Does it ever feel like sport has lost its magic?
Smothered beneath endless commentary about political implications and social responsibility, national sporting victories can often feel rather hollow. As I followed the England football team’s run at the 2022 World Cup, I found myself beset with an unsettling sense of disinterest. Where were the idiosyncratic heroes of my youth? They had been replaced with polished, kneeling banalities, devoid of character and insulated against scandal. National pride and glorious victory had given way to ‘fair play’ and ‘being a good role model’.
Yet those values of my rose-tinted youth are still found in one place. Test cricket is the last bastion of sporting magic.
You could not design Test cricket today; it is fundamentally a relic of a bygone era. The five-day structure is punishingly lengthy by the standards of most sports, host teams enjoy an obscene level of control over pitch conditions, and the built-in break for afternoon tea is a quaint reminder of the game’s Victorian origins. In an age of seething anti-imperialism, it is a format played almost exclusively by former British colonies.
Yet these eccentricities are precisely what makes Test cricket so special. Scratch below the surface, and they all make a kind of sense. The five-day format isn’t exclusive and arduous; it allows spectators to check in from their desks, only needing to focus at moments of particular excitement. The control that host teams enjoy over their wicket conditions means that each pitch is unique, benefitting some styles and punishing others.
Test cricket doesn’t feel the need to be ruthlessly egalitarian, and it doesn’t care about finding the most even playing field. It’s a game that embraces the peculiar and the traditional, and recognises that sport exists to entertain spectators just as much as it exists to test the limits of athletic ability. No Test match is ever truly fair – but across a series, that unfairness is distributed evenly.
And that’s so say nothing of the narratives – oh, the narratives! The real magic of Test cricket is in its unashamed commitment to storytelling. That legendary Ben Stokes innings at Headingly in 2019 has taken on an almost mythical quality in the English imagination. I will mark the retirement of Stuart Broad, that old English stalwart, as Lancelot marked the death of Arthur. By the same turn, Steve Smith still evokes a booing and braying from English crowds typically reserved for pantomime villains.
A good Test match will highlight both effective teamwork and individual brilliance. A match that is seemingly lost beyond all hope can be recovered – a humiliating defeat can be turned into a hard-fought draw. It affords a role to explosive top-enders and quiet, steady nightwatchmen. In the age of participation prizes, Test cricket still celebrates heroes.
And in all of this, the Ashes is the pinnacle. The most complex relationship, the most compelling narratives, the most arcane traditions. The English, a mixture of public schoolboys and salt-of-the-earth lads from post-industrial towns, against the Australians, far less scrupulous and far more attractive, battling over that famous urn.
The contest was born in 1882, with the first Australian Test victory on British soil. A mock obituary, written by Reginald Shirley Brooks, appeared in the Sporting Times, lamenting the death of English cricket – ‘The body’, wrote Brooks, ‘will be cremated, and the ashes taken to Australia.’ England’s captain, Ivo Bligh, promised to ‘recover those Ashes’ on the team’s 1882-83 Antipodean tour. The rest, as they say, is history.
Over as many as twenty-five days of play, convicts, and poms do battle in the same manner as their forefathers. Tempers flare, blows are exchanged, and a victor emerges. The whole thing is punctuated by good humour and a rather one-sided commitment to fair play.
Each stadium has its own character and associated mythology – the esotericism of Lord’s, the earnestness and energy of Old Trafford, the blend of the two which defines the SCG. For the cricket fan, these are names that now stand alongside Agincourt, Hastings, and Helm’s Deep.
Despite the creation of the Cricket World Cup in 1975 – and the disapproval of many at the ICC and BCCI – there is still no greater prize than an Ashes victory.
We should cherish events like the Ashes, which remind us of when we didn’t shy away from complexity and competition. Occasions like these are fewer and fewer. In 2027, we are set to lose the traditional Oxford versus Cambridge match at Lord’s, a tradition that dates back to 1827. In years to come, we will doubtless decide that other harmless traditions are too antiquated to totter on unmolested. The push against particularism and peculiarity makes it more important than ever to defend what we have.
Take it from me. If an Englishman facing down two more years of the urn in Australia can admit the inherent brilliance of Test cricket, anyone can.
