When you talk about coming back to where you started, there is no better place than the Oval. Elliptical shapes supposedly have no beginning or end, but they do when you first start drawing one. Australia’s trip to England’s summer began at the Oval with the World Test Championship final and will end there to close the Ashes. Now, just as then, there is one match’s worth of opportunity to claim a prize.
Of course, whatever the result, Australia will go home with both pieces of silverware tucked safely away. But given the way the Ashes series has panned out, losing the fifth match to draw 2-2 would be a very flat ending. Two wins from two had Australia on the verge of a series win in straight sets, but all manner of turmoil has happened since. Touring around the country, packed with incident from the grave to the trivial, the past few weeks have been anything but elliptical.
Speaking the day before the match Australia’s captain, Pat Cummins, reflected on the series of 2019 when Australia retained the Ashes with a last-hour win at Old Trafford having dominated the match, compared with this year when the same result was reached at the same ground by way of a rained-off draw from a perilous position. The celebrations in Manchester four years ago were long and lavish, where this time they barely happened.
“Manchester was a big win to retain the Ashes, which we hadn’t done for a long time. Off the back of [losing at] Headingley, even Lord’s where we probably missed a trick last series [in a draw], I felt like that was a big exclamation mark on the end of that series with one Test to play.
“It feels really different here. This group has been really motivated to win the series. We know it wasn’t our best week last week, so at the end of the game it was a bit of a pat on the back: we’ve retained the Ashes, well done, but really it feels like the job’s not done.”
There must also be some motivation to stick one to anyone who piled into Australia after Jonny Bairstow’s controversial stumping at Lord’s, a dismissal that prompted all kinds of accusations. Professional athletes will often claim that they ignore outside criticism, but that is only ever partly true. England supporters assuming the right to set the terms of what is fair, then disparaging players for having a different view, would have jammed in the craw.
As for Australia’s approach, they must first clear away the stars and tweety-birds that circled their heads after England clouted nearly 600 runs in an innings last week. Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood are not used to that sort of treatment as a fast-bowling trio, but they got it. There is every chance the same group will take the field again.
Cummins would not give a final XI at the time of speaking, but conclusions could be drawn from what he did say. “Probably the biggest difference to last week is a spinner, whether that comes into the equation, and we’ve waited for a couple of boys to see how they pull up but at this stage it looks like everyone is all good.”
That means Todd Murphy should play, giving Australia a specialist spin option. The players on injury watch were Starc and the all-rounder Mitchell Marsh, who “has been given a chance through injury and has been brilliant” and who is apparently fit to bowl.
That means Cameron Green would be the one to make way, with Cummins offering what sounded like explanatory notes. “He bowled brilliantly here in the World Test Championship, and since then, the way the series has gone, and missing a Test through injury, it’s been more stop-start … he probably hasn’t bowled as much as we thought. In terms of batting, there’s been little snippets where he’s looked really good, then other times when he hasn’t managed to get through that initial phase. He’s doing all his learning in international cricket, it’s not easy.”
Starc’s fitness means that Michael Neser will again miss out, despite being in top form in English county cricket this year. There was little else to be read into Cummins’s supportive comments. “It’s tough. You can only fit 11 players into a team. There’s nothing more he can do. He’s scored heaps of runs and taken heaps of wickets so we know his class and he’s just really unlucky … hopefully there’s plenty more games for him in the baggy green.”
So Australia roll the dice, going into the final contest in much the same formation as they did the previous, and hoping the class of their players will tell. Surely England can’t batter them twice in a row? Well, this England team have made a habit of bucking probability, not least with Ben Stokes winning the toss each time this series. Australia will happily grant him a clean sweep on that measure if they can keep England’s tally in the wins column to just one.
