The impossible Australia had accomplished immediately, in Brisbane and Adelaide. Disconcertingly, the miracle took a little longer. In the first session at the WACA Ground on Tuesday, Australia managed only one of the five England wickets it needed, and there was a clenching in every Australian stomach.
The admirable Ben Stokes was still there, 117 unfussed runs to the good, in just his second Test. A hush fell; even the Australian players lost the voices that, like their cricket, have been so insistent in this series.
But Stokes was trying to achieve sport’s equivalent of driving all day and all night without a break. Australia’s bowlers were the onrushing headlights, in convoy. Three overs after lunch, one blinded him. So often on such days, Test cricket is like dominoes.
Five marauding overs later, England was all out and Australia had wrested its most prized sporting trophy, the Ashes, after four long years. “You get sick of losing,” said captain Michael Clarke, Australia’s only survivor from its previous reign. “This is the pinnacle for an Australian cricketer.”
This was a miracle, if not on the Lourdes scale, the Lord’s scale. In the first leg of this unprecedented double Ashes series in England four months ago, England won 3-0. If that margin flattered England, the idea of reversing it in the return series instantly was preposterous.
Australia entered this series with a partly rebuilt team, unsettled in batting and volatile in bowling, with an average age of 31. Less obviously then, England did not add up to the sum of its eminent parts. The first day of the new series at the Gabba belonged to England and especially the cast villain, Stuart Broad. The next day, Mitch Johnson picked up the series by the scruff of the neck and turned it all around.
Australia had a plan. It wasn’t especially sophisticated: bowl fast and short on Australia’s speedier pitches, follow it up with plenty of pithy language, enlist the home crowd, foment the sort of hostile environment that had the Barmy Army on Tuesday dreaming wistfully, but tunefully, of a White Christmas, and spring the ambush. In a flat moment in this match, Clarke exhorted the WACA Ground crowd to amp up the atmosphere. At the climax on Tuesday, all the Australians were at it.
England stood on its record; Australia stood on England’s toes. At times, both the bowling and the trash talking have pushed to the limit the letter of the Laws of Cricket. Goaded, England joined in. It means that the series has been played in conspicuously poor grace.
Each team largely has shunned the other’s individual milestones. Tuesday’s acclamation of Stokes’ century was a rare exception. This temper has jarred on many, but endeared itself to even more, to that particularly Australian sensibility that sees sport as secular jihad. There was about it all, something of this year’s most infamous motif: “Whatever it takes.”
Momentum gathered. It showed in big ways and small. Australia caught everything, even flies, England swatted at them, irritably. Australia won all three tosses, an important detail. England lost Jonathan Trott, and at a crucial moment in this match Broad, its best bowler.
It dithered over selection, Australia remained unchanged. Decision review system, a mystery to Australia in the English summer, suddenly worked in its favour. Before our very eyes, Alastair Cook, Jimmy Anderson and Graeme Swann atrophied, Johnson and Dave Warner grew.
An opening became a gap, and then a gulf. The margins were 381 runs, 218 runs and 150 runs. Fittingly, Johnson took the clinching wicket on Tuesday. Just as fittingly, Broad was at the other end, helpless.
Duly, history will set this result in its context, but it is possible that it will be remembered as maverick. After the new year’s Test in Sydney, these teams will take a doubtlessly welcome break. When next they meet in England in 2015, both are likely to be much changed.
For England, a Phoenix already was discernible in the embers, in the form of the gallant Stokes. Where others looked at the pitch and saw cracks, he saw a chance to have one. His technique is deceptively simple, which means it will not easily be broken down. Nor will his temperament.
For Australia, Steve Smith was man of the match. Three years ago, his flailing against England symbolised the way Australia had lost. Now he is blazing the trail back. These are the two youngest players on either side. This is the Ashes of the future.
Distantly, Clarke has eyes on a return to No1. Before then, it must improve its away record. Before then, there is the possibility of a 5-0 Ashes sweep. Before then, there is the Boxing Day Test. And before any of it, there is the national celebration of the sentiment so succinctly summed up by Brad Haddin as he ran to Clarke in Tuesday’s moment of consummation: “We got ’em back.”
