The Ashes of 2013-14 casts a long shadow. Mitchell Johnson is the gunslinger at sunset. He defines the modern genre like John Wayne did Westerns. From months ago, when anticipation of the current Ashes series began, through to the close of the Gabba Test this week and looking to the matches ahead, there has been an obsession with short-pitched bowling, with fright and intimidation, with spooked Englishmen being taken apart, their egos sent home in tiny pieces.
All that we see is cast in terms of four years ago. All that we hear invokes it. It’s almost like the 2015 Ashes didn’t happen. Remember that? Slotted in-between somewhere, a few twilit memories of English grounds. Someone mentioned careers ending: Brad Haddin, Shane Watson, Michael Clarke, Ryan Harris, Chris Rogers. Then Big Bad Mitch himself a couple of games later.
All that talk of smashing teams, destroying them. Bowled out for 60 at Trent Bridge, 136 at Birmingham. Those whitewash Ashes surrendered in two separate helpless hours. England did destroy Australia, but by pitching up. It is Australia alone coveting the method that threatens safety and causes fear, rather than threatening wickets and causing embarrassment.
Four years on, the Ashes whitewash has become a game of dress-ups. Who is going to play the left-arm terror quick? Here is an obvious choice. Wait, this new kid wants to play, and he’s already popular. Bowls with the wrong arm though. It’s OK, you can both be Mitch. Alright then, Josh can play two parts at once, won’t that be fun! Who wants to be the English lynchpin, frazzled to the point that he hooks blind catches to the deep? The same kid as last time. Tail-enders flapping at soaring deliveries? A couple of them are back too. It’s a bit like being a burglar in Home Alone; you wouldn’t think anyone would want to reprise the role.
Then on the first day, anticlimax. Brisbane’s tacky pitch gave the short-pitched stuff no oomph. On the Guardian podcast, Adam Collins and I described it as Australia’s bowlers tearing off the Christmas wrapping paper only to find out batteries weren’t included. Next day, a pack of Duracells in hand, they tried again. Initially it was offering honey; to get Dawid Malan caught in the deep. He duly did his best Pooh Bear. Jonny Bairstow and the tail went the same way. Second time round, a quickening pitch caught the lower order defending deliveries beyond their qualification.
In a source of great delight for the Australians, the bouncer game was back on, and they wanted England to know about it. “I think we’ve made our intentions pretty clear with how we’re going to bowl to the tail,” captain Steve Smith said as soon as possible. “I think they know that as well. They can expect a bit more of a barrage … [Adelaide is] one of the quickest wickets in the country at night. We saw how effective our bowlers could be when this wicket quickened up a little bit. That’s exciting.”
Coach Darren Lehmann backed up the new fastest-night-wicket theory, and said that bigger grounds made short bowling more effective. “So that’s one for us that we see as an advantage … at the back end when the wicket quickened up and we could go after them a bit harder, [that] was helpful. That’s the blueprint, it’s no secret we’re going to attack their middle and lower order like that.”
Why is it that the bouncer creates such thrall? It’s quintessentially an Ashes thing. When Pakistan toured last year, we didn’t hear endless talk about playing them chin-music. When New Zealand visited the Gabba and the WACA in 2015, we said that the dead pitches stopped edges carrying to slip, not that they prevented an onslaught to the head.
Australia’s approach to the Ashes is always confrontational, as per this season’s woeful hashtag that somehow escaped unfumigated from a rogue marketing laboratory. But apparently it’s not enough to beat England. You have to break them.
With Cricket Australia growing new tentacles as a media entity, a few nights ago the press pack was invited to watch its Ashes documentary series. Forged in Fire is a mash-up of archival footage and current-day interviews, often highly entertaining. It’s hard to miss with that kind of material. Nominally covering several 1970s contests, most of the screen time went to 1974-5, the Lillee and Thomson series. Its fast-bowling fireworks are the easiest sell.
The theatre was full of laughs, both at Jeff Thomson’s raucously blue turn of phrase, and at the surprise that CA would relax enough to release a product full of it. Thomson has always has been able to spin a good line. Those chuckles were as easily drawn by his blithe comments about how he had wanted to hit and hurt batsmen. The word ‘kill’ was thrown around more than once.
Footage lingered on Colin Cowdrey’s anguish at being smashed in the ribs, David Lloyd having his box broken, and Keith Fletcher being hit square in the head. Thomson talked cheerily about the sound the ball made rebounding off Fletcher’s skull. After the screening, a panel including Greg Chappell made further quips about the speedster’s ability to dish out injury.
I wouldn’t make the argument that any of this is wrong, per se. That’s the way the stories unfolded, and the real or anticipated injuries have become part of the mythos. What I can say is that the jovial tone sat uncomfortably next to the gestures of remembrance two days later, when the third anniversary of Phillip Hughes’ death fell on Brisbane’s fifth day. Photo tributes were posted, Australia’s players wore black armbands with PH initials, and David Warner took special care to reach 63 not out, the score symbolically associated with Hughes.
The two parts of this equation are not directly related. It’s a sad irony that Hughes was struck by a slower-ball bouncer, designed to fool him with a lack of pace rather than threaten with velocity. Even so, it was a strange memorial in the midst of a carnival celebrating the short ball.
Which isn’t to say it shouldn’t be bowled. Bouncers have been part of the game for far longer than recent trends. It only raises questions that I don’t have the answers for. Perhaps there are no answers. Life is full of contradictions that defy resolution.
And so we move on to Adelaide, a pitch known lately for seam and swing, where New Zealand and South Africa competed with Australia to hit stumps and win edges. And we’re told to contemplate it as a potential launchpad for short stuff. Johnson’s series is a “talisman”, wrote Brydon Coverdale on Cricinfo, for an Australian team “desperate to replicate the whitewash. And why wouldn’t they? It’s the only one of the past five Ashes campaigns they have won.”
Perhaps that’s the reason, the only key tried in recent memory that has turned the lock. Perhaps it is something more visceral, the exertion of actual power in the oldest cricketing rivalry, something bigger than the simple matter of victory. Perhaps it is the exculpation of past humiliations via a more direct retaliation. Whatever the case, the obsession is not going anywhere. Cricket has always been a sport obsessed with its past. Right now, it is living it.
