Not long after the end of one of Test cricket’s most engrossing series, the Australians still seemed unsure about what they had just experienced. They had left England with the Ashes urn, thanks to a 2–2 draw that allowed them to brand as a success a tour that began with victory in the World Test Championship final against India. But off-spinner Nathan Lyon spoke for their bamboozlement when he insisted, he hadn’t seen any Bazball cricket from England in the two Tests he played before a calf injury ended his series. To which the only possible retort was: had he been paying attention?
His comment could be ascribed partly to the age-old reluctance of cricketers on both sides of the Anglo-Australian divide to offer their opponents anything so much as a compliment. But it also said something about Australian discomfort at the subversion of an old dynamic: they, not England, were supposed to be the aggressors. And in the 2023 Ashes, it was England who threw almost all the punches.
Across five games of intriguing ebb and flow, Ben Stokes’s team scored at 4.74 an over—England’s fastest-ever Ashes—while Pat Cummins’s Australians proceeded at 3.35. The discrepancy was the largest in any Ashes series. And if England still failed to reclaim the urn, they had last won in 2015, they could reasonably argue that only rain in Manchester prevented them from becoming the second team, after Don Bradman’s Ashes-clinching Australians in 1936-37, to win a Test series after being two down.
WATCH - Ashes 2023: Stuart Broad signs off in style with series-levelling wicket in his final Test
For those who had been following their fortunes closely since the resignation of Joe Root in the spring of 2022 and the accession of his close friend Stokes, England’s flair came as little surprise. Of the 13 Tests they had played in the Bazball era under him and coach Brendon McCullum, they had won 11, including three big chases against the then-world Test champions New Zealand, a national-record pursuit of 378 against India, and an unprecedented 3-0 win in Pakistan. At Rawalpindi in December, they surprised perhaps even themselves by scoring 506 for four from 75 overs on the first day. They were rewriting the internal logic of a game that had been played mainly one way for 145 years.
Naturally, this irked Australia, who set about trying to prove that Bazball was, as Lyon later put it, smoke and mirrors. When they pinched the first Test at Edgbaston from under English noses, then saw off a Stokes tour de force at Lord’s, they could cite their two-game lead to those who argued they were playing less adventurous cricket. And when it rained in Manchester, the extent of Australian sympathy amounted to: “You shouldn’t have gone 2–0 down, mate.”
Urn returns Down Under: From being 0-2 down, England was on course to level the Ashes at 2-2 when the Old Trafford rain washed away the final day’s play and left the fourth Test as a draw, ensuring Australia retained the urn. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
But, to Stokes’s and McCullum’s credit, England held their nerve. They brought in Chris Woakes and Mark Wood for the third Test at Headingley and set about dragging themselves back into the series. It was soon 2–1, then nearly 2–2, only for rain to wipe out all but 30 overs of the last two days at Old Trafford, with England in the ascendancy. Then, on the final evening at The Oval, riding the crest of an emotional wave triggered by Stuart Broad’s retirement, they squared the series. No one—not even Lyon in his more reflective moments—could argue that they didn’t deserve at least a draw.
If anyone best summed up the difference in approach between the teams, it was two openers: England’s Zak Crawley and Australia’s Usman Khawaja. While Crawley, for so long Bazball’s pet project, finally came of age, thrashing 480 runs at 53 with a strike-rate of nearly 89, Khawaja put behind him a poor record in England to grind out 496 at 49 with a strike-rate of 39. While Crawley faced 541 balls in all, Khawaja saw off 1,263. Both seemed to be making a point of their own: Crawley that he could hack it at the highest level, not least during his blistering 189 off 182 balls in Manchester, where England racked up 592 in 107.4 overs; Khawaja that you didn’t need to score quickly to make an impact. They were different sides of the ideological coin.
Throughout, Australia seemed defined by the extent to which they could keep England at bay when a lot of Ashes history had been the other way around. Cummins started with a deep point for the first ball of the series, which Crawley spanked through the covers regardless, and Australia spent the day trying to spike English guns. At stumps, after Stokes had controversially declared on 393 for eight, Josh Hazlewood claimed his side had done well to limit England to five an over rather than concede seven or eight. It was the admission of a team who would spend the series being reactive, not proactive.
In the event, England suffered none of the major collapses that many had predicted: their lowest total was 237 at Headingley, itself a recovery from 142 for seven. And they never gave Australia’s big fast bowlers a moment’s respite. Cummins went at 4.27 an over, Hazlewood at 4.56, and Mitchell Starc, while taking 23 wickets, the most on either side, at 4.86. Scott Boland, of whom much was expected after he took five wickets against India at The Oval, went at 4.91 in his two Tests and managed only two wickets at 115. His career took a big step backwards.
