The last one-off Ashes Test took place in 1887-88, but only if you’re talking literally. The opening match of a long series often sets such a decisive tone – particularly in Australia - that it could often be described as the deciding first Test. Most people give Joe Root’s England two chances in the upcoming series, and slim is unavailable because of an ongoing police investigation. But in the sprawling history of Test cricket there is always a precedent to inspire hope. In this case it’s the first Test at the Gabba in 1986-87, when an England team given approximately 0.00% chance won so emphatically that all the pre-series doom was transferred to Australia.
There are plenty of parallels between then and now, and a couple of reminders that sometimes the past is another planet, never mind a foreign country. The story of the game – “can’t bat, can’t bowl, can’t field” – has been told a gazillion times, so here’s an attempt to disguise brazen recycling: it’s our series of England First Test Dos and Don’ts!
Don’t: go to a nightclub until 2am on day one
England were on top of their game in the buildup to Brisbane – off the field, that is. On it they were a mess: they lost to Queensland, squeezed past South Australia and would have lost to Western Australia but for rain. “The senior players,” said Chris Broad, “were adjusting to the wine and the socialising.” This was the last England tour when Homeric drinking was part of the itinerary, led inevitably by Sir Ian Botham. After one monumental night out during a tour game in Perth, Botham was demoted to No8 because of a migraine. As he arrived in the middle, his internal monologue was celebrating the ability to walk in a vaguely straight line when somebody pointed out that he had forgotten his bat. When the innings started Botham was suffering from triple vision and decided to smash the middle of the three balls he saw coming towards him. He top-scored with 48 from 38 balls.
There was also a spectacular night out in Bundaberg, when David Gower tried to match Botham rum for rum and ended up being carried home by Botham and Allan Lamb. Botham should probably have told him to calm down, but he was having too much fun. After he had put Gower to bed, Botham resumed his night out and head-butted a quarrelsome sugar farmer.
The team meeting the night before the first Test was a line in the sand. “Beefy, who had been culprit No 1, said: ‘Right, the party is over,’” remembered the seam bowler Gladstone Small. “We’d had our fun and games, now all the senior players came together.”
To go to a nightclub. In their defence, Botham, Gower and Lamb followed the management’s encouragement not to leave the hotel: they went to the Pink Parrot under the Hilton hotel, where the team was staying, until 2am. Such an approach wouldn’t fly these days but all three delivered in the match. And once the Test started, Botham went into game mode to such an extent that, when the team went to the Gold Coast on the rest day, he rested in his hotel room.
Do: bat first, quieten the crowd – and find some unlikely heroes
Australia drew 0-0 in India a month before the Ashes, a series that included the second tied Test. It was widely hailed as a breakthrough for a young side who were expected to regain the Ashes. The pre-match mood was summed up in the Wisden Almanack match report. “When Allan Border won the toss and put England in to bat in helpful conditions for fast bowling, it required little imagination to see Australia going on to win and establishing an ascendancy that would take a lot of winning back.”
The phrase “quieten the crowd” is usually exclusive to football but it applies to an Ashes tour of Australia. Some patient top-order batting – and the excessively macho bowling of the inexperienced trio of Bruce Reid, Chris Matthews and Merv Hughes – allowed England to quietly ease into the series. When Mike Gatting, the captain, came in at No3, he told Bill Athey that all that mattered was being at the crease in a few hours’ time. Gatting struck a perfect balance between attack and defence, hitting 11 fours in a 118-ball 61.
England were determined not to get sucked into a battle of machismo, and Gatting was particularly happy with how Athey responded to Hughes’s sledging: “Bill answered Hughes’s verbal offensive by touching his forelock rather like a country yokel talking to the local squire and saying: ‘Sorry sir, sorry sir.’ Poor Hughes looked even more puzzled.”
Gatting’s ego-free captaincy was a feature of England’s tour. He moved up to No3 on the morning of the match, though the parallels with Root are not that great: he did so to protect Gower, who was in such bad nick that, during the match against Western Australia, he apologised to WA’s Ken MacLeay for not being in good enough form to edge his outswingers.
