Collapses galore undermine Ashes

24 August 2015 10:46

The shortest of all Ashes series was packed away, in England's favour despite landslide defeat in the fifth Test, long before the scheduled final day dawned under leaden skies and heavy rain.

If England's Oval rearguard had just had a little more substance, or their first-innings capitulation been slightly less 'jenga', they could yet have restricted Australia to a solitary Lord's victory to show for their summer.

That, though, just was not the way of the 2015 Ashes.

Traditional concepts such as ebb and flow, resilience, fightback were absent throughout as cricket's two oldest adversaries simply landed unreturned knockout blows Test by Test.

England will rightly point out that they did so once more than the tourists, regaining the urn therefore with a match to spare and beating Australia at home for the fourth successive time.

Yet even as Alastair Cook raised the replica urn, and England embarked on their lap of honour to the adulation of a sell-out crowd, there was the nagging impression that a baffling and largely unsatisfactory series had concluded with an appropriate lack of logical resolution.

Yes, when the contest was live, England overpowered Australia at Edgbaston and Trent Bridge with some brilliant seam bowling on two responsive pitches.

Cook's opposite number Michael Clarke, retiring at 34 through a combination of physical frailty, loss of form and his destiny never to win in England, said all the right things in his final press conference.

He described England outplaying his team when it mattered, to become worthy winners of another epic battle.

It was a gracious, diplomatic and arguably erroneous assessment not just of the victors but of the series itself.

Such was the margin of England's defeat at The Oval, and whatever the mitigation in Cook's regretful explanation that they were off the pace after using up emotional energy in Nottingham, it left behind an uncomfortable sense that on this occasion home superiority was a mandatory, random outcome rather than the rational consequence of having most definitely been the better team.

Ball dominated bat to such an extent that play took place on only 18 out of 25 available days.

Three of those 18 were barely dipped into, the result long abundantly clear before the last scorecard details were duly settled.

Batting collapses to skilful bowling, in tough conditions or when odds and match momentum are stacked up, are Test match staple - one of the fascinations of cricket's finest format.

But there are fast diminishing returns when they occur with the regularity, and apparent inevitability, of this summer.

At least once in every Test, even at Lord's where Australia won by piling up a huge first-innings score and then grinding their hosts down, six fell for 50 at some stage.

England were bowled out in just 37 overs in their second innings at HQ.

But if anyone left assuming that to be a benchmark surrender, they discovered differently when James Anderson skittled Australia in two balls fewer in Birmingham and then Stuart Broad's eight for 15 had them all back in the hut at Trent Bridge for a combined 60 in 18.3 overs.

It was a spectacle, no doubt, to see edge after compliant edge flying into safe hands in the slips.

But less gratifying was the realisation which swiftly followed - that the fourth Test, and therefore the Ashes, was as good as over before lunch on day one.

Worse than that was the accompanying common sense that it ought not to have been so.

Broad bowled wonderfully well. But Australia, the world's second-best team, were helpless - and so it was that in the summer of 2015 extremes became the norm.

The age-old urbanity of Test cricket was replaced by a madcap, infectious premise that the only way to turn the tide is to counter-attack at all costs.

It began, to universal acclaim, between England and New Zealand in May.

But when Australia then caught the bug, it undermined the Ashes.

England prevailed, thanks to runs from man-of-the-series Joe Root as well as a series of unchecked game-changing spells from their seamers.

They will therefore take heart for the tough winter ahead, with captain Cook over the "wobbles" about his future and his team up to third in the Test rankings.

Australia have a changing of the guard as Steve Smith replaces the retiring Clarke, with an awkward trip to Bangladesh first up to test the new leader's mettle.

An unfathomable series has had its natural consequences then.

Whether it fits a new, jolting narrative of how Test cricket is to be played is another unresolved matter.

It is hard to imagine, at least, that England will try many of the same tactics for their next assignment in hugely contrasting climes against Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates.

For them and their supporters - and the developing regime of Cook, Australian coach Trevor Bayliss and director Andrew Strauss - the ends have justified the means.

The less partisan may question, though, why there has been something not quite right, disconcerting even, about the past two months.

They may even have woken up on a dreary cricket-less morning in London and felt like asking 'Can't we just start the Ashes again . and do it properly this time?'

Source: PA