It’s been one of the strangest cricket series on record. Hurried, frenetic, foolish, haphazard, and, at times, unbecomingly immature. The cricket between England and Australia in this, the 2025-6 Ashes series, was a recreational coke line, a narcotics fix, a dopamine thrill. But was it even cricket? One thinks of those deathless lines from the French general Pierre Bosquet responding to the British light cavalry attack on Russian artillery during the Crimean War in October 1854: “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre: c’est de la folie” (It is magnificent, but it is not war: it is madness). Position this same Frenchman in Gallic severity at the Melbourne Cricket Ground during the Boxing Day Test match between the oldest rivals of the game, and we might well have something similarly stated: “Magnificent, but was it cricket? It was certainly mad.”
This series has seen some of the earliest conclusions of Test matches in recent memory. (Two matches were extinguished in two days.) Much attention has been paid to that gaudy, streakily packaged confection called Bazball, the creation of the English coach and former New Zealand cricketer Brendon McCullum. It might have simply been called cricket of the entertaining, playful variety: rapid, giddy scoring, above all entertaining; scintillating, sharp bowling, and smaller totals to chase. But it was far more than that. It suggested a relaxed disposition to the dusty protocols of tradition: fewer training sessions; fewer warmup matches; and more golf and activities unrelated to the essentials of the game.
We live in an age of increasingly short attention spans, conditioned by the flashing image and the addiction to screens. This fact is mirrored by shorter forms of cricket. Twenty20 cricket, involving 20 overs a side (120 legal deliveries), has sliced into the patience and attention of the modern cricket audience. That said, the number of spectators during this Ashes Test series was some of the healthiest ever seen, thwarted by the fact that all the games bar one made it into the fifth day. They were, however, treated to what was described by the collective of cricket scribblers and critics as of the “fast forward” variety.
Aggressive cricket played with a hard-boiled attitude is one thing; illogical acts of seppuku when the team needs to accumulate a winning total is another. All too often, in this series, suicide was made a habit, proving to be far from painless. The English, so happened, did it far more than the Australians. This realised an observation made by Barney Ronay in February: that Bazball is not so much a cult as a “death cult”. Hence, England’s losses in the first three Tests ended their attempt to win their first Ashes trophy on Australian soil since 2010-1. It took till the Melbourne Cricket Ground’s victory inside two days to end a 5,468-day drought of victories.
In this series, which is yet to start its fifth match, momentary, spectacular displays of talent and rumblings of impressive achievement have been had. One of England’s finest batsmen, Joe Root, finally scored his long-awaited century in Australia. The lionhearted English captain, Ben Stokes, had his moments of fortune with ball and bat. But by far, the dominant share of good cricket favoured Australia, deservedly triumphant and, fundamentally, disciplined in single-minded toughness. Travis Head, that coarse figure of a man, steered his side to victory in the opening Perth test with 123 runs off a mere 69 deliveries, shaming all others before him. In Brisbane, the home side proved crushing, winning by 8 wickets. In Adelaide, Head again impressed with 170 in his second innings, adding to the century by the Australian wicketkeeper Alex Carey in the first. Throughout, Australia’s bowlers proved remorselessly accurate and metronomically consistent. England proved to be feeble.
Then came a dramatic victory for the tourists in the Boxing Day Test, a moment of almost sacramental reverence in the Australian sporting calendar, reduced to two days of thrilling, brief insanity. The players seemed utterly bewitched by invisible demons carousing under the surface of the pitch. The wicket was described as “furry”, suggesting a Yeti creating magical mayhem on the grass. One of the most seasoned commentators in the outfit, England’s own Jonathan Agnew, suggested many “readings” on the nature of the pitch. In the end, it’s the players that make the pitch what it is, stifling the potency of those demons. They can be superstitious and terrified, nervous and weak at the knees.
Some of the commentators were furious at this riotous display. Dean Bilton, writing for the ABC, lost his nerve and tapped a streak of false nostalgia. “Almost none of it was befitting the occasion or the historical significance of the Ashes.” Piffle. “When record books remind us that the Boxing Day crowd was the greatest ever in Australian cricket history, it will sting to think back upon what those 94,000 sat through.” Ask them, then.
True, many things and feats of skill are always lost when a five-day game is slashed by three. There was no spell of slow bowling. No steady crafting and construction of innings. Weather conditions, in addition to those of the pitch itself, were not allowed their full, kaleidoscopic influence. As commentators sought a scalp, attention turned to the pitch itself. The groundskeeper had decided to leave more grass on the wicket, hoping it would hold leading into the fourth and fifth days. Conditions initially conducive to the bowlers would even out to favour the bat. But the cricket world has been dazed by an obsession with brutal batting and any rules that handicap bowlers. Anything seen as remotely favourable to the bowler is abominated.
The English critic and writer Neville Cardus noted that, more than any other game, cricket was inclined towards sentimentalism and cant. There is certainly no reason to be sentimental about this series. All too often, the foolish reigned; at stages, the brilliant asserted themselves sufficiently to push through to victory. But the ones to really feel the pinch will be the treasurers of the Australian Cricket Board, having lost millions on games that did not make the five days.
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