Day four of the Brisbane Ashes test brought a small semblance of hope for the English visitors, who had otherwise been thoroughly outplayed and outthought.
A partnership of pure grit and application from Will Jacks and captain Ben Stokes made Australia bat again, while two wickets in the Brisbane night briefly hampered our chase of a small total of 65 to two-nil up in the series.
Yet in the test’s dying minutes, England’s pace leader Jofra Archer decided to pick a fight with Australia’s stand-in captain Steve Smith.
As Smith aimed to finish the game quickly, with Brisbane thunderstorms rolling in towards the stadium, Archer decided to chirp about Smith’s shot selections.
Smith retorted with a quick 23 from nine deliveries as Archer and England deflated.
Yet it was less about how Smith handled the situation than how Archer decided to bring the fight and chirp to the Australians too little too late.
With England deciding against a warm-up game with the pink ball, in line with their philosophy to decline tour matches to prioritise team-building and net sessions, their temperament with the bat was minute, save for Joe Root’s drought-breaking century, and their bowling and fielding under the floodlights were too erratic and erroneous to allow their batters to build a lead.
Archer’s antics on the final evening were unnecessary and misrepresentative of the match situation, yet it’s another chapter in the seesawing Bazball saga where inopportune sledges and odd media statements at press conferences continue to undermine the positive brand of cricket England attempt to play.
I would argue England’s public image represents something more than just their uber-belief in their talents and potential.
It highlights the need for greater humility in the game, and a restoration of cricket’s previous brand as “the gentleman’s game.”
Take England coach Brendon McCullum’s comments in the post-mortem of the Brisbane loss. Instead of acknowledging how England had little match-practice heading into the Brisbane test, McCullum suggested instead the team had done too much training.
“I actually felt like we over-prepared to be honest,” he said.
“I think sometimes when you’re in the heat of the battle, sometimes the most important thing is to feel fresh.”
McCullum continued this logic for the rest of his press commitments, which didn’t stave any prior accusations of stubbornness and over-positivity within the England dressing room.
McCullum would have been better acknowledging that the team’s performance was not up to scratch, while also highlighting the countless internal strategy meetings and one-on-one conversations with players the team undoubtedly would have engaged in to stop any discourse about the team’s purported arrogance.
Contrast this with Australian coach Andrew McDonald’s press conference after the victory at Perth, where McDonald took accountability for Scott Boland’s uncharacteristically poor outing in the first innings.
“The plans we had on day one in Perth was to get it full and did we overpitch? I think that was probably the reflection,” he said.
“Those plans on day one didn’t really suit [Boland] and we probably got those plans wrong heading into Perth.”
McDonald, a former Australian representative who has always faced significant criticism from a playing and coaching perspective, showed exactly why we used to regard cricket as the “gentleman’s game.”
A gentleman, or anyone for that matter, must possess the capacity to recognise one’s faults, take responsibility for them, and present an ability to improve them to obtain further opportunities.
McDonald has shown why he is revered by the current crop of Australian players as one of the best coaches they’ve played under. He admitted his plans were ill-advised, and he corrected them upon recognition.
Even if McCullum’s comments were intended to shift blame on the coaching staff for putting his players through foundational training methods, they instead portrayed an England team torn between their Bazball brand and their work ethic.
I have empathy for Ben Stokes.
All tour, any misstep in England’s match performance or preparations have been absorbed by Stokes as his fault, as something he and he only should take accountability for.
Stokes was “shellshocked” after the team struggled to find any strategies to combat Travis Head’s match-winning innings in Perth.
After Brisbane, he acknowledged how he and Brydon Carse struggled to curb the flow of runs early in Australia’s batting innings, despite the two combining for seven of Australia’s wickets as the game progressed.
Throughout this Brisbane test, players who have fronted the press haven’t acknowledged their individual and collective faults and have instead suggested their team is still in the fight.
This is mathematically true, yet statistically improbable – only one team has come from a 2-0 deficit to win a five-match series in all of cricket, Australia in 1936.
Yet that Australian team was buoyed by national pride and a collective confidence in their abilities.
More importantly, they were a team which represented cricket’s humble and gentleman-like roots.
This England team is already exhausted, ill-prepared and misguided in its approach.
If they have any chance of defying history, they will need to reflect on their performances thus far.
Because England could leave Australian shores with an urn they didn’t want, an urn filled with the Ashes of Bazball cricket.