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| The Ashes: cricket's most waspishly familiar fraternal rivalry returns | The Ashes: cricket's most waspishly familiar fraternal rivalry returns |
| (2 months later) | |
| OK, we can call it the summer now. The Ashes are here again after a slow-burn buildup that seemed, by the time England and Australia's cricketers finally trotted out at Trent Bridge on a muggy, slightly ethereal Nottingham morning, to have been going on almost since the last time these two teams played a Test match in England four years ago. | OK, we can call it the summer now. The Ashes are here again after a slow-burn buildup that seemed, by the time England and Australia's cricketers finally trotted out at Trent Bridge on a muggy, slightly ethereal Nottingham morning, to have been going on almost since the last time these two teams played a Test match in England four years ago. |
| Not just the Ashes either: these are the Ashes Max, a conjoined cricketing arm-wrestle that will see England and Australia play 10 Tests home and away in the next six months. If there is a fear of dilution in such unrestrained gorging on cricket's grandest, and most lucrative, long-form rivalry, the opening three sessions at Trent Bridge offered only evidence of Ashes cricket's wonderfully undimmed sense of high summer drama as England were bowled out for 215 before Australia finished on a similarly fast-forward 75 for four. | Not just the Ashes either: these are the Ashes Max, a conjoined cricketing arm-wrestle that will see England and Australia play 10 Tests home and away in the next six months. If there is a fear of dilution in such unrestrained gorging on cricket's grandest, and most lucrative, long-form rivalry, the opening three sessions at Trent Bridge offered only evidence of Ashes cricket's wonderfully undimmed sense of high summer drama as England were bowled out for 215 before Australia finished on a similarly fast-forward 75 for four. |
| This was a day of initially wary, ultimately explosive cricket dominated in the middle session by a performance of almost nostalgically wholehearted snarling seam and swing bowling by Australia's Peter Siddle; and then marked by a fightback from England's own bowlers in front of a raucous and in parts lager-sodden evening crowd. | This was a day of initially wary, ultimately explosive cricket dominated in the middle session by a performance of almost nostalgically wholehearted snarling seam and swing bowling by Australia's Peter Siddle; and then marked by a fightback from England's own bowlers in front of a raucous and in parts lager-sodden evening crowd. |
| At the end of which the summer now seems set fair for a sustained and no doubt deeply agonising restaging of cricket's most waspishly familiar fraternal rivalry. Indeed at times Trent Bridge had the air of a particularly rowdy family wedding, its stands full not just of jovially picnicking English cricket fans, but also of similarly refreshed Australians, most notably in the massed ranks of The Fanatics, a yellow T-shirted own-brand Barmy Aussie Army who burped and yodelled and generally leapt about in their seats for the entire six hours, at one point unfurling a giant boa constrictor-scale plastic beer glass "snake" to great collective euphoria. | At the end of which the summer now seems set fair for a sustained and no doubt deeply agonising restaging of cricket's most waspishly familiar fraternal rivalry. Indeed at times Trent Bridge had the air of a particularly rowdy family wedding, its stands full not just of jovially picnicking English cricket fans, but also of similarly refreshed Australians, most notably in the massed ranks of The Fanatics, a yellow T-shirted own-brand Barmy Aussie Army who burped and yodelled and generally leapt about in their seats for the entire six hours, at one point unfurling a giant boa constrictor-scale plastic beer glass "snake" to great collective euphoria. |
| On the field the omens were also good. If Australia aren't as bad – they never really were – as everybody said they were, then England, who gave away their wickets with a series of aristocratically absent-minded strokes, perhaps aren't quite as good. It is all extremely encouraging. | On the field the omens were also good. If Australia aren't as bad – they never really were – as everybody said they were, then England, who gave away their wickets with a series of aristocratically absent-minded strokes, perhaps aren't quite as good. It is all extremely encouraging. |
| With Trent Bridge already dissolved into a state of slightly wan pre-Ashes anxiety before the start of play, there was something a little distracting in the usual ominously staged preliminaries. Marching bands, giant fluttering flags and a set of frantically warbled national anthems gave way to a pink and white firework display that wreathed Trent Bridge's low slung stands in a fug of white smoke. | With Trent Bridge already dissolved into a state of slightly wan pre-Ashes anxiety before the start of play, there was something a little distracting in the usual ominously staged preliminaries. Marching bands, giant fluttering flags and a set of frantically warbled national anthems gave way to a pink and white firework display that wreathed Trent Bridge's low slung stands in a fug of white smoke. |
| A last-second Red Arrows fly-by added to the sense of a long-awaited treat being rather excessively gilded with frippery. Stop going on about the Ashes, you felt like saying: don't you know it's The Ashes? | A last-second Red Arrows fly-by added to the sense of a long-awaited treat being rather excessively gilded with frippery. Stop going on about the Ashes, you felt like saying: don't you know it's The Ashes? |
