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A conspicuous guest at The Oval, for the enthralling final Test of the summer, was Gareth Southgate, who may have reflected, as India achieved a memorable victory to share the spoils, that Ben Stokes’s England are beginning to share an identity with the England team he led himself.
Southgate’s England were such a success that James Graham wrote a play about them for the National Theatre. The team were more likeable, and more successful, than their immediate predecessors. Up, that is, to a point. At the sharp end, England fell away. Southgate’s England beat every poor team they ever encountered but they never beat a good one.
This might be the verdict on this England cricket team. They are an upgrade on the attritional side presided over by Chris Silverwood. Ben Duckett, Harry Brook, Jamie Smith and Gus Atkinson have all flourished. Stokes’s England have won six of their eight series at home, all of them emphatically, and have impressive victories in Pakistan and New Zealand to their credit.
At no point, though, have this England team threatened to make the World Test Championship final. They have not won a five-Test series since 2018 and they have yet to beat either of the best two sides. Against India and Australia, this England team have drawn 2-2 twice at home and lost 4-1 away in India. The Ashes series at the end of the year has therefore become a critical verdict, maybe even the final act, of the time of Bazball.
In a gracious interview at The Oval, Brendon McCullum acknowledged that England will need to improve if they are to win back the Ashes. The first place to look is at the top of the order. Zak Crawley has already played more Tests than Herbert Sutcliffe and Dennis Amiss. During the winter, he should pass Jack Hobbs and Ted Dexter and, if he survives the Ashes, he will have Peter May in his sights. He averages 31.55 and he scores a hundred every 12 Test matches. If Crawley has a mediocre Ashes, then this protracted indulgence will look really foolish.
The same could be said of Shoaib Bashir, who has just endured his fourth series in a row in which he took his wickets at nearly 50. Ricky Ponting has mischievously said that Bashir must go to Australia. He can’t think we’ll fall for that obvious ruse, can he? England spinners often go the distance in Australia. In the disastrous England tour of 2017-18, Moeen Ali took five wickets across five Tests at 115 apiece. Mason Crane chipped in with one for 193. If Bashir gets flogged into the suburbs of Perth and Adelaide, will anyone be greatly surprised?
The flux in the fast bowling needs to settle. England need a combination of Jofra Archer and Mark Wood to provide a full series and for the unplayable Josh Tongue to cast off his twin Josh Tongue, who is a comical club bowler. The tough decision will be Brydon Carse who, apart from one magnetic spell at Lord’s, rarely troubled the better batsmen. With no Chris Woakes or Carse, the lower order begins to look rather frail too.
Then there is Bazball itself. The harum-scarum batting of the early years was clearly refined this summer. That said, there were still moments, like Liz Truss insisting on the ideological purity of tax cuts when the markets are collapsing, that England’s batsmen throw it away. It is harsh to castigate Harry Brook after a brilliant century which made an unlikely victory feasible, but a ruthless batsman would have modified the gung-ho as the end neared. Brook did at least acknowledge as such after the game and if he adds smartness to his talent, he really will be a player.
With a few adjustments, England’s chances are good because Australia are also struggling to beat decent teams. Marnus Labuschagne was dropped for a series in the West Indies which was a perfect opportunity to score runs again. Cameron Green is batting out of position at three and the opening pair is anyone’s guess. You also wonder whether the fabled Australian bowling attack might find this series one too far. Could they fall in the way that Ernest Hemingway says you go bankrupt – gradually and then very suddenly? Maybe their footballing template is not Southgate’s England but Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City.
But over and above the flaws of any one team, there is the game itself. There is no more tired cliche in the lexicon of the cricket commentator than to say that, at the end of this wonderful summer, India and England drew but Test cricket was the winner. Yet cliches become tired because they are first true and never more so than in the summer of 2025. Perth cannot come too soon.
Photograph by Ben Whitley/PA