If England are to win in 2017-18, they will need unlikely heroes as in 1986-87. It was Chris Broad’s series; he made three centuries and ended up as the International Cricketer of the Year. That came later. At Brisbane it was his fellow opener Athey who justified his professional existence. He went into the match with a Test average of 15.53 from eight Tests but made a then career-best 76 from 189 balls. Every dot ball drained a little more of Australia’s testosterone and confidence.
England ended a rain-affected first day on 198 for two. They had shown they could bat. Soon they would have the chance to prove they could bowl and field.
Don’t: rely on your superhero all-rounder
England’s win in Brisbane was three parts discipline, which is easily repeatable, and one part genius, which is not. They suffered a terrible start to the second day, losing Athey and Lamb straight away. It might have been worse had Gower not been dropped on nought. Instead, he and Botham added 118 for the fifth wicket to reassert England’s dominance. If Gower was scratchy, Botham was disgustingly good in making 138 from 174 balls.
It was Botham’s last Test hundred and his last great Test performance. After just about his only loose stroke, when he tried to smash Hughes for a fourth four in an over, Gower walked down the pitch and said: “I should be telling you to calm down, but I’m having too much fun.”
For the most part Botham was calm. This was no beery slog; he played with murderous purpose. Gatting said he was “as safe as Fort Knox right from the start”. He batted in a floppy hat with his frosted mullet on display. After playing himself in, Botham took Hughes to the cleaners with 22 in a single over. He hit four sixes in all, one of which prompted a memorable comment from Dean Jones: “Jeez, Merv, that one went so far it should probably have qualified for frequent flyer points.”
In 1980s Test cricket, a strike-rate of 79 in an innings was barely legal. “People should savour every moment they can to watch this player,” said Bob Willis, commentating on Australian TV. “They only come once in a lifetime.” It was a nigh-on perfect tone-setting innings, reopening wounds Australia thought had healed.
England will not get something similar from Ben Stokes but, if they bat first and lay a platform, Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali have the ability to give the innings a bit of Beef.
Do: use scoreboard pressure
England’s first-innings score of 456 gave them control of the match and meant Australia were realistically playing for a draw. “Australians are less dangerous when they are on the defensive,” wrote Peter Roebuck after the second day. “They are taught to attack and to win, and so far in Brisbane they have not known how.”
All it took was two days of tough, occasionally brilliant batting for England to alter the mood of the series. They were equally disciplined and methodical with the ball. The new coach, Micky Stewart, spent a long time stressing importance of line and giving the batsmen nothing to hit. The game has changed – Australia won’t score at 2.39 an over in the match as they did in 1986-87 – but the principle of scoreboard pressure is timeless. Allan Border made seven from 47 balls and was tied down by John Emburey. When Phil Edmonds came on, his eyes lit up and he holed out.
Graham Dilley took his first Test five-for as Australia were forced to follow on. In the second innings, Emburey – in the middle of an excellent 18-month spell that came to a shuddering halt when he failed to take a single wicket in four Tests against Pakistan the following summer – took five for 80 from 42.5 overs. He was masterful.
England struggled on the fourth day, when they took only five wickets and Geoff Marsh made an unbeaten century. It was a reminder that a Test victory in Australia rarely comes without some seriously hard yakka. But they hurried through the lower order on the final morning and reached their target of 75 for the loss of three wickets. The victory was celebrated appropriately in a Chinese restaurant. Before they went out, the coach Stewart promised to fine anyone who was suffering from a clear head the following day.
Do: realise how quickly the mood can change
Ashes series are emotive beasts. It’s far too important for logic to be allowed in the building. “Before the game began, England were widely seen as inept, out of form, unhappy, wrongly chosen, tired and divided,” wrote Matthew Engel in Wisden Cricket Monthly. “Australia were regarded as young, fit, spirited, well-led, improving and together. Almost before the first day was out, these impressions started to alter; by the end, it was as though a 10-ton weight had been slipped on to one side of the scales.”
Border was in a vile mood after the game. He didn’t go to the presentation, sending the vice-captain, David Boon, to collect the cheque, and in the post‑match press conference he responded to innocuous questions as if somebody has asked him whether his parents were overrated.
The Aussie press savaged the team and the whole thing perpetuated itself: England dominated the series and took an unassailable 2-0 lead before losing a dead rubber at Sydney. The final Test is designed to be the decider. In the Ashes, the first Test is usually the one.
