Has there been another Ashes series in recent memory when the cricket in the month preceding made it feel like a shame that it was going to happen at all? In a fledgling English summer when the phrase ‘brand of cricket’ has been repeated so often it has all the cross-eyed meaning of ‘red-lorry-yellow-lorry’, how odd and unprecedented it seems that England beat someone else at their own game. It was, after all, New Zealand’s own brand of cricket we were playing.
And so, with the Ashes upon us, here we are: a nation of cricketers who actually learnt lessons. English sportsmen who said they were going to do something and actually went and did it. Disorientating, yes, and perhaps belated, but nonetheless, an achievement to be celebrated. All it took was a touring side as entertaining and as full of modern virtuoso cricket perspective as New Zealand to free us up. Their captain, Brendon McCullum, turned up as a hero to the likes of Moeen Ali, and left with all his best ideas stolen. It almost felt like an apology was in order. Whisper it, but it looked like playing for England was a lot of fun.
The fun, one would be forgiven for assuming, is probably over. No sooner had Michael Clarke gotten off the plane than he had asserted that the line of sportsmanship should not be crossed, but that Australia would probably headbutt it. As a mission statement, given the spirit of everything we had only just witnessed against New Zealand, it felt, well, unnecessary. Like a bunch of impossibly typecast American high-school quarterbacks who walk out of a room at a party only to jealously return and find everyone having more fun without them.
Part of us, let’s face it, wants them to go away already. Take the Ashes back with you if it’s really that important. We’d have been happier watching kwik cricket against New Zealand all summer long. In any case, we’ve all got the 2005 series on DVD and everyone knows that’s the only Ashes that actually mattered. Any England stars-in-waiting worth their salt will already know that if a game is close and we win, the first objective is to shake an Australian’s hand sincerely in an unobstructed view of a camera. You will be remembered forever as some kind of fast bowling Gandhi.
Begrudgingly though, we must be prepared to accept certain stark realities. The battery of Australian fast bowlers will definitely bombard Moeen’s rib-cage with a bat-pad permanently lodged next to him. They’ll probably exclusively bowl at Stuart Broad’s head. Most ominously of all, they will bowl full and straight at Gary Ballance’s stumps.
They’ll probably do it all without smiling that much and while chewing gum aggressively at slip. Chris Rogers, crab-like and deceptively un-amateurish, will block and leave for hours while David Warner scores accelerated runs like a far-fetched cricket version of a villain WWF wrestler. We’ll probably congratulate ourselves for weathering early storms with the new ball and then play seven consecutive poor shots to Steve Smith’s part-time leg-breaks. It’s part of the script we expect this time.
What we hadn’t counted on was that the Kiwis, along with the memories, would leave us something that maybe we could have all done without: a genuine glint of hope.
There is some kind of newly developed tangible (improbable, but still tangible) evidence that we may offer … resistance. We might even counterattack. We might even attack them out of our own free will. Actually, wait. Is there enough evidence to suggest there is significant personality and talent in this team to truly capture the country’s imagination once again?
They do – again, whisper it – fit the bill. Adam Lyth has a ready-made terrace anthem waiting for him in a Des’ree hit single from the 90’s. Moeen and Joe Root, refreshingly, do interviews with honesty and without gratingly palpable media training. Jos Buttler is basically a sensitive English Adam Gilchrist, in a good way. Mark Wood does something with an imaginary horse which I still don’t really understand and has the weirdest run-up I’ve ever seen. Alex Hales might get a Test match. Sky Sports have already prepared evolution of the ages montages where Botham-becomes-Freddie-becomes-bionic-Stokes. Ben himself even went as far as calling Australia ‘as human as we are’ last week.
Half of the team are in that magic and fleeting pre-dawn of an England cricketer’s Ashes timeline, unscarred from disastrous series gone by (see Michael Vaughan’s prerequisite from 2005). All this, tied together by a reluctant leader who deserves to win this series more than anyone else despite the longer he goes into his captaincy appearing to be wearing tighter and tighter shirts, probably almost exclusively drinking protein shakes and dressed in an increasingly bizarrely balanced horse riding hat for a batting helmet. Alastair Cook stubbornly and impressively still holds his own around a baying precession of never-ending critique by hundreds and hundreds of people ill-equipped to captain England themselves, and this, if the universe is balanced, must finally come with some substantial reward.
Having weighed it up, it’s enough to convince me. I’ve convinced myself. We’ll win. I’m not a betting man. And if I was, I wouldn’t actually put money on that. But I would, at the very least, put my house on the cricket being far more competitive than the foregone conclusion that had been assumed in the not too distant past. I’m not sure that’s something you can bet on, that’s not really my forte. But Freddie thinks it could be special and I’m willing to take his word for it. The point I’m making is, whether it be a bit tougher, whether this new hope may hurt occasionally and whether the forthcoming cricket isn’t as wholesome as the New Zealand series just gone, I can’t wait and I hope you can’t either.
The Maccabees’ new album, Marks To Prove It, will be released on 31 July on Fiction Records. Listen to the new single, Something Like Happiness, here: http://po.st/SLHPSUVV
