Stuart Broad began this summer by, rather ludicrously, claiming to have invented a ‘new’ delivery, calling it ‘the outswinger’. Little did we know then that the seamer’s parting gift to cricket would be a novel mode of dismissal.
With his penultimate act of note in the game, and for the second time in this one, Broad worked his magic, swapping the bails over on one set of stumps and conjuring a wicket the very next ball.
With his last, from the very final delivery of his career, came a 604th Test wicket, a Fifth Test victory by 49 runs and, for England, the much-deserved consolation of a 2-2 series draw. No doubt just as crucially to this great Ashes warrior, it denied a truly great Australian team the triumph that would have made their legacy above all.
If the script wrote itself when Broad announced his imminent retirement on the third evening here at the Oval, then at various points across the final two days it looked unlikely to come to fruition.
Chasing a daunting 384 for victory and a 3-1 series success, Australia twice looked firmly on course, first when cruising to 135 without loss at stumps on day four, then again when, having steadied, Steve Smith and Travis Head began to purr at 264 for three after tea on the final evening.
And while the stage was eventually set up for England’s ultimate Ashes performer, it will be to two of the unlikelier lads that he and the rest of Ben Stokes’s side will pay just as much homage tonight.
When England began their Test summer against Ireland two months ago, even fielding a second string bowling attack, the names of Chris Woakes and Moeen Ali were hardly headline absentees. Woakes had not played Test cricket in over a year and never under the new regime. Moeen, meanwhile - well, he’d packed it in entirely.
But on the final evening of this quite remarkable Ashes series, the Brummie lads combined to blow the game apart, the tourists crumbling in sight of a first win in England since 2001 as they lost their final seven wickets for just 70 runs.
Woakes has been quite magnificent since his belated introduction at Headingley. By then, England already trailed 2-0, but the 34-year-old, so often undervalued, could have done no more, four wickets here taking his series tally to 19 after only three games. The player of the series prize could hardly have gone to a more popular recipient.
Moeen, drafted into the team as spinner after Jack Leach’s injury, was just as quickly forced back out of it, bugged at Edgbaston by a finger shorn of its skin. Until now, his biggest contributions had come as capable sacrifice shuffling up the order to No3. But here he was, at last, where spinners are supposed to be, defying a groin injury to bowl his team towards victory with three wickets against a ticking clock and diminishing buffer, on day five of a Test match that, into its final session, could easily have gone either way.
An early afternoon downpour had condensed the equation, and muddled the umpires’ sums, Australia returning with seven wickets in hand, 146 runs needed and 52 overs to get them, later scaled back to 47, once Kumar Dharmasena and the comically bad Joel Wilson had been reminded this was not a day-night game.
Woakes was sensational at the top of the day, making use of a changed ball that, had it been up for sale on eBay, would probably have been marked up ‘good-as-new’. Usman Khawaja and David Warner had chosen the prime moment to string together the series’ highest opening stand on day four, but this was a different game and the pair fell to in successive Woakes overs before Mark Wood had Marnus Labuschagne caught to cap a near-perfect first hour.
On the cusp of lunch, despite Australia’s counter-attack, it ought to have become a dream session, as Smith gloved up to Stokes. The captain, a gun fielder, plucked it out of thin air, but then, with his thigh, knocked it out of his own hand to let the big fish let off the hook.
It was England, at that stage, swimming upriver but this series has known little but shifting tides. It took just 19 balls for this one to turn, four wickets falling in that time as Australia’s chase crumpled from 263 for three to 275 for seven. Pat Cummins had led a pursuit from similar peril at Edgbaston, but soon became No8.
And so, into the final throes, of an epic series and a glorious career. There was a time only a week ago when you wondered whether this Ashes finale might flatter to deceive, the promise of a decider up in smoke, the Urn gone and a fifth Test in six-and-half weeks perhaps a bridge too far. For Broad, though, the ultimate competitor to the last, there is simply no such thing.
