The day before the Ashes

The day before the Ashes.

Tomorrow at Edgbaston the smouldering fires of sporting rivalry will once again be re-ignited. You can almost smell the animosity now. The flames are flickering quite vividly, the hearty crack of cricket ball against willow now no more than a day away. It will be a day of drowsy summer contemplation, of gently flicking through the middle class and respectable pages of the Daily Telegraph and The Times before settling down by the boundary rope where once the greats of Ashes past lifted their bat or swung supple arms and shoulders.

It is now 38 years since that famous England and Australia series. It was the year that players from both sides brandished their swords, glared furiously at each other as if determined to both undermine and humiliate before attempting to demolish each other with a single swipe of a bat or a vicious sling of a ball from the bowlers end. By the end of this titanic battle royal between England and the Aussies, England emerged as thoroughly deserving winners of that little urn with a smattering of Ashes as a reward for their mighty labours.

If you shut your eyes for a just a minute or two you can still see the all conquering, boastful, bragging, wild eyed and fiercely enthusiastic Ian Botham grabbing hold of the bails and stumps at Headingley before charging across those hallowed acres, face burning and bursting with patriotic pride and bubbly effervescence. England had regained the Ashes for what seemed like the first time in ages, a victory made all the sweeter by the knowledge that the Australians had so arrogantly assumed that the Ashes should have been theirs by right. It was time to settle old scores.

Under the scholarly and almost learned skipper Mike Brearley, England threw caution to the wind as the cool, calculating and impressively patient Geoff Boycott, the suavely elegant David Gower, the robustly aggressive and fearsome looking Mike Gatting, the confident and fluently stylish Peter Willey all joined forces to slay the daunting and seemingly overwhelming Australian challenge.

 Dennis Lillee, still brutally sharp and fast, was still hurling missiles at the England batting while Terry Alderman had joined Lillee in a punishing fusillade of red ball deliveries that swung and seamed in perfect harmony. Australian could still stand by Allan Border, a relentless force of nature when the mood took him, smashing the ball wide of the covers or drilling and cutting the ball with all the venomous power you'd expect of an Australian batsman. Kim Hughes skippered Australia with a very precise and scientific outlook on the game while Graham Yallop and Graeme Wood held the Aussie innings with the most adhesive glue.

But it was both the England batsman and bowlers who provided the 1981 Ashes side with perhaps their most remarkable contributions. David Gower spent most of that fabled Ashes series wafting recklessly outside off stump either guiding the ball wide of gully for four or just hoping against hope that the ball would fall kindly for him. He reminded you of a duke hailing a Victorian hansom cab outside a high society party in Belgravia. But Gower was always the ultimate stylist and purist, a man who knew that the 1981 Ashes series was destined to be his for the taking.

And yet when we turn back the clock to 1981 the name of Ian Botham will resound down the ages like a Sunday village church bell. Botham was bold, brash, provocative at times, controversial, bullish and buccaneering, a player who threw the bat at everything dismissively as if he were genuinely annoyed with the Australians. Here was a man who harboured the most personal grudge against them for no particular reason. With the ever threatening Graham Dilley always constituting the greatest danger when it looked as if England were flagging, the series hung by a thread.

Then both Botham and the magnificent Bob Willis came flying out of the traps as if electrified and galvanised into turbo charged action. The Headingley Test was the vital turning point for England and once Botham had pinned back the Aussies, battering the Aussie middle order almost savagely into submission, wickets fell like bowling skittles.

For some of us though it was the heroically bravura display of Bob Willis that held the Headingley crowed in complete thrall. We will never forget the sweat soaked stringed vest, the scuttling and scurrying run up to the crease, the crisp white shirt billowing in the soft summer breeze, the curly hair bouncing up and down joyously as if Willis knew that it wouldn't impede his progress. Then there was that slanting, side on approach to the wicket the result of which was an explosion of whirling arms and hands. But it was that intense and pained expression on the Willis face that will live long in the memory.

So there you have it everybody. The 2019 Ashes series will begin tomorrow, the resumption of many decades of hostility and needle. We will briefly remember and only visualise the majesty and almost regal authority of the 'Don' Sir Donald Bradman who, in 1948, brought over his stunningly gifted and magically resourceful team to England, leaving English shores with the most enduring and indelible memories, a team of grace, style, class, panache and a team England would never ever forget.

Tomorrow morning an expectant Edgbaston crowd will oil their vocal chords with an early lager or two before young children will huddle next to the boundary ropes as if relieved that school days had were no longer an arduous chore and a confrontation between England and Australia would write another chapter in their young lives.

 But we will always have 1981, that notable moment in our sporting lives when everything seemed to fall into place perfectly. We have endured many a sporting disaster, those embarrassing setbacks and defeats when the whole world seemed to be against us. But England regained the Ashes in 1981, the grass was always green, the mood was just right and the Baggy Green caps of Australia knew they were about to get the most severe shock to their system. It was in the stars because we knew it would happen. It's time for the Ashes and may the best team win as long as it's England.