The dust has finally settled on one of the all-time great Ashes Tests, with the Aussies winning by two wickets thanks to an amazing rearguard action from Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon.
With a few days’ hindsight, and less bleary eyes than our sleep-deprived state on Wednesday morning, we rounded up The Roar’s nocturnal cricket writer, Tim Miller, and our resident whingeing Pom, Mike Meehall Wood, to thrash out what on Earth happened at Edgbaston, and see if we can get a read on the madness that might follow at Lord’s.
MMW: Well, Tim – how do you feel about Bazball after your first contact with it?
TM: Well, it’s over, right? Defeated for all time. A nice little gimmick for New Zealand and Pakistan, sure, but no match for the might of Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon. Back to old school dour batting on seaming pitches for the rest of the series, surely!
MMW: Oh, you’ve not been watching for long, have you? It’s a tough one to take at the moment, but really, Australia should be thanking England for giving them something to play for at all. With the great load Stokesy and his fellow Kiwi, that game would have been the dampest of squibs…
In truth, I think England did everything right and didn’t get the luck. Or didn’t take their chances, whatever you prefer.
TM: Oh absolutely. Bazball is absolutely terrifying to come across. There was a consistent feeling across five days that however well Australia were playing, things could turn in an instant with one single innings all England needed to rocket into a commanding lead. We had it with Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope on the opening day, Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root later on (Bairstow in particular), then Ben Stokes, Harry Brook and Root again on the fourth.
Your mob have stumbled on a bunch of guy whose best form of defence is attack, and it’s got to be a concern for Australia that the margin was so narrow despite only Root really getting going. I can’t see Brook, Pope and Bairstow combining for one fifty from all those starts in the next few Tests!
Harry Brook. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
MMW: That’s not a million miles off. My feeling is that if we played that Test again ten times, England would win nine. Jimmy Anderson and Ollie Robinson did nothing too, and you can imagine that won’t happen at Lord’s.
TM: We seem to have different views on Robinson doing ‘nothing’ that Test…
MMW: OK, nothing positive. From the first morning, my mind went back to Rawalpindi back in early 2022. I covered that Test for this site – the jobs you get as the new kid, eh – and Australia couldn’t have forced a win if their lives depended on it. It would have been a draw if the game went for ten days.
Cut to when England played there last summer – they made 500 in a day and won it on the last. That’s what they were trying to do at Edgbaston. Sure, it’ll go wrong sometimes, but losing still seems like a vindication of their tactics, not proof that it didn’t work.
TM: It’s good things for England that they still took 18 wickets despite Anderson being clearly underdone. I think the seven-day break between here and Lord’s – the longest for the series – gives those 40-year old legs enough time to recover to play again, and then he probably misses the 3rd Test. Hard to see any quick bowler on either side playing all five apart from Pat Cummins.
Which raises an interesting question – is Mark Wood the automatic selection for the second Test that most people seem to think he is?
MMW: Logic would dictate that, because rotation, but it’s also the track where they might least need him. I was actually surprised that we got the three we got at Edgbaston, because that pitch was Wood-friendly.
Lord’s might move around, which would suit Ollie Robinson and Anderson, and surely they can’t drop Stuart Broad now he’s added Piggy and Marnus to his bunnies along with little Dave.
25 years of largely watching Australia beat England has led me to believe Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne can’t always be as rubbish as this, but then I would have said that about Warner in 2019… will they all fit in Broady’s big pockets?
TM: I think I wrote at some point that we wanted Warner to start batting like Smith and Labuschagne, and what we got instead was… Smith and Labuschagne batting like Warner.
I’m honestly concerned with Labuschagne in particular – the two outs nicking that Broad outswinger specifically designed to bring him down looked alarmingly nervous from a guy who was so important in the 2019 series. It’s not as if we can rely on Cummins and Lyon to save the day in every Test (with the bat, at least), so he’ll need to come up with a solution fast or it’s going to be a rough series.
I’m less worried about Smith – he got out in two of the ways that England have never been able to get him out (nicking outside off and getting trapped LBW missing a flick) so I don’t think those dismissals are as replicable as what Broad did to Marnus.
Marnus Labuschagne. (Photo by Alex Davidson-ICC/ICC via Getty Images)
MMW: Why do you taunt me like this? Smith haunts us all after 2019, but I wasn’t completely convinced with him given how poorly he fared in his County cricket warm-ups. Nailed on for a double now that I’ve said it aloud, of course…
But in the great Bazball debate, it’s been a little lost that the important part is 20 wickets. Yeah, there’s all the fours and sixes – or constant singles – but the point is time and England are banking that if they throw enough mud, some will stick.
Usman Khawaja seemed to understand that best in this Test and batted for 75 per cent of England’s combined balls faced on his own. Nobody else got the memo on that, from Australia at least. My feeling is that Stokes will keep acting like it’s Bootsy Collins setting the field, keep bowling weirdly and keep transferring pressure back onto Smith and Marnus in particular.
Then, when we bat, Cummins might do his job for him with the fields. Does it offend your national pride to be the guys reacting, not setting the tone?
TM: I’m sure if I was one of those old timers who lived on setting the tone – your Haydens, Pontings, Langers, Gilchrists etc. – it would rankle, and indeed it has. All that pretty quickly disappeared when he hit those winning runs, though: suddenly he’s a genius!
