“Ashes?” “Lol.” And so, after a two-word WhatsApp exchange and a two-year break, Moeen Ali is back at the top of his mark. There’s a roar of approval as his name is announced, a newish red ball in his hand and a fresh page to be written. Moeen has bowled 11,854 balls in Test cricket and most of them, like most of everything, have been instantly forgettable. But then there are the ones you remember.
For his nine years in international cricket this has been the eternal illusion of Moeen: a cricketer in whom you can see whatever you want to see. Do you see the boundary balls or the magic balls? The soaring sixes or the squandered starts? Even his abrupt recall – by Ben Stokes, via text – felt like its own little self-contained paradox. It was the bold call. It was the safe call. It was a counterintuitive gamble. It was a grave insult to county cricket. He was going to take vital Australia wickets. He was going to get collared.
As it turned out, pretty much all of these things turned out to be true. On a pale warm day in his home city, Moeen went for 124 runs and was by far the most expensive of England’s frontline bowlers. He was collared for 15 boundaries, most of them disdainful swipes and lofted drives from Usman Khawaja and Travis Head. His Ashes average ticked down from 64.7 to 64.4.
And yet he also broke two crucial partnerships, bowled with attacking fields all day and produced arguably the ball of the series. It was – in short – a day of Total Moeen and for all its imperfections the perfect example of what Stokes and England are trying to do these days.
At no point was this more apparent than in the 15th over of an epic 18-over spell from the Pavilion End either side of lunch, with the score 148 for three and Moeen in the jaws of an Australia counter-assault. After a taut, turbulent first hour a little of the air had gone out of the day. Moeen’s previous six overs had cost 45 runs. Khawaja had just stepped down the pitch and clouted him into the tarpaulin.
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But nobody else was getting loose. And we were reminded that the only force stronger than Stokes’s impatience is Stokes’s stubbornness. It is quite possible he persisted with Moeen for no other reason than that it was the very opposite of what conventional wisdom demanded. Tell Stokes that conventional wisdom demands he take a bath and he will quite happily wallow in his own filth for weeks.
The red Dukes ball is a little smaller and waxier than the white Kookaburra Moeen has been tossing for the past two years. It takes a little getting used to. Even so, there was a richly therapeutic quality to seeing Moeen bowling in a Test match again: the smart shuffle, the beautiful high arm, the dip and the drift, the flash of the blade, the inevitable cut for four, the gnomic stroke of the beard. Yes, we’ve missed this.
But everyone knows Moeen bowls the occasional stinker. This part is priced in. We tolerate the four-balls because we know what else he does. The clever variations, the skidders delivered with a slightly rounder arm, the slower balls held back through sleight of the fingers. And it was just such a ball that did for Head here, tempted down the track and splaying it to Zak Crawley at midwicket. A beaming Moeen pointed at Stokes. A beaming Stokes pointed at Moeen. They knew what had just happened. They knew what it meant.
Had Jonny Bairstow taken a stumping chance off Cameron Green the very next ball, Moeen might have gone on a tear. Instead, he would have to wait until the final session for his postcard moment. Once again, he hung the ball in the air, just long enough to stare Green squarely in the eyes. Green lunged at it, but as he did the ball spurned him cruelly, dipping out of sight, ripping off the surface and twanging the top of middle stump: the sort of ball that Jack Leach can only bowl in his dreams.
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Leach is a fine and underrated cricketer, but so different to Moeen in so many ways. Leach ties down an end; Moeen lights it up. Leach allows the stars to rest. Moeen is the star, a genuine England great with a deep yearning to feel things and make people feel them, too.
Only later in his career did England realise he was a strike bowler, not a support act: a man who can take wickets out of nothing, turn the page, stem the opposition’s momentum. Even if it is a momentum for which he is largely responsible.
“You’re just a shit Moeen Ali,” the crowd sang to Nathan Lyon on Friday. Which as a cricketing hypothesis probably doesn’t bear too much scrutiny, but then it wasn’t intended as a hypothesis so much as an assertion of belonging.
In unhappier times Moeen would lament that he was always the first player to be blamed for England defeats, the first to be singled out by reactionary fans, the first to be shuffled up and down the order. Partly it was why he left. Now, as a partisan Birmingham crowd stood to acclaim him, we understood why he returned. In more senses than one, Moeen Ali was home.
