The arrival of late October and the departure of England’s team to Australia can do funny things to the most pragmatic of cricketing folk. Forget mists and mellow fruitfulness. This is the time of year for dreams and blind optimism when somehow, discounting all evidence to the contrary, the English at home persuade themselves that at the end of the first week in January England will have the Ashes secured after a gobsmackingly brilliant victory in the final Test. Solid cricketing common sense can easily be subsumed by wayward wish fulfilment when the Ashes are up for grabs. Maybe that is part of the allure.
This will be the 10th time your correspondent has been in Australia – in various guises – when the Ashes are being contested there. Out of those nine series England have won twice – in 1986-87 (I did my best to console Western Australia team-mates returning to Perth after another defeat by Mike Gatting’s motley band) and in 2010-11 under Andrew Strauss. Australia have won the rest.
Only once in that time – in 1982-83, when I was ferrying drinks to our brave boys in the middle – has the great bandwagon reached the final Test in Sydney with the destination of the Ashes still to be decided, which may not cheer those who have purchased expensive tickets and hotel rooms.
It is not so difficult to temper any wild optimism this time. Two words, one name are all that is needed: Ben Stokes. To get him out of the way promptly: he will not be there at the start; he will probably not be there at the end. The Australians have been hard-pressed to disguise their glee at his likely absence. Simply, they like winning.
Stokes, at a conservative estimate, is England’s third best batsman, whose technique is especially suited to Australia, as he demonstrated when hitting his maiden Test hundred in Perth almost four years ago. He relishes fast pitches and fast bowlers more than normal cricketers. And he can be sporadically inspirational with the ball and in the field. So his absence weakens the side and reduces the options available to the captain, Joe Root.
It would be so much easier for the England set-up to cope with the Stokes situation if he had simply picked up a conventional injury. It is the unnecessary, self-inflicted cause of his absence that is so galling and so deflating, and there lies the major challenge for the management. They have to convince the squad that they can prevail without him, which means exciting them with the glorious possibility of winning against all the odds. To clear the minds of all concerned, Andrew Strauss, director of cricket for England, cannot leave it much longer before clarifying whether Stokes will have any involvement on the tour.
It will be intriguing to see how Root manages the situation in his early exchanges with the Australian media. Already there has been some belligerent talk from David Warner to set the phoney war rolling and it is a phoney war. Often during previous Ashes series Jeff Thomson at the end of his phone interviews would ask his ghost for an English paper: “Is that OK? Have I bagged the Poms enough for you?” Even so, it will go against tradition if one home reporter in Perth soon after England’s arrival does not ask Root whether this is the worst side ever to land on Australia’s shores. “Why have you bothered to come?”
The best riposte might be to play along in public with the notion that England are no-hopers, who are “just eager to learn and do the best we can”, while in private Root and the coach, Trevor Bayliss, should be constantly reassuring their men that of course they can win. They say that Len Hutton did this consummately when he and his young team arrived in Perth in 1954 – they left with the Ashes three months later. However, that is rarely the way in the 21st century, though Stuart Broad did try the “we are the quiet assassins” line after the first day of the Brisbane Test four years ago, an observation that looked a little ridiculous at the conclusion of the game.
Talent and togetherness are needed in Australia and there is no likelihood of winning if one does not accompany the other. Four years ago an old England side seemed talented enough, with Kevin Pietersen, Jonathan Trott, Graeme Swann and Ian Bell in the ranks, but little cracks soon became crevasses. Old sides can acquire too many agendas.
The 2017 tourists are likely to stick together much better. They are nowhere near as high maintenance but, as they set off, it is hard to identify more than seven cast-iron Test cricketers in the squad. England’s plans must be unusually fluid but they include Mark Stoneman as Alastair Cook’s opening partner – curiously there are no other opening batsmen in the party – and James Vince as the notional No3. That leaves Dawid Malan and Gary Ballance contesting the No5 position.
Then, assuming everyone remains fit, there is one pace bowling place up for grabs in Brisbane. Jimmy Anderson, Broad and Chris Woakes are bound to play, which leaves Steven Finn, once regarded as a bone fide Test cricketer but now a late addition to the squad after the Stokes incident, Jake Ball and Craig Overton contesting that final place.
No doubt the original plan was to have Overton there mainly to gain experience on the sidelines but there is an opening for him now if he impresses in the first three weeks. Should the Somerset man bowl as well as the other three early in the tour, his superior batting ability might just earn him an unlikely Test debut.
The Australians can argue that their second tier of Test cricketers, namely all the batsmen after Steve Smith and Warner‚ are superior to England’s supporting cast – all the batsmen after Root and Alastair Cook. The only area in which the tourists seem to be manifestly superior is behind the stumps. Australia are mulling over whether to persist with Matthew Wade; England have Jonny Bairstow.
That does not seem enough unless Matt Renshaw and Peter Handscomb, Ashes debutants, turn out to have been flattered by their early efforts at Test level; unless the fitness of Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins, who has never played a home Test, comes into question (James Pattinson is already sidelined); unless the ball darts around conveniently for Anderson and Broad under the lights at Adelaide; unless Root out‑bats Smith and Cook rediscovers the magic of 2010-11 with Vince and/or Ballance defying the critics as well as their recent records in Test cricket. And maybe Mason Crane could suddenly take vital wickets on his debut in the decisive Sydney Test … Oh no. Here we go again.