| And yet on days like this Test cricket can be relied upon to assert its own glacial powers of seduction. The opening session provided a wonderfully tense morning of old-school attrition, with a sense at all times of a wider, half-glimpsed struggle in play, the familiar tiny adjustments and small but telling cuts and nicks that are the essence of Test cricket's migrainous wide-scale drama. There is no other form of mass public entertainment quite like this. If you were to pitch Test cricket now as a global sport – five days of weather-bound, opaque and often imperceptible struggle – you wouldn't get it past the first audition. It is a glorious fluke, a hangover from less adrenal times, threatened continually by louder, shorter, more explosive attractions, but still gloriously unchanged. | And yet on days like this Test cricket can be relied upon to assert its own glacial powers of seduction. The opening session provided a wonderfully tense morning of old-school attrition, with a sense at all times of a wider, half-glimpsed struggle in play, the familiar tiny adjustments and small but telling cuts and nicks that are the essence of Test cricket's migrainous wide-scale drama. There is no other form of mass public entertainment quite like this. If you were to pitch Test cricket now as a global sport – five days of weather-bound, opaque and often imperceptible struggle – you wouldn't get it past the first audition. It is a glorious fluke, a hangover from less adrenal times, threatened continually by louder, shorter, more explosive attractions, but still gloriously unchanged. |
| Not that you'd have known it at Trent Bridge, where there was a shock even in the team lineups with the selection by Australia of 19-year-old Ashton Agar, elevated from the closest thing international sport can offer to obscurity to play a part in the defining moment of an Aussie cricketer's career. | Not that you'd have known it at Trent Bridge, where there was a shock even in the team lineups with the selection by Australia of 19-year-old Ashton Agar, elevated from the closest thing international sport can offer to obscurity to play a part in the defining moment of an Aussie cricketer's career. |
| When Agar came on in the morning session to bowl his left-arm spin to Joe Root, who has the angelically unmarked face of a brave blond child selected to sing the national anthem at an Olympic opening ceremony, there was briefly something downy-cheeked and boyband-ish about this most hoary of summer contests, with its ancestry of scowling, moustachioed men hewn from willow and leather and swaddled in ancient flannel. | When Agar came on in the morning session to bowl his left-arm spin to Joe Root, who has the angelically unmarked face of a brave blond child selected to sing the national anthem at an Olympic opening ceremony, there was briefly something downy-cheeked and boyband-ish about this most hoary of summer contests, with its ancestry of scowling, moustachioed men hewn from willow and leather and swaddled in ancient flannel. |
| Root was Siddle's first wicket of the day, succumbing to a beautifully directed yorker that offered the first real sign, after Alastair Cook's early dismissal, of the zaniness to come. Even with England scoring runs at a jaunty rate and going to lunch in relatively good spirits on 98-2, there was a sense of brittleness in the air. Might it have been a Kevin Pietersen day? Certainly this was a stage to relish for England's most talented middle-order celebrity narcissist, but Kevin Pietersen looked tentative and it was no surprise when he edged behind off Siddle, who pounded in from the Radcliffe Road end to great effect, at one stage taking five for 22 in 51 deliveries. | Root was Siddle's first wicket of the day, succumbing to a beautifully directed yorker that offered the first real sign, after Alastair Cook's early dismissal, of the zaniness to come. Even with England scoring runs at a jaunty rate and going to lunch in relatively good spirits on 98-2, there was a sense of brittleness in the air. Might it have been a Kevin Pietersen day? Certainly this was a stage to relish for England's most talented middle-order celebrity narcissist, but Kevin Pietersen looked tentative and it was no surprise when he edged behind off Siddle, who pounded in from the Radcliffe Road end to great effect, at one stage taking five for 22 in 51 deliveries. |
| The Victorian is an incredibly likeable – and also incredibly Australian – Australian cricketer, a former competitive wood chopper (the infant Siddle was given his first axe when he was two) who in his on-field manner seems to speak to a kind of sweat-soaked deep male Australianism, the older, un-styled Australia of the tinnie-draining 1970s. Siddle is of course the darling of the Fanatics, who chanted his name – literally, just his name: the oral tradition has yet to catch on here – throughout the post-lunch session as Trent Bridge subsided into a familiar state of boisterous but attritional afternoon drama. | The Victorian is an incredibly likeable – and also incredibly Australian – Australian cricketer, a former competitive wood chopper (the infant Siddle was given his first axe when he was two) who in his on-field manner seems to speak to a kind of sweat-soaked deep male Australianism, the older, un-styled Australia of the tinnie-draining 1970s. Siddle is of course the darling of the Fanatics, who chanted his name – literally, just his name: the oral tradition has yet to catch on here – throughout the post-lunch session as Trent Bridge subsided into a familiar state of boisterous but attritional afternoon drama. |
| When Australia batted England struck back with two wickets in two balls from Steven Finn and, most significantly, a beautiful away-swinger from James Anderson that trimmed the off-stump of Australia's captain Michael Clarke. A wildly oscillating first day of the endless Ashes summer ended more or less even. Just the 49 left to go. | When Australia batted England struck back with two wickets in two balls from Steven Finn and, most significantly, a beautiful away-swinger from James Anderson that trimmed the off-stump of Australia's captain Michael Clarke. A wildly oscillating first day of the endless Ashes summer ended more or less even. Just the 49 left to go. |
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