Sunday 23 August. Day 4 at The Oval. Weather apps are being checked on smartphones, terms and conditions on the back of tickets. We’d spent the first three days hoping that we’d get to use those tickets – now we’re desperately hoping that Australia can wrap it up quickly. It’s an odd end to an odd series.
Nobody can begrudge Australia winning this Test. It’s been as comprehensive as their win at Lord’s – and, for that matter, England’s wins at Edgbaston, Trent Bridge, and, to a lesser extent, Cardiff. 3-2 will be a fair result, and 3!-2! an accurate way of expressing it. Five 10-8 rounds, in boxing terms.
England don’t deserve the weather coming to the rescue, and nobody has much desire for any rearguard heroics. Never mind that Jos Buttler could do with a substantial innings, and a bit of Moeen Ali with bat in hand is always a treat. Never mind, even, that this is Australia, the Ashes. The crowd have come to see Alastair Cook lift the little urn. It will be a bit of a damp squib, after such a heavy defeat, but it will be even damper tomorrow.
And I won’t be here tomorrow.
Australia take the new ball. Good. Peter Siddle raps Mark Wood on the pad. Plumb. Got to review it. Out. Everyone is grinning, a collective acknowledgement of the incongruity of wanting Australia to win quickly. The weather is supposed to improve this afternoon, but there is a sense, perhaps financially motivated, of now or never.
In the event, it is neither now or never. It’s later – approaching half past three, the 23rd over, ensuring a fifty per cent refund, when Moeen slashes a thin edge through to Peter Nevill.
Back when tickets were purchased, we’d joked that we might get to witness Australia seal another whitewash, see Michael Clarke lift the Ashes. Wrong. Although Clarke’s mutual appreciation with the visiting fans is a more lasting image than all the ticker-tape and fireworks. It helps that we’re sitting just along from those in green and gold to which Clarke approaches.
Much has been made of the reconnection of this England team with the fans, and they are a likeable team playing likeable cricket. As Rob Smyth put it, “Joe Root is scoring runs for fun in every sense.” And Mark Wood’s imaginary horse, and Alastair Cook’s redemption – and Steven Finn’s. It’s all there during the lap of honour, but any sense of intimacy is absent from the presentations. Not surprising, really, when the majority of the crowd is sitting 100 yards behind the stage, a sponsor board obscuring the view. Whatever happened to the crowd spilling onto the outfield, gathering under the pavilion balcony to watch the presentation ceremony? You can’t sponsor a pitch invasion, I suppose, although Parka certainly got some exposure, back in the day.
As it is, I might as well be watching it on TV. Oh, I am. A giant one. It’s like having a FaceTime conversation with someone in the same room, a further layer of absurdity to the day.
At this point, I defer to the great Gideon Haigh, writing in Uncertain Corridors:
“Where once cricket coverage was accented to conveying to the home viewer what it was like to be at the match, now the opposite is true: the profusion of advertisements, the liberality of replays and the incessancy of music are directed to replicating the televised experience for the live spectator. Yet is this a contributor to the emerging dynamic of a game with a large but growingly distant public? For why would I go to a cricket ground for a kind of washed-out replica of what I could see at home?”
One answer is to be able to say “I Was There.” No t-shirt, this time – that was Trent Bridge, where the Ashes were really won – but I Was There.