So now do you get it, you young’uns?
Yes, yes, yes of course you think Test cricket is about as exciting as grandpa’s old overalls still hanging in the laundry, too old-fashioned to be worthy of your short attention span, and something that is really only for ruddy fuddy-duddies. You prefer the hit-and-run T20 matches that have practically squashed Tests out of existence. And given those views you probably missed the extraordinary final day of the first Ashes Test. Well, after you do the right thing – and get off my lawn! – let me apprise you.
Young’uns, whipper-snappers all, it was Test cricket at its very best, the exemplar of why it remains the highest form of the game. There was more worth in that match than TEN T20 World Cup Finals, stacked on top of each other.
“Shakespeare on steroids”, it was real-life drama before our very eyes, just like Grandpa used to make – with heroes and villains, deeds of derring-do and disaster alike, twists and turns in the tale that no one saw coming, inspiration, perspiration, pathos, bathos – and a climax that was simply astonishing.
Oh, and all of it came wrapped up in almost 150 years of tradition, of history, of genuine national pride and engagement that T20 simply cannot get close to. Years from now, decades from now, this match and most particularly its final day will be talked about.
(And compare that to the last T20 World Cup Final. Before you click here, do you even know where it was played, who was the runner-up or a single thing that happened it? Can you admit the truth, that within three days you had forgotten the whole thing and barely referred to it since?)
Australian captain Pat Cummins celebrates the winning runs.Credit: Getty
For this was the day that Australia, after a rain delay, went out after completing their mission: to chase down 281 runs in the final innings. It pitted them not just against England, but against history – as such a chase had only been accomplished by an Australian side in England once before when Bradman’s Invincibles got 404 runs at Headingley in 1948.
And yet before our very eyes, in those wee hours of the night, it began to take shape. Usman Khawaja acted as the anchor and put together a painstakingly careful genuine Test innings of 65 – in the process being the first Australian to bat on all five days of a Test since 1980!
Nightwatchman Scott Boland knocked out a hugely important 20 runs. Travis Head brought a flash of excitement with a quickfire 16 before departing frighteningly fast, and you could see in his eyes that he realised his departure likely spelled the end for Australia. Still, Cameron Green nailed a useful 28 runs and wicket-keeper Alex Carey put on another 20, before both were gone. At 3am in our home town, it seemed obvious that at least our blokes would go down fighting – but go down they would.
Cult hero quick Scott Boland also chipped in with the willow.Credit: Getty
After all, the only thing we had to offer now was the Australian bowlers, Pat Cummins, Nathan Lyon and Josh Hazlewood – the latter pair alongside Boland derided the day before by England fast bowler Ollie Robinson as “three No.11s”, and they had to get the remaining 55 runs. If those three weren’t Australians, all hope would have been lost. For at least we knew they’d have a go!
‘This was cricket at its best, the equivalent of a novel by Charles Dickens, making the T20 stuff look like a Phantom comic.’
And so it proved. For in one particular over – just when the run chase was at its most tense and it seemed the England attack must inevitably choke the life out the two tailenders, the mighty Australian captain Cummins hit two sixes and a two, to take 14 runs!
Shortly afterwards, the England captain, Ben Stokes back-pedalled to a square-leg hit from Lyon and against all odds the England captain managed to pull in the catch … only to fumble it as he fell … half-regather it still … and then finally drop it!
From somewhere in that mass English crowd, the call went out: “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!” And back it came from various parts of the ground: “Oi! Oi! Oi!”
Cummins dives to escape a throw at the stumps during Australia’s dramatic run chase.Credit: Getty
We’re still alive!
Our people were outgunned, outnumbered and out-chanted, but they still believed! Yes, it remained only a forlorn chance that Cummins and Lyon could put together a partnership that would do the job, but there was a chance. When the cameras went to the Australian players’ box, you could see most of them watching intently and talking animatedly, while just behind them, the next man in, bowler Hazlewood was hitting imaginary cover-drives, knowing that there was every chance he was very likely about to have a walk-on part into history itself.
Time and again, as the Australian lower order played and missed at the ball by the thickness of a cat’s whiskers, the crowd oohed and ahhhed, but mostly moaned. So close, yet so far.
What sport delivers such sustained excitement for so long, where every ball is a ball-tearer, when no one breathes, until they know the result? Only Test cricket.
Nathan Lyon backed himself against England’s bowlers.Credit: Getty
The English were as frustrated as they were confused. How could these two tailenders possibly be holding on? And it wasn’t just Cummins playing a skipper’s knock for the ages.
Nathan Lyon? What chutzpah! What cool. What phlegmatic savoir-faire to back himself in, take on a classy international bowling attack that had already sent Steve Smith, David Warner and Marnus Labuschagne back to the far pavilion whence they came with few runs, and take them on!
Even when there remained just a handful of runs to get, with two wickets in hand, the tension did not remotely abate. If one wicket had fallen, and Hazlewood had come in to face, who knows what would have happened?
But now the dénouement.
Ben Stokes throws the ball to the mouthy Ollie Robinson who was not only liberal with his views as to the lack of worth of the Australian tailenders, but who’d already had a run-in with Khawaja.
By golly, Mr Ollie. Are you ready for this? Death or glory. If they are as bad as you say, mate, you should knock them over?
Two balls into the over, with four to get, Robinson puts one down the leg side, only for Cummins to get some of his bat on it, as the ball races away towards the boundary. The England fielder stretches out, throws himself at it, and manages to get his hand on it, but the ball dribbles away … into the rope.
Four runs!
And the first Test for Australia! Though Cummins is the major hero of the piece, he lifts Lyons high, before the English, with great good sportsmanship, crowd in to congratulate them both.
I repeat: this was cricket at its best, the equivalent of a novel by Charles Dickens, making the T20 stuff look like a Phantom comic.
Thank you. I’ll be in my trailer.
And like I said, get off my lawn!
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