Photograph: Steve Bond/PPAUK/Shutterstock
It is the morning after the day before. The beer-with-breakfast customers have emptied out of the Golden Beam pub on Headingley Hill and wound their way up St Michael’s Lane, scooping a second pint inside the ground as they head to their seats. The sky is bluer than Thursday, the mid-morning sun more powerful. It’s a day for broad-brimmed hats, factor 50 and batting, batting, batting.
Jerusalem’s opening arpeggio plays across the speaker system, and the two home ground heroes make their way to the crease. Jonny Bairstow wheels his arms like windmills. Joe Root crosses the boundary with his customary sprint-out-of-the-blocks and a couple of supplementary skips. There’s a proforma boo for Pat Cummins as he takes the ball for the first over. His week-old shiner is in full bloom.
The Australian captain runs in from the Kirkstall Lane End and bowls a nagging, back-of-a-length ball that Root defends. The second delivery is perhaps a pencil-shaving shorter, just outside off. Root rides the extra bounce and late cuts it past third slip for four. The first boundary of the day.
In the multiverse theory – at least, the one espoused by Hollywood’s current overlords – not only are all things possible, they’re happening everywhere, all at once. In the particular reality that these words are reaching you, Root was out to the second ball of the day, his body acting on instinct, his arms shadowing the ball along its upward trajectory and slivering an edge to first slip. But be assured, somewhere there’s an alternate dimension where England’s best batsman drew first blood against the opposition bowlers, and the Root-Bairstow axis prevailed once more.
This was judgment day, after all, not just for Ben Stokes’s team but for the entire 2023 Ashes series. The forecast promised storms on Saturday, and dicey weather for days four and five. There was only one way for England to force a victory in this must-win match, and that was to rack up runs, as fast and hard as they could. You might say that the situation played to their strengths. You might even say it’s what they live for.
In our alternate reality, Root plays out the rest of a testing Cummins over defensively, and Bairstow waits to face Scott Boland. The first ball is straight and squares him up, but he gets an ugly bit of bat-end down just in time. The second’s a pearler, gliding sensuously past his outside edge, a teasing almost-kiss. The third he blasts square with a one-handed drive for four.
Their blossoming partnership plays out along the lines we recognise from previous partnerships such as Edgbaston last year, and – checks notes – Edgbaston last month. England’s former captain, the guy with all the gifts, angles the ball off the seamers in so many directions that Cummins struggles to remember where he’s parked his fielders. The ones and twos are run hard, heads down, bases stolen. Bairstow stews over the memories of Lord’s like a teapot left out since breakfast, cracks a couple of thunderous cover drives and bludgeons anything that strays on to his stumps. Todd Murphy comes on to stem the flow, and Root immediately reverse-scoops him for six.
This was the way the story was supposed to go, after all. Homeboys make good on day two: local legends come together to save our summer. It was the obvious second act to their stuttering performances in the field, not just on Thursday but throughout this series. Their anchor roles at keeper and first slip have been on the fritz for a while now – heads turned in surprise and agony as the ball flies harmlessly between them.
As for actual drops, they are jointly responsible for 11 of the 14 that England have missed in this series so far.
Four of those came on Thursday. Travis Head, dropped by Bairstow on nine, added another 30 to his total. Mitchell Marsh, who Root put down on 12, finished with 118.
If ever there was a time for the two Yorkshiremen to tackle their run deficit and even the account, it was surely now. In our parallel universe, they dominate the afternoon session, flogging the ageing ball to all parts. Are they both still there at tea? Does one fall in the final session, attempting a slog-sweep too many? Doesn’t matter much, England have the game in their hands by the close, with contributions from an amped-up tail and a lead of a hundred and fifty. Plenty of time to take 10 wickets, and a little left over for the chase.
Wondering what might have been, lamenting what wasn’t, is hardly very Bazball, and this England side aren’t the kind to indulge in fruitless longing. No retreat, no regrets. Never apologise, never explain. Speak softly, carry a big stick and throw it at every ball.
And of course, in this world, Stokes isn’t required to stage his Headingley Threequel. We probably don’t get England’s indomitable, inimitable skipper thrashing maximums – maxima? – off one leg, or dragging his team back into the fight once again, against every single damn odd. We get fewer fireworks, a little less drama. But in a galaxy far, far away, England’s 2023 Ashes contest just turned the corner.
