One day the 11 Englishmen beaten in less than two days in Perth will be “has-beens,” to use Ben Stokes’s term: ex-pros, reflecting on the chances they took, and those they didn’t.
If the rest of the most keenly anticipated Ashes series in recent times plays out the way Perth did, England will forever be haunted by the delusional evangelism that caused them to collapse from a 105-run lead with nine wickets left to the first two-day Ashes defeat since 1921.
As social media flared and flashed with denunciations from England’s followers, it felt as if a cult was being called to account. It wasn’t the generalised anger of people who had stayed up half the night only to be disappointed. It was precise in its condemnation. This England team, it said, was taken hostage again by a Big Idea, applied in the wrong place, at the worst possible time.
We’ve been here before with the Bazball religion, with many a merry chat between proponents of orthodoxy and those on the hit-everything freedom train, where fecklessness is forgiven and Zak Crawley will always – always – open the batting.
It’s a caricature, but the reversion to self-harm in Perth was so pronounced, and so counter-productive, that England fans are entitled to lay a charge of frivolity on coach Brendon McCullum, the team’s managing director Rob Key and captain Ben Stokes.
Stokes will know better than anyone that Ashes tours are precious and fleeting opportunities, not to be tossed away. Jonathan Agnew made the point on Test Match Special that these trips into the jaws of a 143-year rivalry don’t belong solely to the players. The supporters and the country have an investment that needs honouring when England’s cricketers light the beacon for our winter of sport in Australia.
The series is far from done, and Stokes’s England have a talent for responding to adversity. But this isn’t a Headingley run chase. It’s the most taxing assignment of any England cricketer’s career, spread across nearly two months, with Australia’s hand at your throat the whole way.
Despite all the hoopla, and all the giddiness of England’s travelling fans, Ben Stokes’s side returned, in their second innings, to the reckless self-indulgence of a doctrine entirely unsuited to an opening Test in Perth. With only a game amongst themselves to prepare for local conditions, they stepped on to a bouncy, green wicket at the Optus Stadium thinking they could Bazball their hosts into submission when there were still three and half days of cricket left to play.
When it’s worked, trying to score off almost every delivery has given England’s followers many fun days out. When it goes wrong, it looks unintelligent and vain. And the one place on cricket’s planet where you wouldn’t risk it going wrong is in a first Test in Australia, where England’s record now stretches to 14 defeats and two draws since the victorious tour of 2010-11.
They were taken hostage by the Big Idea, applied in the wrong place at the worst possible time
Stokes came on the radio to say he was “shell-shocked” and “wide-eyed”, McCullum joined him in eulogising Travis Head’s match-winning 123 off 83 balls. Head’s century was Adam Gilchrist level, but Stokes and McCullum were blowing a smokescreen when they suggested one brilliant flourish had taken the game away from them.
What turned the match Australia’s way before Head came to the crease was a fatal phase of showing off by England’s middle-order when what they needed to do was stay put, apply traditional Test match discipline and accumulate a decent lead, with two to three days left to bowl Australia out. Glenn McGrath, not the most objective witness, but entirely correct in his dissection, marvelled at the willingness of Ollie Pope, Joe Root and Harry Brook to drive at balls pitched up, rising and moving outside off-stump.
After a Test that was supposed to go on until Tuesday but ended before Burnley played Chelsea in the Saturday lunch-time kick-off, McCullum defended his team’s mantra of “putting the pressure on the opposition.” A laudable aim, but crazy in the context of England being in control of a contest that was only a day-and-a-half old.
You could hear England’s leaders trying to use Head’s belligerence as a validation of their own assertive thinking. But Head’s controlled aggression was a tactical strike by a mid-order batter moved up to an opening slot. It wasn’t the whole team deciding to drive at everything outside off-stump in a disastrous attempt to transplant a mindset used in England to a first Ashes Test in bouncy Perth after one internal warm-up game.
England’s implosion has sent them 1-0 down to Brisbane, where they haven’t won since 1986. Ian Botham’s year before that victory included a John O’Groats to Land’s End walk and a two-month ban for smoking cannabis. So he didn’t have the ideal preparation either. But he did score 138 in the first innings in a city where, encouragingly, West Indies won a Test last year and India prevailed in 2021.
In this summer’s enthralling series with India, England were pragmatic, packing Bazball away for long periods, as if practising for the Ashes. The new realism was short-lived. Chris Woakes didn’t walk out in a sling to bat one-handed at The Oval just so England could throw it all away in Australia.
We’d all accept England losing to Australia – in Australia. But not them losing to an idea.
Photograph by AP photo/Gary Day