit 2-1 up, the urn secured once more after the soggy, sorry draw at Old Trafford last weekend. Back at the venue where they were crowned world Test champions just seven weeks ago, and with another sell-out crowd confirmed, the tourists can claim their first series victory in England since 2001, killing the last remaining English bragging rights at having won away more recently in 2010-11.
As Pat Cummins rightly pointed out in his final address, this represents an excellent trip even before this final crack at history. And yet despite all this, England’s travails have continued to dominate the discourse, with host status only partly explaining the greater fascination here. Chiefly it is the cricket they are playing, wasteful initially before being refined and culminating in that jaw-dropping eruption of rapid runs in Manchester.
Once the arch-prankster Mark Wood had stopped blaring Aqua’s Barbie Girl out of the speakers in the Oval’s echoing indoor school, Ben Stokes started his pre-match press conference. Among a wide range of topics came an assertion that despite the Old Trafford assault last week appearing to break the tourists – “they didn’t have an answer” – this is a fresh game, a fresh pitch and momentum counts for little.
He also revealed that Old Trafford was the first time he had left a cricket match utterly devoid of emotion and wasn’t alone in this regard. But even though a winner-takes-all finale has been taken off the table by weather and Australia’s earlier successes – a lamentation not to be construed as whinging – there is a fair bit riding on this fifth Test for England beyond the seldom-discussed World Test Championship points.
Under Stokes they have made a virtue of disregarding results, which, despite some wilful misinterpretation of this, certainly does not mean they don’t care about them. The point here is that by removing all talk of the outcome and looking to put on a show first and foremost, it frees up minds, giving players their best chance of securing a positive one. All told, even factoring in their current predicament, it has worked.
But to lose a home Ashes series 3-1 would lead to the sense of what might have been morphing into what ruddy well was. The questions that met that fifth-day washout will linger on with this; questions such as why they started slightly shabbily, why Stokes declared on the first day at Edgbaston, and why Jonny Bairstow was entrusted with the gloves when, by his own admission in that surly press conference last week, the after-effects of his horrendous leg injury last summer have hampered his movement.
Bairstow’s role as wicketkeeper has become a necessity as the series has gone on, it must be said, Stokes sending down just 29 overs and thus needing five frontline bowlers. The only real questions selection-wise were whether Chris Woakes was ready to return to the scene of his Test debut 10 years ago after some residual soreness – a box ticked at training on Wednesday – and whether Jimmy Anderson would hold his spot, sitting top of the economy rates but bottom of the strike rates.
Once more unto the breach has been the response from Stokes, naming an unchanged XI a day out from the toss. There didn’t appear to be any thought to standing down Anderson either, Stokes hailing the “greatest fast bowler to play the game”. The captain also reciprocated a desire for Anderson to plough on past his 41st birthday – this Sunday – even if the five-match tour of India next year is England’s only Test cricket in the next 11 months.
With the best part of two and a half years until the next series in Australia, however, it may well be this is the last Ashes Test for Anderson and a host of others on both sides. Among them is Stuart Broad, 37 and poised to play his 25th successive home Ashes Test since 2009 – a remarkable feat of endurance, desire and skill, even before considering the fact that with 18 wickets he is the leading bowler this series.
While Cummins held up Anderson as an example of why predictions are a mug’s game, there was a concession that players such as Steve Smith, Usman Khawaja, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood may not return to these shores for Test cricket. In the case of David Warner, certainly. For England we already know Moeen Ali will slip back into Test retirement and, more broadly, a team of just three 20-somethings will surely be overhauled before the 2025-26 Ashes, let alone back here in 2027.
As such, beyond a chance for this Australian team to nail down their legacy, or for England to claw back some respectability, this Test represents a broader celebration of a generation and some damn fine careers among them; the kind of careers that only the longest format can forge, even if the scheduling of this potential farewell signposts our multi-coloured, slightly dystopian future.
