“Are you not entertained?” roars Maximus to the crowd in Gladiator, having shredded a gang of clanking, helmeted assassins. In Melbourne’s colosseum counterpart, we certainly have been. Quite what else this TikTok cameo of a Test conveyed needs a fuller reckoning.
England won a match of ambiguous status. It was their first Test victory in Australia for 15 years – cause for thanksgiving. It was played before monster crowds – cause for qualified rapture, given the truncated duration. It was part of the Ashes – the cricket world’s most storied rivalry. It could also have no bearing on the Ashes – they are already in Australian custody. There are, strictly speaking, no wholly dead rubbers in the World Test Championship. But Australia is streeting the competition in this WTC cycle, while England drift. This was a Norwegian Blue of a game, an ex-Test match.
Still, England’s victory is a blessing. Imagine had Australia won a two-day Test match – perfectly conceivable had Steve Smith had the chance to send England in. The 10mm matt of grass and the atmosphere of chaos suited Ben Stokes’s team. With England needing 150 to win on the second day, Michael Neser bowled a ragged delivery down the leg side, Ben Duckett missed a scatter-brained ramp, and Alex Carey dropped a straightforward take standing back. It wasn’t Bazball, or Ronball; it was pure village, and in that sense strangely companionable. To be fair, Duckett repeated the shot an over later for six to the finest of legs. But, despite the efforts of Jacob Bethell and Stokes, victory accrued not in the grand manner. Instead, rather appropriately, four scrambling leg byes from Harry Brook’s thigh pad sufficed.
It was England’s bowlers, however, who set this victory up, in this Test finally finding a length to challenge both edges on a surface that jeopardised each, and jarring with extra bounce. When Gus Atkinson twinged a hamstring early, Stokes bowled Jake Weatherald leaving and welcomed Marnus Labuschagne with consecutive deliveries to the right thumb. Labuschagne then edged low to slip, was convinced the ball had bounced, consternated when the third umpire concluded otherwise, and inconsolable as he walked off.
Josh Tongue arrowed a bouncer at the shoulder of Usman Khawaja, who took his eyes off the ball and waved it to fine leg. Brydon Carse zeroed in on the top of off stump, obliterated Travis Head’s, and took Alex Carey’s outside edge. Too slow and tall to avoid it, Cameron Green wore Carse’s bouncer on the bicep, played a legitimate glance for four, gathered a couple of streaky boundaries through the cordon and an overthrow, continuing his search for form. He was jogging on the balls of his feet to get himself moving, pushing into the off and inviting Smith to send him back, all in the name of busyness and positivity, but also conveying nervous energy that needed decanting. Another day he’d have abjured a stroke at that Stokes delivery on fifth stump. There might not be another day for a while.
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That left Smith as Australia’s guarantor. When the ball is doing something, no batter in the game is more animated, for he shares all his concerns with the watching world. Beaten by his first ball, he made a gesture with his left hand like he was twiddling the knobs on a dashboard, as though to adjust the pitch. To his partner he was reenacting every other delivery, miming a stone skipping off the water or a car bunnyhopping a speed bump; every so often he would turn to watch a replay, not least when a ball from Carse swerved between his legs for four byes. Though he was not going anywhere, England found a way past by working around him, Carse expunging Neser and Mitchell Starc in three balls: at number four, Smith was marooned on 24 off 39 balls.
England’s fourth innings chase for 175, the highest chase this series, began at 2.10pm, at which time a year ago the game’s first innings was still in progress. Again, this was a scenario nicely set up for Zak Crawley and Duckett – a flier here was of disproportionate value. Duckett tucked away some Starc sighters, missed what he needed to, and dropped a leading edge just short of the bowler. Crawley launched Neser over his head when that bowler got too full. Suddenly England had 25 from their first 20 balls, and Smith had only two fielders in front of the wicket. When England lost Duckett to Starc’s pinpoint yorker and Stokes threw Carse into the mix at number three, Smith ringed the fence with half a dozen boundary fielders. The impression was on an expanding vortex of chaos that Australia was struggling to contain.
From this point, in fact, Australia could feel the Test sliding out from under them. Bethell tried to pull his second ball, unwisely off the front foot, and top edged over the cordon for four. Crawley’s edge from Neser flew through a vacant slip, and he survived a lbw review by Scott Boland, who was swift and incisive. When Boland resumed after tea with Carey standing up, Bethell reverse ramped over the keeper’s head, cover drove for four for a touch of retro chic, and pulled Neser for four.
After Crawley got too far across to Boland, Bethell survived two violently swerving deliveries from Starc. His miscue from Starc just cleared Head at mid-off, his upper cut from Boland just failed to carry to Neser at third man. But when Weatherald misfielded Joe Root’s push at point and an extra run accrued, it somehow counted for more. England would fritter a further three wickets away before the end, but the circumstances were forgiving.
What does it mean? In the long run, the match rather failed to satisfy: it provided England with no formula for future success, any more than the pitch provided a template for tomorrow’s curators.
In Gladiator, of course, Maximus asks a second question: “Is this not why you’re here?” In this context, after a second two-day Test match of summer, with cricket left to shovel more money out the door, with patrons of the next three days foiled, the answer is no.
Photograph by Robbie Stephenson/PA Wire