analysis
The Ashes 2021-22: The eight burning issues at the heart of this headline-grabbing series

The 72nd battle for the little urn Ashes will have more twists than a septuagenarian dance. Beneath the Baggy Green and Three Lions caps bubbles one of world sport’s great rivalries and the storylines of this series will be bestsellers: Can Ben Stokes carry England to an against-the-odds victory? Can a paceman, Pat Cummins, captain a Test team? Will this be Justin Langer’s last hurrah? Will Nathan Lyon survive the five Tests? STOKING THE FIRE Ben Stokes. The name might be anodyne, but the person it represents is anything but bland. The most controversial cricketer of his age — not counting a handful of Australians — Stokes will enter the Ashes series as the most critical player on either team. Outrageously talented, remarkably competitive and with a sense of timing second to none, Stokes will be the central figure as England attempt to secure the Ashes in this country for just the second time in 35 years. Australia can win — just — despite Stokes having a big series. England can’t win unless he does. Combatting Stokes is one of the most pressing issues faced by Justin Langer and his back-room staff as well as the players tasked with reducing the red head’s impact with bat and ball. Like his predecessors Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff, Stokes has used the game’s biggest stage to showcase his extraordinary all-round gifts. Botham did it for three Tests in a row during the memorable 1981 series, including a performance at Headingley in which he single-handedly swept the game away from Australia, energised an entire nation for a glorious summer and set up a barely believable Ashes heist. Flintoff was less individualistic but barely less influential during the unforgettable 2005 series which ended with the winning England team somewhat drunk and completely disorderly in the garden at No.10 Downing Street. No one cared, least of all the tenant Tony Blair, though a less-tolerant security guard evicted the dishevelled all-rounder from the Prime Minister’s office with the pithy instruction: “F..k off, Freddie, you’ve had your fun.” Stokes had his fun at Headingley in 2019 when his unbeaten century not only won an Ashes Test from a seemingly unwinnable position but rivalled Botham’s heroics as the most astounding individual display in his country’s Test history. “It would have been soul-destroying if we hadn’t won,” Stokes said a few weeks after that gripping third Test, though the enormity of his achievement was evident from a simple examination of his feat. His team was bowled out for 67 in the first innings, the lowest Ashes score since the days of Don Bradman, and needed another 76 to win when last man Jack Leach joined him late on the fourth. Stokes delivered like few players have ever managed let alone dared to dream. He smote eight sixes on the way to 135 not out, each brazen stroke appearing to carry the expectations of all England with it, and inspired Leach to defend grimly for one solitary run in their hour together. “He knew exactly what he had to do, which was just to survive,” Stokes said. “I couldn’t watch when Jack was facing — and that wasn’t through not trusting him. “It was because when I wasn’t on strike I couldn’t do anything. I was helpless. That’s probably the most emotion you’d see from me. When Leachy is on strike I’m just head down. I don’t think we’ll ever forget sharing those moments on the field together.” There was no choke at Headingley, but Stokes nearly did just that when he gagged on a pain-killing tablet in a Queensland hotel room last Sunday. “Until it actually came out, I thought this might be the end,” he said. “I was on my own in my room and I couldn’t breathe as it became lodged and started to dissolve. It felt like my mouth was on fire . . . it was a genuinely frightening experience.” Stokes, who took a mental-health break from cricket in July which doubled as a recovery from a second operation on a broken finger, was a late addition to England’s squad for the Ashes tour. There was a collective sigh of relief from both the England camp (giving them a fighting chance) and Cricket Australia (a home-grown whitewash would be a nightmare for the coffers during the straitened times of COVID) when Stokes landed in the Antipodes. Yet as soon as the 30-year-old declared his finger was “coming along really well” and that he “was in a good place mentally” he took a heavy ball to his forearm during practice. “I couldn’t lift it . . . I thought it was broken,” Stokes said. “Thankfully the pain and reaction settled down once I was back in the dressing room and the physios could be sure it wasn’t actually a break. “It was only after I got back to my hotel room that I took stock of what a day I’d had. The adrenaline had worn off and I was exhausted. Happy that I’m here to tell the tale, but hoping that my pre-Test dramas are now over.” POSTMAN PAT Australia’s 47th Test captain, Pat Cummins, is like the boy with the wheelbarrow with a flat tyre — he has the job in front of him. The 28-year-old takes over from Tim Paine who quit over the sexting controversy, who took over from Steve Smith, who was removed from the job after the Cape Town ball-tampering imbroglio of 2018. Cummins steps into a role once revered as the second-most important job in the country behind that of the prime minister, although both positions have lost a little cachet. His challenges aren’t limited to restoring public confidence. When he tosses the coin on Wednesday, he’ll be the first fast bowler to lead his country since Ray Lindwall replaced the injured Ian Johnson in 1956 with his only first-class experience as a skipper for NSW in the limited-overs competition. There is conjecture over whether a paceman can lead the team in the field of battle, given how taxing it is to come off the long run and then call on the grey matter to disembowel the opposition. Curiously, if Cummins is rotated (a distinct possibility given Australia’s recent