You might think it impossible to rob England v Australia of its lustre, but then you probably weren’t in Southampton last Wednesday, or in Manchester on Sunday.
As Hampshire’s Utilita Bowl staged the first of the sides’ eight white-ball matches — yes, eight — there was ominous talk of the coldest September this century.
Spectators shivered in fleeces, pundits in woolly hats breathed condensation over their mics. The Australians looked as if they had just landed in Antarctica after a week in the Algarve.
At Old Trafford four days later, the third and deciding Twenty20 was abandoned without a ball bowled. Again, this was greeted by a meteorological shrug of the shoulders: Manchester is wet enough in July, as we were reminded last summer when rain there probably cost England the Ashes. But in mid-September? Nobody can say they hadn’t been warned.
In between came a game in Cardiff, and in fairness it was a good one, Liam Livingstone launching it into the River Taff, and 20-year-old Jacob Bethell hinting at a bright future.
The third and deciding T20 between England and Australia at Old Trafford was abandoned without a ball bowled
Nobody was surprised to see the weather impact a T20 series that was held in September
But Australia’s captain Mitchell Marsh was ill, and England’s captain Jos Buttler injured, which meant Travis Head led Australia for the first time, and Phil Salt England for the second.
A 21-year-old spinner called Cooper Connolly opened the bowling for the tourists. It’s not disrespectful to suggest it all felt slightly B-list.
And while crowds have been good — they usually are against the Aussies — how many two days earlier in Southampton wondered if their money had been well spent? England, deprived of several big names by a schedule that has left them crocked or exhausted, fielded one of the thinnest batting line-ups in their history.
Jordan Cox, a talented but understandably raw debutant, filled the crucial role of No 3, while for all Salt’s post-match assertion that Sam Curran has the attributes of a ‘world-class all-rounder’, his T20 international batting average of 12 does not scream ‘No 6’. Neither did it help Salt’s argument when Head hit Curran’s first over for 30.
It all left Jamie Overton — picked as a specialist hitter because of a back injury — and Jofra Archer at least a place too high, when Overton’s place might have gone more profitably to a proper batsman. It was no surprise when England’s 106 for four quickly became 151 all out.
The spectators knew as much. Well before the end, they were drifting off into the night. By the time the presentation ceremony was taking place on the outfield after 10pm, the ground echoed only to the sound of interviews.
Australia, too, are paying lip service to the idea that any of this feels remotely like part of a 147-year rivalry. Fast bowler Mitchell Starc gave the T20s a miss, while Pat Cummins is skipping the tour to prepare for the Test series at home to India. And good on him.
Instead, Australia’s seam attack has been led by Aaron Hardie and Xavier Bartlett — good bowlers, but barely household names Down Under, let alone in the UK.
Both sides had stand-in captains – Mitchell Marsh for Australia and England’s Phil Salt
We are, of course, missing the point of this trip, which is not to pit the best of one country against the best of the other, but to uphold one of English cricket’s golden rules: every season, come what may, the cast of visitors must include Australia or India, the better to put bums on seats, satisfy the broadcasters and plug the holes in the schedule.
And no matter that the holes are becoming smaller and fewer, or that the desire of the so-called Big Three to reap the financial benefit of playing each other at every opportunity has devalued other bilateral fixtures, and is now devaluing their own.
We’ve been here before — and recently, too. Three days after England won the T20 World Cup at Melbourne in November 2022, they were obliged to embark on a three-match ODI series in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne.
Supremely uninterested, they lost 3-0, including the last match by 221 runs, at the time their heaviest ever defeat. Deep down, even Australia must have felt victory was hollower than usual.
The words of England captain Buttler ought to have been a shot across the bows.
A four-figure crowd was in attendance at the Oval to watch the Sri Lankans win the third Test
Fewer than 10,000 turned up to Lord’s for the fourth day of the second Test against Sri Lanka
‘Lots of people are talking about how you keep bilateral cricket relevant,’ he said. ‘And this series is a good example of probably how not to do it. Any time England play Australia, you want to put up a good performance, but it’s just been hard.’
