You may recall that the last Test match at the Oval came in rather subdued circumstances, the final game of last summer’s South Africa series paused for a day following the death of Queen Elizabeth II and then resumed with a poignant and surprisingly stirring first rendition of God Save The King.
It would be overly dramatic to compare then and now, but as the Ashes circus rolled into its final stop in south London yesterday, the mood felt a little flat, this million-miles-per-hour series brought to something of a slow march by the weekend’s washout and the mourning of the decider that never was.
The exception, both illogically and predictably, was in the spirits of the two sets of players, England’s visibly upbeat for the circumstances and Australia’s with a sharper focus than when they arrived here four years ago having painted Manchester yellow in hailing the retention of the Urn.
So, having moped for three days about the most anti-climatic of penultimate hurrahs, it is time for the rest of us to follow suit and get back on board for the last, something — just not everything — still on line for both nations and their fans.
For Australia, the prize is the prospect of a first series victory on English soil since 2001, a remarkable drought when you consider the level of dominance at home and indeed the quality of sides that have made the trip across the intervening 22 years.
In fairness to Pat Cummins and his current iteration, the pursuit of that specific goal is no new narrative cooked up in a bid to better last week’s damp squib, the tourists having arrived on these shores two months ago (longer in some cases) with twin aims of winning the World Test Championship and claiming the Ashes outright.
Twelve of this series’ squad were on the 2019 tour when, with history in sight, Tim Paine coughed up first use of the country’s best batting track, then had to raise the Urn and spray the champagne after a 135-run defeat on a podium branded with the amusingly petty masthead: ‘Series Drawn’. Cummins & Co. have a more flattering backdrop in mind.
The preservation of that long home unbeaten streak may be of some motivation to Ben Stokes’s side, though one suspects that denying the lads in the dressing room down the corridor a proper knees-up is the headline incentive. For a team that claim not to be driven by results and no doubt now have even less fondness for the draw than before, a 2-2 final scoreline would hold a significant — though nothing like redemptive — degree of consolation.
It is true that Stokes’s men have every reason to feel unlucky at being denied a near-certain victory by the Manchester rain. Australia, though, have similar right to point out that, given they won the first two Tests of this series and still now lead it, only patriotic or recency bias could have England down as these Ashes’ better team.
That particular campaign, fuelled by former England captain Michael Vaughan in the aftermath of Old Trafford, sounds like sour grapes at 2-1 down. At 3-1, it would look about as credible as Sol Campbell’s push for London Mayor.
But at 2-2, knowing the series’ sole draw came as a result of factors beyond human control, in a game England would surely have won? It would be almost indisputable, Australia’s retention of the Urn ultimately an after-effect of England’s familiar dismantling Down Under 18 months ago.
While that convention has come under rather knee-jerk scrutiny this week, it is at least the case that these two sets of players remain largely unchanged, albeit England’s playing in a manner unrecognisable.
For a significant proportion of those who have defined this rivalry over the past decade, though, this is the end, some, like David Warner, having already made it public, others, like James Anderson, yet to do so but aware that another Ashes would be a bridge too far.
There are also those who do not know it yet, no doubt several men on both sides with every intention of being in Australia in two-and-a-half years’ time, for whom the bell of age, injury or usurpation will, between now and then, toll.
Five days of this gripping series remain, for them, and for us all.
