The Ashes

 The Ashes

So it is that summer has peeped its head out of the hedgerows bursting with colour and personality and a sporting summer greets the arrival of one of its most fiercely competitive rivalries. Amid the bees, wasps and butterflies that always seem to be on their best behaviour, cricket grounds around the country will be alive with feverish anticipation, ritualistic decorum, the gentle hum of lively conversation and every so often punctuated with loud laughs, guffaws, giggles and a good deal of cheerful banter.

There comes a time during the year when sport loves to abandon itself to sport at its finest and purest, sport at its most gentle and dignified, sport at its well mannered and courteous while next to cricket's boundaries and pavilions, cricket announces itself quite boldly and vigorously. Football has now departed the sporting landscape and in its place is quite the most fiery, red blooded, volatile, hostile and antagonistic contest of them all.

This morning at Edgbaston, the Ashes, that age old argument between England and Australia, fires its first guns, blows a gasket, roars into action, all guns blazing, foes and enemies but then good buddy drinking partners when the day is over. Then the  blackbirds at mid wicket will finally finish an animated discussion about the old days when Ian Botham, Graham Dilley Mike Brearley, Graham Gooch, Mike Gatting, Peter Willey, Geoff Boycott, David Gower and Chris Old would always deliver cricket from the heavens. They stared at each other in awe and wonderment because those were the days when cricket seemed to go on forever from mid May until deep into September.

Today the white flannelled men of England will discard their spring pullovers, polish that famous red ball almost incessantly and then venture into the green fields that are forever England. So it's the Ashes 2023 but to the nostalgic community it could be any Ashes series if we close our eyes and cast our minds back to the way things used to be. This is no ordinary Ashes since this England- Australia battle royale has never been boring, always controversial, invariably personal and packed with incident, pivotal turning points and then the players themselves.

For the fact is where would we be without the players? At the beginning of the 1930's none of us knew what to expect but then discovered that cricket meant something much more disturbing and sinister than was first thought. The now notorious Bodyline Tour was quite the most grotesque spectacle any of the watching public and media would ever witness. One Harold Larwood took it upon himself to inflict raw violence and aggression on a series that would become progressively more dangerous with every single Test match.

Larwood, Nottingham's most fearsome of England's fast bowlers would hurl down what can only be described as missiles from an arm loaded with menace. conviction and a sniper's intent. Larwood desperately wanted Australia's blood and would stop at nothing to make life for the Aussies as uncomfortable as possible. The bouncers then came thick and fast, of course bordering on illegitimacy and quite prohibitive at times. How did Larwood get away with it, you may ask  yourself? But anything went way back then and although we winced with horror and shock, the general impression was that this was England against Australia and nothing was held back. Are we ready? So let's go.

But in the now epic year of 1953 England and Australia were at good natured loggerheads for entirely different reasons. The much beloved and now deeply missed Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Second serenely awaited her Coronation, Sir Gordon Richards galloped home to victory in the Epsom Derby and a couple of intrepid explorers reached the summit of Mount Everest. It was a year unlike any other and it just happened to be the year of the Ashes where everything was at stake and emotions of course were running high.

This was the year of immense cricketing feats, broken sporting records and a gentleman by the name of Jim Laker. Laker was a slow, cunning leg spinner, gentle, a modest and totally unobtrusive figure, amiable by nature and a cricketer with authenticity coursing through his veins. When his shirt was billowing with the sweat of high conflict, Laker breezed throughout a day's play with barely a flutter of unrest or agitation. Nothing bothered him apart from the taking of wickets and that he did with bountiful abundance, carefree abandon rather like picking apples from a Kentish orchard.

But Laker once took 19 wickets and 10 in an innings at Old Trafford. When the legendary Len Hutton tossed the ball to his frontline fast quickie bowler, very few of us had any inkling of how damage, wreckage or carnage Laker could do and yet it was almost clinically effective. Laker wrapped his fingers around the ball, applied the appropriate spit and polish and the Australians fell like skittles in a bowling alley. 

In 1953 the brilliantly thoughtful Alec Bedser accompanied by the wise and analytical Trevor Bailey would conspire together in plotting the downfall of an Australian team who still felt they had the bragging rights over England. That summer Laker, Bedser and Bailey were always prominent and visible, cricketers with subtle strategies, master craftsmen who were never short of mischief and guile. They were England during 1953, the men who dominated English cricket's public domains, the fashionable men of the early 1950s, the best dressed cricketers of the day and permanently influential throughout the 1953 Ashes series.

Then 28 years later Ian Botham, that most masculine of all England cricketers, demolished an Australian side who must have been convinced that the Ashes had been theirs once again without even trying. With the Test series between England and Australia finely poised all focus was on Headingley, the home of Yorkshire cricket but now the sole property of a man from Somerset. Botham was like a whirling dervish, a bowling and batting demon, uncontrollable, all conquering, masterful, a sweeping statement of intent, a blustery gale force wind and, ultimately destroyer, tormentor in chief of everything Australian.

With the ever studious and professorial Mike Brearley offering academic advice to Botham and Geoff Boycott settling into a long tenancy at the batting crease, England in 1981 were almost beginning to despair of ever winning the Ashes again after so long without. But Brearley, Botham, Willis, Dilley, Old, and the majestic David Gower were hitting destructive form on the pitch. And so it was that Botham dragged England out of the mire into the land of fantasy, fortunes turning astonishingly in England's favour and they were the ones who won the Ashes for England.

In 2005 Michael Vaughan, Freddie Flintoff, Jimmy Anderson, Matthew Hoggard and the marvellous Kevin Pietersen were the principal architects of another Aussie meltdown. The image of a drunken Flintoff staggering around Trafalgar Square and then the rest of that celebrated team standing outside 10 Downing Street will never surely be forgotten. 

But then we come right up to modern times. In 2018 the England guided by the charismatic Ben Stokes took complete charge of an Ashes series in a way that we'd probably only seen with Botham. There was  Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson charging in with bowling of the highest quality, Joe Root, bright and instantly likeable as leader of the pack, Johnny Bairstow breathing fire and natural flair, Jos Buttler keeping wicket with concentrated efficiency and Jason Roy, capable and dedicated to the cause. The series sadly for England was drawn and therefore the Aussies brought back the urn of Ashes back to Australia.

So to the present day, England expects of today's generation. This morning the warm and blue skies of Nottingham awoke to find tragedy and murder on its doorstep. But for some cricket will embrace the Ashes as if it had never been away for so long. And England will welcome back lush green outfields, brown batting strips, creases that refuse to do as they're told, pavilions with delicious buffets of sandwiches, cold and soft drinks, snacks for all tastes and cricket will find itself with satisfied appetites.

The county championships has changed very little over the years, apart from the clothing, the colourful clothing, helmets, sponsors names on their shirts and the shorter game. It's cricket of the T20 Blast slogfest and limited overs cricket- which has never really been away for any length of time. But now cricket enjoys the novel pleasures of night and day cricket as floodlights flicker on at supper time. Then there's the Hundred which is difficult to categorise because therein lies cricket's evolution and rapidly expanding commercialism. Oh for the crack of red ball and willow. Cricket- oh how enjoyable it is.