His warning fell on deaf ears. England v Australia used to mean the Ashes, with its rich and vivid history, unmatched in any sport. Now the fixture doubles up as a cash cow, milked in all its iterations, red-ball and white.
And if the punters keep showing up, don’t expect the administrators to change tack. India visit next summer for five Tests, and again in 2026 for eight white-ball games. In 2027, it’s the Ashes. And so on. As the lyrics have it in The Windmills of Your Mind: ‘Round, like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel/Never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel…’
There are other factors. Sky’s deal with the ECB is understood to require 12 white-ball internationals a summer (as well as six Tests). Then there’s the matter of spreading the games around England’s international venues, shoring up finances at a perilous time for many counties.
But it all means the season is being stretched beyond any meaningful definition. The last of these eight games will take place in Bristol on September 29 (top price for a ticket: £95), taking us close to England’s first home fixture in October. Almost immediately, the Test squad will fly to Pakistan. Forget autumn: these days, our summer sport jumps straight to winter. The seasons may soon overlap.
England’s cricketers have done some wondrous things in recent years, winning both World Cups and scoring at 4.5 an over in Tests as part of their brilliantly watchable Bazball project. They have knocked off 378 to beat India, and become the first team both to win 3-0 in Pakistan and to avoid a series defeat against Australia after being 2-0 down. But the end of the season is in danger of leaving a sour taste. Faced with the possibility of completing a cherished first summer clean sweep since 2004, the Test team treated Sri Lanka patronisingly at the Oval, and paid the price.
The umpires, meanwhile, took the players off for bad light on the first morning of the game, to the disbelief of a crowd of 25,000.
Players going off for bad light during the Sri Lanka Test series was another bad look for the game
That followed other mis-steps. The squeezing of the schedule, caused in part by the need to give the Hundred pride of place in August, means administrators think nothing of starting the Lord’s Test on a Wednesday, as was the case against West Indies in July. When England won inside seven sessions, those with tickets for the Saturday were denied one of the great occasions on the British sporting calendar.
Earlier this month, fewer than 10,000 turned up to Lord’s for the fourth day of the second Test against Sri Lanka, when tickets were going for up to £115 despite England only needing eight wickets to win. It forced an admission from MCC that they would review their ticketing policy.
And because of the need to play back-to-back Tests, the fourth day at the Oval recently was a Monday, which meant one of the Sri Lankans’ best results in recent years was witnessed by a four-figure crowd.
Despite Sri Lanka’s victory, England still won five Tests out of six, confirming the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots — itself a function of the Big Three’s decision to close ranks.
All the while, there is uncertainty over the make-up of future summers, with the sale of Hundred teams opening the door to private investment — and to the prospect of India’s all-powerful IPL franchises influencing the English season.
It is true that the month-long T20 World Cup in the Caribbean and the USA in June took a large bite out of the summer. But there was no World Cup in 2023, and England were still playing on September 26, when an ODI against Ireland at Bristol was — you guessed it — spoiled by the weather.
Cricket’s great battleground is often said to pit the red-ball game against the white. Luke Wood, apparently, is unavailable to play in Lancashire’s Championship match against Somerset starting on Tuesday because he is off to the Zim Afro T10 in Harare. But there is another, not unrelated, tension — between quality and quantity.
England vs Australia should feel more special than it did during this recent T20 series
Quality is remembered for ever. It’s why the 1981 and 2005 Ashes series will always have a place in Britain’s sporting pantheon, and why 2023 wasn’t far behind.
Quantity? Not so much. One day, even Head may not recall his 59 off 23 balls at Southampton on a damp Wednesday in September.
On Thursday, the merry-go-round begins again with the first ODI in Nottingham, followed in quick succession by matches in Leeds, Durham, Lord’s and Bristol. Someone, somewhere will be following it all.
The good news is a white-ball series forced into the darkest, dankest corner of the season will be forgotten by the time the Tests start again in Pakistan on October 7.
But international cricket should be treasured, not transitory. And England v Australia should be special, not second-rate. The public are filing through the turnstiles for now. But administrators take them for granted at their peril.
