Divided by a Common Sport Harry Trott May Be Best Remembered As the Lateral- but We Are Not Just Concerned with Recent History
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150 editions of the world’s most famous sports book WisdenEXTRA No. 8, July 2013 The Ashes in England Divided by a common sport Harry Trott may be best remembered as the lateral- But we are not just concerned with recent history. thinking Australian captain who regained the urn in Rob Smyth’s imaginative précis of more than 130 1897-98, when England were thrashed 4–1. But I prefer years of Ashes cricket – summed up in ten deliveries the story told in Gideon Haigh’s Game For Anything. – stretches all the way back to The Oval in 1882 (the Presented with a royal cigar by the Prince of Wales Book of Genesis, as far as the urn is concerned). And during the 1896 tour of England, Trott was later our archive material includes Bob Massie’s swing-happy puzzled to be asked what he had done with the destruction of England at Lord’s 90 years later. memento. “I smoked it,” he said. We also have cameos from lyricist and cricket-lover We all make repeated efforts to distil the essence of Tim Rice, and author and cricket-lover Tom Holland, the Ashes, but that act of lese-majesty does the job more who remembers his first Test (Headingley ’81, or some than adequately: the Poms as blue-blood patricians, such). Tyers and Beach shed crocodile tears for the upholders of the faith; the Aussies gloriously egalitarian, Aussies, and Benedict Bermange rummages into his unimpressed by the demands of decorum. menagerie of stats. Somehow the stereotype still passes muster, and the You can also find details later in these pages of eighth edition of Wisden EXTRA leads with a lovely Wisden’s special World XI competition, in which you piece from Alistair Gildard about the significance of one get to pick your best XI from the last 150 years – the of Test cricket’s last remaining five-Test series. lifespan of the Almanack. The selection that comes The Australians’ reputation for cutting to the closest to matching that of Wisden’s team of experts chase has been unwittingly buttressed in recent weeks wins £100 worth of Bloomsbury Sports titles, plus by the punch David Warner aimed at Joe Root in a subscriptions to All Out Cricket magazine and The Birmingham bar, and the astonishing decision – less Nightwatchman, our new quarterly home for long-form than a fortnight before the First Test at Trent Bridge – cricket writing. For more details, please click here. to sack coach Mickey Arthur. And if quirky cricket-related music is more your Even before all that, people were wondering if this thing, there’s a chance to win one of ten copies of Sticky was the worst Australian side to visit England since Wickets, the new album from The Duckworth Lewis 1989. And Malcolm Conn, perhaps the most strident Method. of anti-English voices while they were losing eight Happy reading – or listening. Your comments, as Ashes series in a row leading up to 2005, examines the ever, are very welcome. comparison here. Some are now wondering whether they are the most distracted too. Lawrence Booth Eagar’s Eye p18 For Patrick Eagar, the doyen of cricket photographers, sport has no greater contest than the Ashes, which he has covered for well over 40 years. In the following pages, he picks ten personal favourites from the many thousands of images he has taken while the battlelines were drawn on English soil. © John Wisden & Company Limited 2013 Wisden is a trademark of John Wisden & Company Limited WisdenEXTRA • The Ashes in England 1 The Big Hit Sibling rivalry rather than culture clash? Alistair Gildard peers inside the urn to investigate… Brothers at arms Some you win, some you don’t: defeated Australians in the Baggy Green watch Andrew Strauss and team celebrate at Sydney, January 2011. Pic: Hamish Blair, Getty Images 2 WisdenEXTRA • The Ashes in England It was David Warner who expressed it most International cricket can be a sociopolitical eloquently. No, really. tinderbox. From the apartheid-era South Africans With a single booze-fuelled swing at England’s to the regional pride of the great West Indians, angelic starlet Joe Root, Australia’s ocker opener rare is the cricket contest that doesn’t find itself ripped the lid clean off any apparent embargo on encumbered with baggage from beyond the pre-Ashes repartee and got everyone buzzing about boundary. In the past decade alone, England the greatest rivalry in sport. have conducted series against Zimbabwe and Sri Admittedly it was an odd way to reignite Lanka that prompted debate at government level, Anglo–Australian passions. But rather than focus on while Kevin Pietersen of all people was lauded as the