Masterstroke: England’s decision to call back Chris Woakes and Mark Wood for the third Test at Headingley set off their exhilarating pursuit of fighting back in the series after being 0-2 down. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
This being the Ashes, there were squabbles, none greater than when Alex Carey stumped Jonny Bairstow at Lord’s after England’s wicketkeeper prematurely left his crease at the end of an over from Cameron Green. This triggered England’s Spirit of Cricket brigade, who believe the game should be played on a higher moral plane than the laws themselves demand—ironic, given that the rumpus took place at the home of the lawmakers themselves, the Marylebone Cricket Club. Australia shrugged their shoulders, carried on, and were grateful when Stokes’s retaliatory innings later that day ended at 155, just when it seemed England might chase down 371.
Australia had already taken offence at Ollie Robinson’s sledging of Khawaja at Edgbaston. Now, they fumed at the treatment of their players by MCC members in the Lord’s pavilion. The rest of the series was niggly, with Cummins facing repeated questions about whether he missed an opportunity to prove Australia had changed in the five years since Sandpapergate by refusing to recall Bairstow.
At The Oval, Australia were further irritated when a ball change in their second innings proved to England’s benefit: from 140 without loss on the final day in pursuit of 384, they slipped to 169 for three against Woakes and Wood. Steve Smith and Travis Head added 95 before Woakes and Moeen Ali ran through Australia’s middle order on a dramatic final evening. Broad then crowned his 167th and final Test with the scalps of Todd Murphy and Carey, wheeling away in delight as The Oval went berserk. He had finished with 604 Test wickets, of which 153 came against Australia—an English record.
Memorable swansong: Stuart Broad grabbed Australia’s final two wickets on the last day of the fifth Test at the Kia Oval, bowing out with a staggering final tally of 604 wickets at 27.68 in a 167-Test career. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
There was still time for one last spat. Tradition dictated that the teams share an end-of-series beer, but when Australia knocked on their opponents’ dressing room door at around 10 p.m., they were told England were still doing their post-series presentations. By the time England had finished, the Australians had left the ground. At around 4 a.m., Stokes tweeted a clarification: the two teams had met in a Soho nightclub instead—a very modern way of breaking the news. Not that it stopped the clickbait factories in both countries from squeezing out a couple more news cycles’ worth of confected outrage.
Of more interest and deeper significance was the question of whether England’s Bazball tactics could help reinvigorate Test cricket in general. Taking place in parallel was a two-match series in the Caribbean, where the West Indies hosted India on hopelessly slow pitches in front of demoralisingly small crowds. India’s talented batting line-up scored at 3.41 an over, barely quicker than Australia managed during the Ashes against a stronger attack. The West Indies crawled along at 2.32. It was not a recipe for reviving the five-day game.
England had not claimed to have invented a failsafe formula, as some critics seemed to imagine. At Edgbaston, they were careless in their second innings, when another 50 runs would have put the Test beyond Australia’s reach. And at Lord’s, they were suckered into attacking the short ball when a period of caution might have served them better, especially with Lyon limping out of the series. For some, this was proof that Bazball didn’t encourage rational thought and had no serious future. For others, it was just bad cricket. Bazball was about soaking up pressure, when necessary, then choosing the moment to attack. This was just brainless.
But England stuck to their guns. No team had ever salvaged a draw from 2–0 down against Australia. Don’t forget, either, that they were up against the newly crowned world Test champions with a pace attack that was the envy of the game. Had England questioned their strategy after Lord’s, Cummins’s side might have run away with the series. Instead, Stokes’s men doubled down, handing Australia the mother of all hammerings before the rain fell in Manchester.
Thwack it like Stokesy: England captain Stokes belted 155 at Lord’s with a total of nine maximums—a record for an Ashes innings. But his incredible riposte was not enough to carry England to a second-Test victory in a nail-biting run chase. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
It was easy to forget, too, where England had come from: one win in 17 under Root had, by the end of the Ashes, become 13 wins out of 18 under Stokes, with three of the four defeats by margins of one run, two wickets, and 43 runs. Had England tackled Australia with the conservatism of old, they would probably have gotten nowhere close.
Will other teams take note of their approach and agree that Test cricket needs to do something to keep the march of the T20 franchises at bay? Pakistan have already tweaked Bazball to suit their own game, “The Pakistan Way,” and in Colombo in July, they made 576 for five at 4.29 an over to subdue Sri Lanka. When England revisit Pakistan late next year, we could be in for non-stop fireworks.
First, though, in early 2024, England face a five-Test series in India – as difficult an assignment as world cricket can serve up. They will be told in advance that Bazball won’t work in India, but they will give it a go anyway. One thing is for sure: the cricket will be more entertaining than England’s previous two visits, which they lost by a collective margin of 7-1. Bazball is no guarantee of anything. But it is certainly preferable to the alternative.
Lawrence Booth is editor of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack and a writer for the Daily Mail.
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