Welcome to this evening’s therapy session. Come in, have a seat. Or better still, lie down, relax, and let’s get it all out. Now then, with which grievance shall we begin?
There are plenty to choose from, plenty of places we have all turned to over the past 24 hours to channel our frustrations that after all the hype, and all the delivery on the hype, it is rain, mere pesky precipitation, that has denied England a shot at regaining the Ashes and us all what might have been the occasion of a cricketing lifetime, a first genuine, winner-take-all decider from a 2-2 scoreline since 1937.
The most sober introspection would start at the start, with the opportunities squandered with both bat and in the field at Edgbaston, a Test in which England made all the running but were never quite ruthless enough to pull clear, eventually reeled in in the final furlong by a team in more clinical mood. This, however, does not feel the time for sobriety, so pour a glass and let us plough on.
To Lord’s, where, despite Ben Stokes’s latest epic, Australia, led by Pat Cummins, were value winners. It was a result that left England no margin for error and raised the possibility that, even after winning at Headingley, one washout and the first Bazball draw would be enough to deliver a killer blow. Its realisation is the source of all English frustration now, the knowledge that nothing could have been done to prevent it only amplified by the wondering whether, just maybe, something could.
Might Stokes have declared sooner on day three, rather than indulge Jonny Bairstow’s century pursuit? Perhaps, but the runs added with James Anderson swelled the lead to make batting once — the most likely route to victory in a shortened game — a genuine shot.
What about over-rates, with 26, an entire session’s worth, lost across the first three days? That time may well have come in handy, but consider the causes — the volume of seam bowling, Stokes’s field changes to enact batter-specific ploys, England’s spraying of the ball to the fence — and it is clear that slowing the game while accelerating it is to some extent inevitable, and speeding up would not come without cost.
So, then the gripes (of varying merit) stray into the realms of logistics: start and finish times that fail to make full use of the British summer’s protracted daylight; the lack of reserve days for rain; that a drawn series is enough to retain the Urn in the first place; northern Tests (no worries there in 2027); the surrendering of August (when, of course, it has never rained) to the Hundred; cricketers being allowed to eat lunch.
It is hard to understate what a boon these seven days might have been for cricket in this country, to underestimate the fever pitch that might have been reached
The more genuine of these are long-standing grumbles about things woven into the very fabric of the Test game and while that might not necessarily make them unalterable, on the back of a stinging result is probably not the time to make the credible, clear-eyed case.
Maybe the profile of this particularly underwhelming denouement should make it the straw that breaks the camel’s back, but asked about both reserve days and the draw-retention rule, Stokes was not in the mood for change.
Ultimately, the search for blame, understandable as it is, is being conducted in a soggy void, borne of the longing for that little Urn, yes, but more for what this week might have been.
It is hard to understate what a boon these seven days might have been for cricket in this country, to underestimate the fever pitch that might have been reached. It is hard, given the state of flux the Test game finds itself in, to escape the nagging feeling that it might never be this good again.
The mood at Old Trafford as the inevitable realisation crept in yesterday was somewhere only just north of funereal, corridors and concourses littered with people here in all manner of capacities exchanging the same empathetic nod. I know, pal, I know.
That we now go on to The Oval to experience the Fifth Test Lite feels in some sense almost cruel, akin to the old gameshow insistence of cracking on to see what you could have won after chucking away the lot. There is half-a-mind to take the Catherine Tate Nan approach to it all. “Oh no, love,” she tells Noel Edmunds during a spoof appearance on Deal Or No Deal. “I ain’t got time to be sitting around playing a game for money I ain’t gonna win. No thank you very much.”
Of course, there is still plenty at stake, for Australia the chance to win here for the first time in 22 years and for England the chance to stop them. But it could have been, and so nearly was, so much more.