violence, let’s instead marvel at how the incident “statesmanlike” after leading England back to India resonated without too much vibration. Cricket Australia in the wake of the Mumbai bombings. may have high-handedly branded Warner’s actions It’s not all about broad themes either. One needs “despicable” but, with details emerging of fake beards only think of the toxic fallout of the Monkeygate and jaegerbombs, this was no ordinary Birmingham bar saga involving Andrew Symonds and Harbhajan brawl. Warner’s idiocy (and subsequent apology) misses Singh, or Mike Gatting’s run-in with Shakoor Rana the point that most Englishmen were too busy laughing at Faisalabad, to recognise that all too often in cricket to take any real offence. a moment of indiscretion can, like the proverbial Leaving aside the horrified moralising from butterfly, lead to a series’ worth of earthquakes. And Down Under, this was Ashes banter in extremis, an that’s before we even consider the motherlode that extension of the sort of fisticuffs that have occurred is India v Pakistan, the ultimate example of sport as down the years on the grass banks of Adelaide and George Orwell would have understood it. Perth without anyone seriously suggesting that In the midst of all that, the Ashes represent an the relationship between England and Australia is island paradise, a chance to breathe easy every two or anything other than exemplary. It’s the sort of stuff so years and soak in a cricket contest that really is all that, 20-odd years ago, inspired the Barmy Army about the on-field action. That fact was perhaps most to hit back with song rather than limb because, keenly felt when England travelled to Australia in the as David Gower clumsily reiterated in a recent autumn of 2010. The prospect of defending the urn in interview, Australians are too culturally illiterate to Australia for the first time in 24 years was a rest cure cope with such a highbrow approach. And, whoops, compared to the poison that had seeped into England’s off we go again... home summer, courtesy of the spot-fixing scandal that The Warner incident even earned a special mention erupted in the final month of Pakistan’s visit. on Channel 4’s Friday night gameshow, The Million By contrast, 80 years have elapsed since Bodyline, Pound Drop – one of the most prominent slots cricket the one truly diplomatic incident between England has occupied on TV since the 2005 Ashes. “What did and Australia. It is almost as though the prospect of Solihull Police tweet was on the loose this morning?” losing an empire over the small matter of a cricket was the question. “A boomerang”, “a wallaby” and match has dissuaded either team from getting quite so “Australian cricketer David Warner” were the three over-sensitive again. Which brings us, indirectly, back possible answers. to Gower’s recent point. It’s not that Australia lacks The contestant instantly piled her cash on to our culture as such, it is that England and Australia lack a Dave, correctly reasoning that (a) “he punched Joe clash of cultures. Theirs is a sibling rivalry, but it’s far Root” (honestly, what would have been the chances of from a blood feud. a member of the public knowing such details about, The context of the Ashes rivalry is one thing, but say, Wahab Riaz?) and (b) “Solihull is in Birmingham”. it would mean nothing without the content. In an Unfortunately she was wrong and lost all her money era that is designed to rush past in a blur of instant (the answer was, in fact, the wallaby) but that does not updates, the opportunity to luxuriate in a contest that detract from her impressive grasp of the facts. Cricket stretches across 25 playing days is rare to the point is back on the public agenda. With favourable form of anachronism. And yet the world still stops for an and forecasts, the Ashes effect could keep it there until Ashes series precisely because it allows us enough time January next year. to slow down and take it all in. Unlike his occasional opening partner, Ed Cowan, It is the dramatic pauses in Test cricket that make it Warner may not fully appreciate the power of the most engrossing sport in the world. Even in 2005, symbolism. “No offence, mate, but I want to knock the most storied Ashes series of all, fever pitch was your block off” is a sentiment that might as well have not reached until the ninth day of the campaign, the been snarled by every Aussie cricketer from Spofforth stage at which most modern-day Test series tend to be to Siddle. Like Derek Randall goading Dennis Lillee at winding towards a conclusion. Instead England’s two- the Centenary Test, you can picture Root doffing his run win at Edgbaston guaranteed that the remaining cap in response and getting on with his evening.