And for what it’s worth, on that pitch and under sunny skies on Day 1 England could have racked up another 500 in a day if we’d gone traditional Test fields, and I think only one chance was missed without a fielder in a conventional spot – Alex Carey’s one-hander off Bairstow right in front of where first slip would otherwise have been.
MMW: Ah Punter, thanks for reminding me of him. Prat, run out, 48, (Pratt).
You’re right though – it is reckless, or at least, it’s thought to be reckless, and that’s the point. I did think it was funny that one of the arguments against the pitch was that there were no wickets from seamers caught in the slips… that would have required slips, right?
TM: Hard to take catches there when there’s no one there – and it’s conveniently leaving out all the edges behind to Bairstow and Carey, so it isn’t as if there were no nicks at all!
One thing that did annoy a lot of Australians – including our esteemed editor, Tony Harper, was this suggestion that Bazball is going to drag Test cricket out of the doldrums and back into prosperity, that England are going to be the saviours of the longest format. (You can read that here, by the way.)
Is that something you subscribe to, or is it a bit much?
MMW: Look, I don’t want to disagree with the man who pays my wages, but I think it asks the wrong question. Test cricket between England and Australia (and India) is as strong and good as ever. It’s everyone else that’s the issue and nobody will fund them to play any games… I guess that’s one for another day.
In truth, it might just save this version of the England team. I’ve watched them since 1995 and can’t remember a more exciting time – yeah, we won in 2005 and 2010/11, but that was with a team of absolute champions.
The 2005 comparison is apt because what they did was change a narrative, which English cricket drastically needed. This lot are doing that too. Need I remind you the result of the 1st Test that year as well?
Styles make fights and Australia now know what this looks like. They’ve got a week to think about it and when they’re having their honesty session – do cricketers have honesty sessions like NRL players do? – then they might recognise that they were second best despite winning. England, in their team meeting, will be emboldened to Bazball even more.
To go back to the original point: I can’t wait for the first ball at Lord’s. That’s the meaning of Bazball, right?
Joe Root attempts a ramp shot. (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
TM: Now there’s a philosophical debate… is the real Bazball the friends we made along the way?
I would dispute Australia being second best – I think given the disadvantage of losing the toss and bowling on the best batting day of the Test (not that it was ever particularly challenging), they kept honours even pretty much throughout. Yes, England had a lot of missed opportunities like the early-day declaration and all those wild shots, but that’s also the way they play and on a dead track, playing the waiting game for a mistake was a pretty sound way of thinking.
But definitely agree England will take so much away from that Test. Given how far you were behind Australia in 2021/22 – 4-0, getting mauled every Test pretty comprehensively, losing by an innings at the ‘G – to be this close is a lot like 2005.
Bazball feels like such a runaway train and one win will likely bring two or even three, so winning at Edgbaston definitely felt more important for Australia than England.
On to Lord’s, let’s finish up by naming our teams for the second Test. Would love to hear the bowling attack you’d go with – Joe Root as the sole spinner? Mark Wood? Jimmy Anderson again? Matthew Potts plucked from obscurity? Jonny Bairstow to give the gloves to Ben Foakes and take Harry Brook’s overs on a broken leg?
MMW: We are on the vibes train, and what says vibes more than picking Stokes, Foakes and Woakes in the same team? A deeply unserious move from a deeply unserious team. It’s not mad, in fairness: Woakes averages 61 with the bat and 11 with the ball at Lord’s…
If they’re fit to go, I’d pick the same three seamers and then make a call on whether we go with Moeen (if fit) or Liam Dawson/Will Jacks/Rehan Ahmed, based on the pitch. Lord’s isn’t know for spin, so there’s certainly an argument for four quicks and Root’s part-timers. Wood is brilliant, but often the England attack can look like the same bowler four times over, all right-arm over the wicket… oh for him to be left-handed, like a certain Australian I very much hope you pick.
I’ll say four seamers and Root would be how I’d go. The biggest question: will you go with the Boland bowling machine again? Harry Brook would very much like a second look at him. And Starc? Please say yes!
TM: It’s sacrilege in Australia to not give blokes at least two Tests before dumping them, but Boland getting reverse-ramped by Root was a worry.
If it’s another flat track at Lord’s (it’s usually pretty pace-friendly but not a minefield, yes?) I’d be ultra-tempted to go Starc, just for his extra pace, and give him a licence to go for slower balls, inswinging yorkers, his usual one-day change-ups to give England something new. With defensive fields from the start he might not be as leaky as he usually is with three slips and a gully.
In fact, I’ve talked myself into it: one change, Starc in for Boland, but bowling second change with Cummins and Hazlewood taking the new ball. I can live with Root and Brook and Bairstow making runs, but Crawley’s 61 on Day 1 was the big difference in England’s batting from what I expected to see.
MMW: Deal. Starc gets 1-150, but the one will be Crawley. Then we can drop him (they won’t). Tolstoy’s War and Peace wouldn’t be long enough for me to fill with my thoughts on the lanky ginger #?$%!
Everyone else, however… needless to say, I can’t wait.
TM: As nice as it’s been to get a full night’s sleep these past few days, it’ll be great when play resumes at Lord’s next Wednesday. Maybe just schedule the rain for mid-afternoon to wipe out the EVENING session this time, guys…
MMW: Is it cowardly to pray for rain? I never thought I’d hear an Australian ask. We’ve got you rattled!
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