England providing the style and substance, Aussies the comedy capers

The Age

2 days ago

A good Ashes series starts before it starts, like feature movies used to, with half an hour of teasers and cartoons. Right now, England are providing the teasers, Australia the cartoons.
Set 371 to win in the fourth innings to beat India at Headingley, England achieved the 10th highest chase in men's Test cricket history with 14 overs and five wickets unneeded. It was the highest successful chase in Leeds since Don Bradman's Invincibles, and England cruised home with similar ease.
The style was more modern, Jamie Smith finishing the game by whacking Ravindra Jadeja over the long-on fence, watched by the same Jasprit Bumrah whose stiff arms and jangling bangles haunted Australia's sleep a few months ago. Bumrah went wicketless that day. England had found, as Australia had, that stopping Bumrah meant stopping India. The difference was it only took England one game to figure out how to do it.
England also became the first team to win any Test match after conceding five centuries. Two were scored by Rishabh Pant, which, in England's favour, meant that the Indians did waste much time amassing their 835 runs (the fourth-highest aggregate by a losing team in Test history; this game was a statistician's playpen).
While India's mountain of runs might not speak too highly for England's bowling, the tenor of England's cricket under Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum has been not to worry too much about the target, anything is chaseable, leave it to the batsmen. 'We're a very simple-minded pair,' Stokes said. 'Everyone knows what cricket's about: it's about scoring more runs than your opposition.'
Australia, on the other hand…
Australia gave England a box seat to view their frailties at Lord's earlier in the month. Australia's cricket is also simple-minded: it's about their bowlers taking more wickets (and maybe also scoring more runs) than the opposition. It didn't work in the World Test Championship final, where South Africa's collective discipline and enthusiasm were too good. In the fourth innings, Aiden Markram provided (or copied?) the England template, making a fourth innings chase look easy after Australia's top four batsmen contributed 126 across both innings at an average of 16. In Barbados, the Australian top four contributed 105 runs at an average of 13.
The Ashes outlook is complicated for Australia, which is engaged in a race against its chickens coming home to roost. Can the four mighty bowlers sustain their potency for one last summer? Can Usman Khawaja hold body, soul and reflexes together past his 39th birthday? Is this when the bell finally tolls on the selectors' long-proven methodology of crossing their fingers, closing their eyes and hoping for the best?