The beauty of Test cricket is the vast range of possible futures it offers. As disappointing as this England team turned out to be, on the second morning in Perth they were utterly dominant; during the Ben Stokes-Will Jacks partnership in Brisbane and the Jacks-Jamie Smith partnership in Adelaide the unthinkable became thinkable; they won in Melbourne; and even on the last day in Sydney, memories of Australian collapses chasing small totals hovered into view.
The series had people talking about cricket as much as the Ashes have ever done. There are 859,580 reasons, even with six days lost in Perth and Melbourne, to back this up, and the Sydney Test – a dead rubber – was the most attended in history, with 211,032 tickets sold.
Men of the moment: Ashes destroyers Mitchell Starc and Travis Head celebrate Australia’s series victory. But it was the lesser lights who really shaped the series.Credit: Getty Images
While it is true that Australians will flock to watch England go down by any margin and in any manner, the level of interest reflected both the intrigue around England’s thrusting approach to the game and the feeling that Australia were there for the taking.
So hot are the takes, so sage are the instant unifying theories, so forensic are the analyses of why Australia won and (more thoroughly and bitterly) why England lost, we can lose sight of cricket’s essential unpredictability.
Due to Australia’s batting fragility and weakened bowling stocks due to injury, and to England’s mercurial volatility, there was a lot more uncertainty in this series than the post-mortems would lead us to believe.
Test cricket is decided by a stream of mini-contests. In this series, the mini-contests were generally decided, in percentage terms, by 51 to 49. Australia won the Ashes 4-1 because, basically, they won the vast majority of those tight little battles, and I would argue that for all the focus on Australia’s stars, the series tilted on the contributions of the weaker half of each team.
Jake Weatherald’s flaws were exposed during the Ashes, but his contribution at the top of the order cannot be underestimated.Credit: AP
Australia’s consisted of Jake Weatherald, Marnus Labuschagne, Usman Khawaja, Cameron Green and a rotating crew of replacements. Weatherald, though his technical flaws were cast in a harsh light, was a partner in opening stands of 0, 75, 77, 37, 33, 8, 27, 57 and 62: an average of 42, which, if asked at the beginning of the series, Australia would have gladly taken.
Applying the logic that kept David Warner in the team in his last two years, Weatherald’s performance was better than break even.
Labuschagne, with the bat, was Australia’s Brook, constantly looming without ever arriving. Unlike Brook, however, Labuschagne made his contributions in the more demanding No.3 position. And even more unlike Brook, Labuschagne took match-winning catches, particularly the two at second slip in Adelaide.
Khawaja’s first-innings 82 in Adelaide, playing with an hour’s notice, was one of the underrated knocks of the series. He blunted Jofra Archer when it mattered.
Usman Khawaja’s first-innings 82 in Adelaide was one of the underrated knocks of the series.Credit: Getty Images
Green certainly failed to meet high expectations, but he had fewer outright failures with the bat than Joe Root. His dismissal of Brook in Adelaide set up the session in which Australia would effectively seal the series.
Brendan Doggett, Nathan Lyon and Patrick Cummins all won critical mini-battles when the Ashes were on the line.
England’s weaker half consisted of Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Jamie Smith, Jacks and the flat battery that their express attack turned out to be. Duckett and Smith were prime exponents (along with Brook and Crawley) of what Stokes, at the end of the series, called “three out of 10” cricket: Hail Marys, long shots and shortcuts.
Smith as a keeper, Pope as a No.3 and Jacks as a spinner were not Test standard. The speedsters bowled too short and wide before they broke down, and the one who stayed sound for all five Tests, Brydon Carse, bowled the shortest and widest. England’s big bet on pace was their most three out of 10 punt of all.
An Ashes series in Australia is no place for gamblers; Australia win because they know how to play the percentages.
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The magnificent Starc, Head and Carey deserve the plaudits, but there’s a strong argument that it was Australia’s weaker half that won it the Ashes in such resounding fashion. That cumulative list of little unheralded micro-wins – Khawaja versus Archer (Adelaide), Cummins versus Root (Adelaide), Labuschagne’s catching, Weatherald versus new-ball Archer (Perth and Brisbane), Josh Inglis’ run out of Stokes (Brisbane) – were what added up to a 4-1 result.
Based on individual statistics, any Combined XI will include five or even six Englishmen: Root, Tongue, Brook, Stokes, Crawley, Bethell and Archer would have a claim. But that would entirely miss the point of a team sport, 11 on 11, the weakest players having as big an impact as the strongest, and ultimate victory going to the side whose whole effort adds up to far, far more than the sum of its parts.
