The English teams that have visited Australia since 1862 have been good and bad, feared and derided, but none have so quickly developed a reputation for insularity, bordering on arrogance, as those of 2025-26.
Anybody can lose a Test match; nor is it unprecedented to do so in two days. But there is some expectation on a touring team, especially an Ashes touring team, to look like it cares, and to pay some heed to the footsteps in which they walk. Ben Stokes’s team is not just falling short of that mark; they betray no sense of knowing that a mark exists. They may be, on paper at least, the most competitive English team in 15 years. But their lackadaisical air is endearing them to nobody.
This weekend, England are scheduled to play a two-day match against a Prime Minister’s XI at Canberra’s Manuka Oval. This is a pretty good team, containing four Test players, along with highly-rated up-and-comers Campbell Kellaway, Olly Peake and Hugh Weigben. A pink ball will be in use, heralding the night Test match at the Gabba – where Queensland, by the way, have just monstered Sheffield Shield leaders Victoria under the lights, winning by seven wickets.
Yet only three peripheral members of England’s squad are reported to have ‘chosen to take part in the game’; the rest, one must presume, have chosen not to. In their stead will be various of the England Lions who have just had their arses handed to them by a rag-tag Cricket Australia XI at Lilac Hill. Michael Vaughan of Test Match Special was made to feel his fogeydom.
He said: “It’s amateurish if they don’t go and play now. What harm is playing two days of cricket with a pink ball under lights? They’ve played two days of cricket. They’ve been out in the field for, what, 70 [67.3] overs? Look, they’re professional cricketers. I can’t be so old school to suggest that by playing cricket, you might get a little bit better.
“My method would be, you’ve got a pink-ball, two-day game: you go and grab it, go and take it. Play those two days, and make sure that you’re giving yourself the best chance.”
To which Stokes has already offered the pre-emptive retort that times have changed, that preparation is different, that “we can’t [prepare] how the has-beens have maybe prepared in the past” because the schedule is ‘jam-packed’. Except that England’s peremptory defeat left 12 days between Tests in which none of its top six will have a competitive hit.
Stokes might reasonably point out that the Australians aren’t playing either. But it is different when you win, different when you are hosting, different when only five of your squad members have prior Australian experience and all they’ve done besides is played a picnic match at Lilac Hill. On the visitors’ part it is a public relations flub.
Now, the Prime Minister’s XI does sound like a bit of an archaism – a vestige of gentler, more ceremonial times, established in 1951-52. England rested a number of players when they last played the fixture, albeit they still fielded quite a strong team that won convincingly. Yet a year ago they played a full-strength team in a two-dayer against a New Zealand Prime Minister’s XI in Queenstown, while India fielded most of their Test side in the corresponding match in Canberra.
Competitive cricket, with jeopardy, with scores that count, has value that the best nets in the world cannot approximate. To play it shows confidence, conviction. It maintains interest in the summer; it evangelises for the game. The knock-on the ‘tour match’ of yore was that domestic opponents frequently fielded teams without key players. Cricket Australia have here done the opposite. Their efforts have not been reciprocated.
As for the idea that the past is of no consequence in the urgent, unstoppable, uncompromising present, well, England, you’re here for the Ashes, staged over five Tests since the 1890s. Inherent in what you’ve come to Australia for are ideas of tradition, continuity, precedent. You are the beneficiary of colossal historical endowments; it would do you no harm, and conceivably some good, to invest in them now and again. You’ve left thousands of your fans staggering zombie-like around Perth and its environs for three days; they, and others, might have liked to see you play in Canberra. And, well, I’ll say this as gently as possible lest it be felt undue sensitivity, it is the Australian prime minister. I know he’s not yours, but you could show some respect for that office rather than bunking off for another Stableford.
It wasn’t only English supporters who had high hopes for this English team; so did Australians. You’re always rattling on about being such stupendous entertainers. But it’s not much use if you don’t turn up.
Photograph by Robbie Stephenson/PA Wire