“Even in the dead of the Australian night, there is a palpable sense of England as a country alive again to the idiosyncratic, maddening, marvellous joys of cricket, indeed of a country reawakened to its sporting vocation.” Thus wrote Greg Baum in the Melbourne Age in 2005 when the nation was transfixed by the greatest Test series of the modern era.
Those of us lucky enough to be able to watch the drama unfold 10 years ago from the first Test at Lord’s to the last at The Oval shook hands with a hint of sadness at the end of it all, tacitly acknowledging that it would never be this good again.
There were astonishing moments in 1981 amid some ordinary cricket – think of the first three days at Headingley – but in 2005 there was never a day when the cricket was anything other than spellbinding. Sometimes it was unbearably tense yet it remained impossible to take the eyes from the action that was being played out on terrestrial TV.
Kids raced from their screens as Richie Benaud bid Channel 4 viewers farewell to the nearest patch of grass or their local cricket club to try to bowl like Freddie Flintoff or Shane Warne or to bat like Kevin Pietersen or Ricky Ponting. Among those transfixed was the 14-year-old Jos Buttler, who remembers the thrill. “I think back to when I was a kid and inspired by the 2005 Ashes,” he says. “It inspired everyone to pick up a bat and play the game and pretend to be Marcus Trescothick in the back garden.
“That 2005 series was amazing, probably the best ever and even now everyone can remember it like yesterday. As players you want to be people who inspire the younger generation or the public to watch the game and play it themselves. That is part of our job: to inspire people and make it fun.”
It is too much to expect that the 2015 series will touch those heights. Even if this were to happen the action would not be available to the majority of the country. Sky Sports have held the rights since 2006. We can debate at length the drop in participation and whether the England and Wales Cricket Board’s decision to abandon terrestrial TV has much to do with that. Do the extra millions compensate for the inaccessibility of cricket? But the toothpaste will not return to the tube.
The terrestrial channels are no longer interested in Test cricket. It was brilliant in 2005, but it is an unwieldy product, unpredictable in its timings and tough to schedule. And expensive. For the majority – and the casual supporter – the cricket continues to come second hand.
Both sides may try to draw on the 2005 experience – even the Aussies acknowledge it was one of the greatest series ever – and both have one survivor as a first-hand witness. Ian Bell and Michael Clarke were relatively peripheral characters in the great contest of 10 years ago but they were there.
The Australians might be more watchful of stray balls on the outfield and be a tad more flexible at the toss – with Glenn McGrath suddenly out of the fray how did they continue with their determination to bowl at Edgbaston? England will seek to recapture that spirit of adventure, which meant that they refused to be cowed by a side universally regarded as superior – with Ponting, McGrath, Warne, Adam Gilchrist and the rest near their peak. As in 2005 England start as the underdogs and underdogs have to snap away relentlessly at their foe.
That Edgbaston Test began with England hitting a wonderful, preposterous 407 from 79 overs on the first day and it ended with the Observer’s estimable football correspondent, Paul Wilson, writing: “Might as well admit it now … that nothing in the next nine months of overhyped, overpaid bladder-chasing is likely to be as gripping, as heroic or as memorable as the denouement of the Edgbaston Test match.”
Just a pale imitation of 10 years ago would keep everyone happy this time.
