Well that was a pretty special Test match, huh? After the abject humiliation of England’s first innings came the perfect nail-biting victory steered by the BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2019 (pending).
It’s been a weekend of two ginger heroes for this Tractor: first the Ed Sheeran ‘homecoming’ shows in Ipswich, followed by today’s carrot-topped heroics. Gingers of the World Unite and Takeover, etc.
I think everybody had ruled out an England win although my own Addis group chat messages will prove my belief that a Butcher-style century or Cook/Strauss/Trott-style combo a la Brisbane could save us. Indeed, all we had to do was bat for two days. Bat for two days, and we win the game.
England’s deficiency of recent years (remember this was the fourth time in twelve months, third in 2019 that England have been bowled out for under 100) has been in the application of long-form batting. Like the decline of the long-form essay replaced by the banality of the Tweet, the loss of stolid defensive Test batting is to be rued. On the evening of Day 3 I raged at PC TinTin along these lines:
It doesn’t matter to the England coaching staff what the ECB has decided to do about the Hundred and prioritising the World Cup and relegating County Championship to early April and late September continue ad infinitum. This is the situation the players are in and so I expect there to be long, looooong net sessions where players are forbidden from ‘scoring’ for as many balls as possible. Nobody gets to leave until everybody has executed a minimum of 50 textbook defensive shots. WHAT STRATEGIES ARE WE USING TO MAKE UP FOR THE FACT THAT THEY ALL CHASE THE WHITE BALL MONEY NOW?!?!
So you can imagine my delight on Saturday afternoon (before Ginger King Ed took to the stage and I could no longer get score updates) to see Joe Root and Joe Denly batting in a manner befitting their status and that of the match. Turning on the TV at about 11.15 this morning and seeing that Stokes had scored 2 runs of 50 balls, and England had not yet scored off the first four overs of the day, I was cockahoop!
Finally it really felt totally within our grasp.
Of course there will be players saying that their performance has ‘showed the journalists a thing or two’. Well, yes, it will reinforce to them your physical skill and frailty in execution if you know exactly what to do and how to do it yet so rarely do (ie score above 300, let alone 400). It will also raise eyebrows along the lines of ‘if you have come out and performed so well now only because you want to stick it to the media, you might need to reassess your motivation to succeed!’ I’ve not seen the post-match interviews with England players or coaches – keeping Little Jos watching for the final 90 minutes was a challenge not dissimilar to Ben Stokes’ and there was no way we were getting through the aftermath – but I really hope the PR message is right. This is what it should sound like: We were embarrassed by our first innings batting; it hurt to be so widely but fairly criticised and we were determined to show ourselves and the world that we do have the skill and mental tenacity to play this game. We are hugely grateful to the supporters in the ground and following from elsewhere, because they have been incredible.
I am over the moon for everyone who made a positive contribution in this match. With a ten day break before Old Trafford there is time for the England team to fully celebrate, but also for a serious examination of where things weren’t good enough. They mustn’t duck those issues because that’s will only compound them.
The Ashes are alive; now is the time to celebrate the most unexpected victory before getting back to the books and working out how we can win two more and bring these Ashes home.
Tractor