Shut out the noise...the second Ashes Test at Lord's was one of Australia's greatest wins
- Dave Tickner
- 3 July 2023
Dave Tickner says that if you shut out all the noise around Jonny Bairstow's dismissal for a moment and zoom out to the bigger picture, the result at Lord's was one of Australia's greatest wins.
There's a lot to get through, so let's start with the basics.
Australia's win at Lord's gives them a 2-0 lead. England meanwhile have romped into a 2-0 lead in the Moral Ashes, while perhaps most surprisingly the score in the Banter Ashes is, at best for England, a 1-1 draw.
Given the Banter Ashes is a series England traditionally win 5-0 without much more than token opposition from the dreary Australians, this is perhaps the gravest concern of all.
This was a second extraordinary Test match in what might not be the best Ashes series of all time but is surely now absolutely certain to be the most content-rich.
Shut out all the noise for a moment, zoom out to the bigger picture and this is one of Australia's greatest wins. Better even than Edgbaston.
They again lost the toss and had the worst of the conditions for most of the game. Put in under leaden skies they scrapped their way to 400, lost their champion spinner to cruel injury when England were cruising at 180-1 in the sun in reply, defied another full-blooded Ben Stokes miracle and emerged deserving and ultimately pretty comfortable winners.
The loss of Nathan Lyon, who Pat Cummins so loves to plug in at one end for most of the innings while his seamers rotate and who England spent the first Test and the start of this one obligingly running past, could yet be hugely damaging for Australia.
It's certainly going to be strange in the third Ashes clash at Headingley when, for the first time in 101 Tests, an Australia XI takes the field without him.
But it's easier to do that at two up with three to play than it would be at 1-1. Which is what the score really should have been in a game where England had multiple opportunities to take charge and squandered the lot.
The assorted controversies will continue to dominate the headlines but may in the end actually rather help England.
First and most obviously, it drew the ire that would otherwise have been devoted to the brainless and cowardly collapse in the first innings.
Second, it might galvanise England. The Jonny Bairstow stumping certainly provoked Ben Stokes into Headingley mode, turning a 126-ball 62 not out into a 142-ball century in the space of five exhilarating overs that also featured Stuart Broad at his most theatrical, as he cartoonishly and pointedly and repeatedly made sure he was in his ground after every delivery.
Ultimately, Stokes was forced into miracle mode too early this time and came up short. But there really are few sporting stars like him. Few are capable of just flicking this switch inside themselves at the very biggest moments.
Here it would end in heroic failure, but it's telling that while he was there the Aussies were never, ever comfortable about their position and that disappointment at his failure to complete a once-in-a-lifetime innings for at least the sixth or seventh time was so keenly felt.
It says a great deal about Stokes that this utterly absurd innings of 155 will, in his final reckoning, be considered neither a) his greatest innings on this ground nor b) his best in the Ashes.
But the third reason why this might just benefit England is in their general approach. There were signs on day four with the relentless, understandable, ultimately effective but undeniably boring short-ball barrage with which they dragged themselves back into the match that the "entertainers first" mantra of Bazball might just be slipping.
The events on day five ensure that beating Australia is a clear number one focus now and, while that doesn't guarantee success, it is a far healthier attitude for an England team in the middle of an Ashes battle.
Nothing entertains like winning, especially against Australia.
But the road is now a long one. As is the road back to day one to begin describing this absolute cartoon of a Test match. It boggles the mind to think that Jonny Bairstow physically carrying a Just Stop Oil protestor from the field is something that happened five days ago given several decades seem to have passed since that astonishing moment kicked off one of the wildest Tests of recent times.
When Steve Smith was named man of the match for his first-innings century I was surprised. Not because I felt others more deserving, but because I'd genuinely forgotten it happened.
Smith is perhaps the second-best batter of all time, but his innings are rarely memorable beyond their idiosyncratic inevitability. His was a fair enough award for an innings that set the match up for Australia when conditions were at their toughest but his 31st Test hundred felt like at best the, I don't know, 150th most interesting thing that happened in this game.
After England had clawed themselves back into a game that appeared beyond them, they then had their top order blown away by Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc's brilliance with the new ball.
It was fast bowling of a staggering standard, and something perhaps for England's mainly inexperienced top order to remember the next time they feel like just giving their wicket away because they've helped themselves to 40-odd easily enough.
But the match really exploded back to life late in the day with Starc's failure to catch Ben Duckett at fine-leg. It enraged Australia and Starc's own post-match quotes suggest it might at least be part of the reason Carey decided to do what he did to Bairstow.
