The Ashes: Real test is still to come if England are to join the greats

Burning ambition: England celebrate their Ashes victory but now they must go on to bigger and better things
Tom Collomosse20 August 2015

England began the final Test today hoping to make Ashes history but it requires more than a few wins over Australia to join cricket’s greats.

As Alastair Cook pointed out, perceptions of English and Australian cricket are informed by Ashes series results. The losers examine the winners and see how they can copy their approach. The winners tell themselves that all is well.

Yet this is far from the case. There is rich potential in this England team but they can fulfil it only by winning important series away from home.

Recently, the cricket played by England from 2009-13 has been characterised as “attritional” or “negative”. Yet the sides captained by Andrew Strauss and Cook, with Andy Flower as coach, reached the top of the Test rankings, won in Australia and India and drew in South Africa. Offered similar results, this team would snap your hand off, and to hell with their “brand” of cricket.

The Australian entourage, as is their habit when they lose, have been moaning privately about the pitches for the second half of this series. They should probably spend more time working on their technique against the moving ball.

There is nothing wrong with ordering conditions to suit the home team. That is one reason why teams win away from home relatively rarely and why they should be celebrated when they do so.

It was encouraging, then, to hear Cook’s sensible assessment: “When you win an Ashes series, people talk about how healthy your domestic game is and if you lose the series, they talk about the disarray your domestic game is in.

“We have to be really careful not to get too carried away. We played really well at Cardiff, Edgbaston and Trent Bridge and Australia haven’t played to their potential. They shouldn’t get too down and we shouldn’t get too far ahead of ourselves.”

Since 2001, there has been just one Ashes series win away from home — England’s in 2010-11. Winning overseas becomes more difficult and perhaps we will never see again teams like the West Indies sides of the 1970s and 1980s, or the Australians of the 1990s and 2000s. Those sides were so talented that venues and conditions were rendered irrelevant. From 1980-95, the Windies never lost a Test series. Under the captaincy of Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh, Australia built a similar era of dominance.

Yet when those teams ruled cricket, tours were longer, offering more time to grow accustomed to conditions.

David Lloyd, the former England coach, expressed surprise at the weakness of the Australians’ batting technique here. He suggested they should have played at least three tour matches before the Ashes but in today’s packed schedule that is virtually impossible.

When West Indies and Australia were leaving opponents in their wake, there was no Twenty20 franchise cricket.

Whatever players might say, long-form cricket is no longer top priority. Given the choice of playing in the IPL or spending a season in county cricket, not many international players would choose the latter given the riches on offer in India.

Perhaps England will develop into one of the great sides. Perhaps they will go to the UAE this autumn and beat Pakistan. Perhaps they will go to South Africa this winter and beat the world No1s. Those challenges will be far tougher than anything they have faced this summer.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in