A hush falls before the first ball, and Edgbaston is quieter in those last moments than it will be again until the place is empty in the evening. Some of the fans here bought tickets for this match nine months back, and have been waiting for it through the autumn, winter, and spring. Now it’s almost here, and the atmosphere in the final seconds is eager, and apprehensive. All eyes are on the middle, and the volume in the Hollies Stand has dropped to a murmur. Nobody knows what’s going to happen, but everybody’s excited that we’re finally about to find out.
This year’s Ashes has felt especially unpredictable, the Australians have clearly had no real idea what to expect from this England team, and it isn’t all that much more obvious even to their own supporters. Nobody knows how their easy-come, easy-go approach will hold up against an Australian squad that includes the world’s three top-ranked Test batsmen, four fine fast bowlers, and the most prolific finger-spinner in history. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. Nobody really knows anything, except that it will be entertaining.
Pat Cummins is done limbering up, and is ready, at the end of his run. Zak Crawley has marked his guard and is watching him, motionless in the main, body cocked and bat poised. Cummins tosses the ball from his right hand to his left, then passes it back again as he takes his first stride in towards the crease, two, three, four, five, six more follow, the crowd are cheering now, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, and roaring as he gathers himself into his action, lands on his front foot, brings his arm over and sets the 2023 Ashes under way.
The story goes that the first ball of the Ashes can set the tone for the whole series, and sometimes it really does. In 1994 Phil DeFreitas served up a decent enough delivery to Michael Slater, who chopped it past point for four, and England lost the series 3-1, buried under an avalanche of runs. In 2006, Steve Harmison fired it so wide it flew straight off the pitch to Andrew Flintoff at slip, and they were battered 5-0. And in 2021, Mitchell Starc bowled Rory Burns with a delivery that beat him around the back of his legs, and England were thrashed 4-0.
All of which, on reflection, might tell you more about the fatalistic nature of your average England supporter than it does about whether or not one ball really can determine what will happen over the course of the next five Tests.
Crawley, of course, is supposed to be the weak link in this England team. After 34 Tests, he has an average of 28. In the entire history of English cricket, only two batsmen have ever played more Tests while maintaining a worse average, one was Mike Brearley, who played 38, and had the good excuse of being a great captain, and the other was Mark Ramprakash. But Ben Stokes doesn’t have time for all that, he swears by Crawley regardless of the stats. It’s not the one-in-every-two innings Crawley falls in single digits that he cares about, it’s the one-in-every-five where he fires, and gets the team off to a flier.
So here comes the ball. It’s a little short, a little wide, not so very dissimilar, in fact, to the one DeFreitas bowled to Slater all those years ago, and now, as then, you have to reckon that most openers would be happy enough to leave it well alone.
But not Crawley. He leans out and (what, surely not?) thwacks it through for four through extra cover, where it clatters into the boundary like a champagne cork ricocheting off the ceiling. The fans around Edgbaston erupt, while on the England balcony, Ben Stokes does a double take as the players around him fall about laughing.
Crawley was on strike for the start of the second over, too, and this time he put Josh Hazlewood away for four more, through square leg. It was the first time in the history of the Ashes that England had hit fours off the first balls of both Australia’s opening bowlers.
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It turned out to be Crawley’s morning. He stepped out to punch Nathan Lyon down the ground, stood up and thumped Scott Boland away through point, strode forward to drive him through cover, and leaned back to whip Cummins through mid-wicket. In this sort of form, Crawley has the air of a millionaire (and not only because he is). At the non-striker’s end he stands like a man propped against his mantel, and at the other, he wafts his bat around like he’s brandishing a poker to show everyone how he’d set about the bowling.
England rattled along at four-and-a-half runs an over while he was at the crease, he kickstarted the innings, gave it a push that carried through the afternoon even while wickets fell. Which is, of course, exactly the job England picked him to carry out. He fell, in the end, slicing a catch behind off the final ball of the session. Australia had already got him that way once already, when he was on 37, but, bizarrely they didn’t realise he had hit it so did not appeal for the wicket. He had made 61, and you were left with the nagging sense it ought to have been more.
Because glorious as it was, it left the unanswered question of whether this spendthrift stuff will be enough. It is hard to imagine the Australian batsmen being so profligate.