READ MORE: Brad Hogg thinks Australia should have called Jonny Bairstow back after controversial dismissal
That's all fine except for one thing. It was obviously and categorically not out. Australia's rage at this most straightforward of decisions was and remains utterly baffling. Starc caught the ball and then placed it on the ground in order to stop himself face-planting the Lord's turf as he slid across it. He had control of the ball before grounding it, but by no sensible definition could he be said to have control over his body before he put his hand down in a way designed purely to mitigate the ball popping out as he hit the turf.
To argue that was out as many bafflingly did, with one 563-wicket Test veteran in particular still at time of writing yet to recover his senses, one would also have to argue that any catch where a player has the ball in his hands but drops it as his body, elbows or hands hit the turf is also out. A position so patently absurd that it still now seems quite the daftest element of the Test despite all that followed the next day. "You can't catch a cricket ball by dragging it along the ground for an extended period of time" really shouldn't constitute a hot take.
Yet as clearly as Duckett was not out, Bairstow was out. In both cases, the decisions were correct. You can call them "technically correct" as much as you like; it means precisely the same thing.
Bairstow assumed the ball was dead and, through either arrogance or doziness sauntered out of his crease without even a backward glance at Australia's keeper. Had he done Alex Carey the courtesy of so doing, he would have seen the ball already heading for his stumps and been able to do something about it.
The dead ball is unhelpfully vague in places, but as with Starc's 'catch' no sensible reading of the ball being "finally settled in the wicket-keeper's gloves" could conclude Carey's instant catch-and-throw qualifies. If that ball was finally settled in the gloves, then no stumping in history has ever been out.
More importantly, the dead ball law contains the equally woolly but in this case pertinent note that the umpires should only deem the ball dead once it is clear that both batters and the fielding side consider it so. One side cannot unilaterally deem the ball dead. This is not Under-9s; Bairstow cannot say "IN!" and miraculously automatically render himself safe from dismissal.
As for Carey, he is having a truly excellent series behind the stumps and stands as a key point of difference between the two sides. That he was so switched on at a moment his opposite number was so dozy only sharpened the contrast between them.
It seems a shame to focus on the controversies on a day that featured some astonishingly good cricket, not least from Australia whose heads initially fell off in the face of Stokes' assault as the Headingley PTSD kicked in.
They regrouped, though, and had slowed England's scoring to almost nil in the overs immediately preceding the decisive capture of Stokes' wicket. Lessons were, eventually, learned.
Maybe the benefits of that excruciating day so many of these Australians spent rewatching the final day at Headingley four years ago finally did pay off.
There are also still questions about where this all leaves Bazball. My gut feeling is that it remains something close to all or nothing. That once you allow a bit of equivocation or playing to the situation to creep in, the whole thing falls to dust.
The batting collapse was not Bazball, though. Bazball had never been about mindless slogging. Bazball batting was about calculated and controlled aggression tailored to the conditions. It was ultimately about doing what the opposition bowlers least wanted. Here, England too often did precisely what Australia's bowlers wanted.
It's easy for this to get a bit "That's not my Bazball, its dismissals are too soft" and there remains a need to sometimes accept a frustrating dismissal along the way, to remember not just that it caused a collapse from 188/1 but also that it got England to 188/1.
Most important of all, the general approach remains the best one for this particular group of England players.
Bazball is perhaps a victim of its own success to an extent in making people forget just how flaky England's top order really is.
It contains one bona fide all-time great, a couple of players capable of greatness, a rookie opening pair, a whiffy number three and a kid just starting out.
They have yet to bat to their full potential in any innings yet have crossed 300 three times and made 273 in their other innings.
It's highly doubtful a more conservative approach would have worked any better against what is on paper a markedly superior Australia side.
And Stokes was on to something after the game when he said this England team is the perfect one to make something out of being 2-0 down with three to play.
Bazball works best when everything is simple and crystallised. Two down with three to play isn't the ideal way to take all those "Would you ever consider playing for a draw?" questions off the table, but it's done so nevertheless.
This England team has from the start been about doing the wildly improbable from the most unlikely positions. The manner of defeat here has given them a better chance than if they'd lost by the, I don't know, 150 runs that looked likely for much of the fourth innings.
Especially as this most absurd of all Ashes series now takes us to Headingley, the one ground above all others where there is absolutely no chance of things quietening down a bit.
