Melbourne has been an odd place over the past few days, a city brimful of deeply confused people all dolled up for a party which has already finished. The fourth Test ending early has forced people to spend time with their families or quietly cry into their schooners on St Kilda beach in 34C heat. Those desperately searching for a methadone hit of live sport have been forced to watch the Big Bash, or worse, the A-League. Oh, the humanity.
Fortunately for everyone involved, the space where cricket should have been was filled by noise and sound and fury, outrage and disgust. These have descended into the Content Ashes, where everything is narrative fuel, a steady supply of rage bait for men in suits who mattered in 2001. We are apparently witnessing the moral degradation of Test cricket, which also happens to be the most watched, followed and attended Ashes series in Australia ever.
There have been attempts on social media to shame any celebrating English fans because games like these are single-handedly killing this thing we love, rather than, say, systemic underfunding of the Test game in all but three countries that play it, in favour of Actual Bad Cricket. And you can hardly call it a win anyway, except you definitely can, because it was, by four wickets.
Here’s a thought: stop worrying about Test cricket for five minutes and just enjoy the chaos. It’ll live until morning. It has survived worse. This might not have been the highest-quality series ever, but there is little doubt it’s been fun and entertaining. And you have to question whether England never winning here is worse for future broadcast deals and wider public interest than the occasional match finishing early.
The latest victim dragged into the eye of the discourse storm has been MCG groundsman Matt Page, whose job extends to cutting grass, watering grass and deciding how much to cut and/or water the grass, forced to don his best polo and explain why 2mm of grass ruined Christmas and could bankrupt Cricket Australia. Managing to do so without screaming “did you see that shot from Cameron Green?” required a level of self-restraint he must wish some of Australia’s top order showed not to waft at wide ones. These must have been the oddest days of his life, but then nobody expects the Bad Pitch Inquisition until Michael Neser is effectively bowling 80mph leggies.
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Although to give everyone involved some credit, the past week has been oddly mind-bending. If Bazball is dead, why is Steve Smith talking about balls being misshapen by smacking into LED boards? Zak Crawley is on course to be England’s top run scorer for a second successive Ashes despite seemingly nicking off to Mitchell Starc in the first over of every innings. If Australia are so good, how come it is so hard to point to what they consistently do well, basically dragged to this point by spite and the individual brilliance of the same three players?
England have simultaneously had their best and worst Ashes tours in 15 years thanks to a match that means everything and nothing, a Rorschach test for how Baz-pilled you are, whether you call them a groundsman or curator. But then this has always been a series of contrasts, especially Down Under, the constant clash between the setting and the cricket, the beauty and horror, the lads holiday vibe and sport-as-waterboarding reality. Spend long enough here and you realise it’s actually very hard not to end up wandering the streets at night so drunk you can only ask for an Uber to the nearest nets. It just sort of happens.
A lot of the talk has been defined by how quickly people declared this England team braindead after the Gabba, which has left them somewhat backed into a corner when they have actually achieved part of what they came for. Perhaps the most convincing sign of life in the Bazball project has been confirmation that it still has the power to drive Australians absolutely insane, seemingly preferring to void the whole series as bad for the sport rather than admit England might have played well once.
But the most legitimately frustrating element of the Boxing Day Test (which ended before Boxing Day had finished in Hawaii) has been that, despite Rob Key’s proclamations that it is better to have planned and lost than never to have planned at all, planning and winning was clearly an achievable option.
The question is now how best to utilise and direct that frustration, whether heads must roll because English sport likes heads to roll, or whether you allow Key and Brendon McCullum to correct some of their errors, learn from their mistakes. Hire back some data guys, bring in someone who knows how to book the WACA at less than six weeks’ notice. Hire a fast-bowling coach that can work 365 days a year. Hire a fielding coach at all.
Trust Jacob Bethell and Josh Tongue for a bit. Learn that your bowling attack needs preparing and briefing in a different way to your batters, that, yes, sometimes bowling with freedom looks like Brydon Carse taking 4-34 with unending accuracy and guile. But sometimes it looks like Brydon Carse taking going for 152 from 29 overs in Brisbane like line and length are something he tried once and didn’t rate.
Almost to a man, bar perhaps the Will Jacks aberration at No 8, England’s future looks a lot like its present and there is a reasonable argument that whatever happens in Sydney, this thing is still only just getting started. As Joe Root’s unflinching support of team management showed, the squad still appears to be behind the project. The principles underpinning it remain sound, if regularly poorly executed. If eight or nine of the starting XI in Melbourne also started the first Ashes Test in 2027, how shocked would you be? The wheels staying largely attached is by design, the product of the Noosa principle that these tours are sometimes allowed to be enjoyable, part of what this set-up exists to achieve. No-one looks as though they’re about to retire before Sydney. No-one has presented anything close to a legitimate blueprint for how to replace it, especially now the players have bought in so heavily, shaped their games and lives around it.
For all the greatly-exaggerated rumours of Bazball’s death, it remains the ideal approach for its time, a content machine and rage factory, a reasonable response to the world which bred it. The MCG Test was Channel 7’s most-viewed ever, with 16% more people watching the two days than endured all five against India last year. It might be infuriating at points for everyone involved, but you tune in all the same. By the standards of 2025, where everything is basically a trolley dash for eyeballs, maybe that’s the real Ashes.
Photograph by AP Photo/Hamish Blair