“The dream is always the same,” says Joel Goodsen at the start of Risky Business. And it is, even if everyone’s version is different. He dreams of missing an exam that will ruin his future. Others can’t find their batting kit when they’re due in the middle, or have to flee an enemy who is always right behind them. They wake, they stumble through their day, then back into the halls of sleep.
Australia’s class of Headingley 2019 would have had some dreams after Ben Stokes pulled off his last-day miracle. After one night’s sleep their head coach Justin Langer made them watch the whole innings again, the way they fell apart. Tim Paine, then the captain, spoke much later of how often it still came to mind. And then, at Lord’s in 2023, there it is again.
Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, both of whom became slot machines four years earlier, are going through it again. Under clouds on the last day, suddenly they are bowling in gumboots, gumboots in mud, dredging and trudging towards Ben Stokes in the middle. He burns with an unreal light. They can’t get any traction, any speed. The ball floats out of the hand like a handful of foam, fast bowling with the venom of a sponge bath. They keep running up that road, keep running up that hill. Stokes keeps battering them away.
It’s the fact that all of his attempts for six strike clean. It’s the fact that when he pulls the lever on the slot machine, his numbers keeps coming up. Anybody can hit a bomb, but nobody can keep doing it. Just like Headingley, they have nine back on the fence. Just like Headingley, the ball keeps soaring over them. Just like Headingley, when the miscue does come, a fielder jars a knee in the turf, digs a divot, rolls over and spills the catch.
At one point Stokes gets the equation down to 74 to win, the same number he put on for the last wicket in 2019. This time he has four tailenders for company, an advance on one. But this time he has already made 152 runs, more than his whole innings last time. Australia have enough margin, adrenaline has time to curdle, fatigue has time to tell. So it does, the eventual top edge, that once failed tactics paying off, Hazlewood with the wicket to perhaps purge the dream.
Still, for the crowd at Lord’s on that final day, the appreciation of Stokes and his 155, his nine sixes, was also fuelled by resentment, sticking it up opponents who were deemed transgressors. It was Chapter II in the battle for Ashes grievance, one controversial dismissal for another. On the fourth evening, when Mitchell Starc’s catch was overturned to reprieve Ben Duckett, Australian supporters were livid, from Test greats in the commentary box to anonymous accounts online.
Clearly out, was their verdict on a claimed catch that was at least sufficiently unclear for a very good umpire with time to think it over to decide that it wasn’t. It was fuelled by a lack of understanding of the Laws: catches do not just require controlling the ball, but having full control of the player’s movement, which means concluding any dive or slide or roll. That is what the definition means and is intended to mean, whether or not people think it should.
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The angst was surprising, given England were so far behind in the game and four down. Frankly, any team that can’t create two chances from someone who plays like Duckett doesn’t deserve to win. But Australian soreness was overtaken by the English equivalent, after Alex Carey tenpin-bowled Jonny Bairstow’s stumps.
Again, it involved the emotional overcomplication of the factually straightforward. A batter’s first responsibility is to know where the ball is, and when it is live. Had the bowler been a spinner, Bairstow would never have wandered out of his ground. Had the fielder been anyone but the keeper, likewise. People incorrectly assume that the keeper’s gloves mean dead ball, but this ball was returned to the stumps in one movement. It was Bairstow’s oversight alone.
Some irony, though, that the dismissal fired up Stokes to the cusp of Headingley Mark II. The home crowd would have loved it had Australia brought destruction upon themselves. Few Lord’s crowds have ever been as hostile. Unsurprising then that Cummins did not back down in his post-match interview, smiling as the howls drowned out his answer: that his team saw a repeated mistake from an opponent and eventually punished it. He already knows how to endure criticism when he believes his position is right, and his team are now 2-0 up. Tonight, he will sleep just fine.