history of managing its bowling stocks) or worse injured, his “new” deputy Smith will be elevated again. Now that would be a story of the summer. THE GLOVES ARE ON Here’s a stat: there have been 33 Australian Test wicketkeepers starting with Jack Blackham in 1877 — who was said to have so revolutionised the art of fielding directly behind the stumps he took on the moniker the “Prince of Wicketkeepers” — and 47 captains. That’s right, there have been fewer glovemen than captains. The Australian wicketkeeping gig comes around about as often as Halley’s Comet. Former Greater Western Sydney AFL player Alex Carey, at 30, has been named Australia’s 34th wicketkeeper. WA’s Josh Inglis, at 26, was considered the next best option, while Queensland’s Jimmy Peirson was also in the chop up. The problem for Inglis and Peirson, who is 29, is it’s likely a four-year appointment, at least, save for an unexpected failure of Carey to liveup to expectations. The challenge for them is to both stay relevant and hope no one else, such as another West Aussie in Josh Philippe, jumps them in the queue. COME IN SPINNER Nathan Lyon sits among Australia’s Test greats. The man bestowed with the honour of leading the Under the Southern Cross I Stand chant after an Australian victory, has 399 scalps from 100 Tests to sit behind only Glenn McGrath (563 from 124 Tests) and Shane Warne (708 from 145 Tests). Only 13 Australians have played 100 Tests since 1877. Lyon and Warne are the only spinners on that elite list. But the 34-year-old off-spinner’s figures in Australia’s last home series, against India in 2020-21, made for worrying reading: Nine wickets at an average of 55.11 and a strike rate of 124.6 — the worst rate for any home series in his career. He was also criticised for setting negative fields in that series, with Warne a vocal critic. Lyon needs to become a strike weapon again and not just hold up an end or it’s Test career over. If he fails to fire an early shot, there are others warming up: leg-spinner Mitch Swepson is next in line and WA’s Ashton Agar is another healthy option. JL’S LAST STAND Talking about Justin Langer’s future as Australia coach was all the rage two months ago. There was talk of player unrest, with the lightning rod bizarrely a reported dressing down of batter Marnus Labuschagne for eating a toasted sandwich on the field before a net session. In response, Langer displayed the obstinacy that was on show throughout his 105 Tests — he faced the new ball on a green top and saw it off. First there was a punch through the covers in the form of a tweak to his coaching style — sharing more responsibilities and taking a softer approach. Then there was a powerful swat for six when the Australia team he coached pulled off an unexpected T20 World Cup win. Langer has been in charge of the Australian side since 2018 and, barring an Ashes disaster, looks likely to be at the helm during a three-Test tour of Pakistan in March, the team’s first visit there since 1998. RACISM ROW The miasma cloud that rained claims of institutionalised racism down on English cricket has cleared . . . for now. But expect more significant blowback post-Ashes when England captain Joe Root seeks a discussion with former Yorkshire teammate Azeem Rafiq. Rafiq, a 30-year-old former England Under-19s captain of Pakistani descent who played for Yorkshire from 2008-14, told a British parliamentary committee he had suffered “inhuman” treatment in his time with the county. Root said he had never personally witnessed incidents of racism at the club, prompting Rafiq to respond he was “incredibly hurt” by that response. “We’ve exchanged a couple of messages since . . . and hopefully when we finish this tour we’ll get the opportunity to sit down and talk about this whole situation, about how we can move the game forward,” said Root, who also described racism as “intolerable”. PERTH TEST DROUGHT No WAGS, a 14-day quarantine. It seems the England players will not have anything to do with a fifth Test in Perth, given the restrictions WA Premier Mark McGowan insists the State will impose on any touring cricketers. So barring a Christmas miracle, Perth looks at short odds to experience a second successive summer without a Test in its sparkling new stadium. Melbourne and Sydney are the most likely suitors, with the MCG considered the front runner and it has a pretty solid argument. Melbourne has suffered through 262 days, or nearly nine months, of lockdown restrictions since March 2020, the longest cumulative closure of any city in the world. Given the lean economic times for cricket in this country, a second Melbourne Ashes Test — with a push for a day-nighter — to follow Boxing Day for event-starved Victorians would herald a significant boost to Cricket Australia’s coffers. BARMY WEATHER They won’t arrive in Australia en masse, with supporters from the UK unable to travel for the series unless they are expats or have a family member living Down Under, but the Barmy Army will have a presence, and no doubt, a voice. A Brisbane-based chapter is, we have been warned, primed and ready to go — songbook and all — for the first Test. George Gallantree, organiser of the Brisbane Barmies group, hopes to fill 1300 Gabba seats with Barmy Army supporters. The army had reportedly penned a song especially for Tim Paine, but now he has taken a mental health break from the game, they have declared the disgraced former captain off limits. Not so Steve Smith, nor an ageing David Warner. Perhaps they will revisit their 2019 Warner offering to the tune of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall: “He still needs some education, “He still needs some self-control “No gold sandpaper in his pocket “Warner, leave those balls alone “Hey, Warner, leave those balls alone “All in all he’s just another cheat like them all.”

analysisThe Ashes 2021-22: The eight burning issues at the heart of this headline-grabbing series

analysis
The Ashes 2021-22: The eight burning issues at the heart of this headline-grabbing series