MrGareth’s Missives

Of course The Ashes series here in Australia has dominated the summer; a contest involving a strong rivalry, oscillating fortunes, controversy and naturally some great performances with bat and ball that has done the game of cricket proud.  But at the risk of trying the patience of those more than over the subject,  there’s also been another series, going by the same name and involving many of the same characteristics – but one also I like to think doing the game proud.

While the first has been dione and dusted for very nearly two months now, this somewhat smaller and less well known contest came to its denouement today in the tense final minutes as the English tail wagged and the series came down right to the wire after looking all but there for the taking for the Australians.

Now I should add, this is not a professional series.  In fact this effort is so amateur there wasn’t one nets session the whole summer.  The crowd was considerably less than the hundreds of thousands who attended the other Ashes, and no one watched it on television.  While there was some sponsorship, it amounted to a few hundred dollars invested in shirts a couple of years ago – and we are still wearing them.

But make no mistake, there was just as much at stake.

With Australia taking the first match back in November – at the same venue, Tunks Park on Sydney's North Shore; and England taking the second (which I was not able to play in) in December in Balmain, the series was level.

The rules are very slightly different too: 35 overs, forced retirement after scoring 25 runs (able to come back in later when all the other batsmen are out), five overs only per bowler and a free hit for the one’s first ball.  The atmosphere of “everyone should have a go” drives the game to ensure to full participation.  God knows with the quality of my batting and bowling, I’m a big fan of these rules!

Some early and impressive wickets from the dangerous bowling of England Captain, Mr Garvey, and England looked confidently in control before the bowlers and fielders tired in the 30 degree heat and the Australians ran up an intimidating 213 by the 35th over.  For the Australians, Mssrs Finn and Clarke in particular, the bat became an extension of their arms and the runs just kept coming and the chances were missed (not least when I perplexingly dropped a sitter of a catch!)  But with a wicket in the last over, we at least went into tea upbeat.

The English batting got off to a fairly strong start after one early wicket and a successful chase was built – mainly by the Man of the Match, Mr Cutler, carrying an unhealed broken thumb.  But then calamity struck.  A mid-order batting collapse any English side would have been proud of.  Suddenly the required run rate got away from us and the wickets piled up.  Penetrative bowling by the Australians  did for the English – myself included, caught behind for 7 – and by tea, even their English team mates had given up and began making plans for the evening.

But quietly, while the crowd – numbering about twenty people, half of them under 10 – became embroiled in preparing food, drinking beer and generally chewing the fat, the English tag wagged.  And wagged. And wagged.  Eleventh Man Mr Riley built successive partnerships with returning 25-ers Mssrs Cutler and Garvey and before long the target was in sight.  Suddenly it was 23 runs needed from 18 balls.  The total was finally put away with a loudly-cheered six in the last over and the poms stole the series 2-1.

After eight years – five of which I have been lucky enough to be involved - the whole rivalry is now locked at four-four.  Season 2011-12 will no doubt take the tension to a new level!

(Pictures here.)

Amid all the Ashes excitement in Australia, you wouldn’t imagine that there is a small grave in a field in Belgium with profound and poignant relevance to the world’s oldest sporting rivalry.  But I traced that very link from a last minute invitation to a very small ceremony in the Oxford Road Cemetery in Ieper (previously known as Ypres and colloquially known as “Wipers” by British troops during the First World War.)

Colin Blythe was a Sergeant in the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and was killed somewhat arbitrarily - like so many others - by a random shell in the battle of  Passchendaele  in November 1917.

Colin, also known as Charlie, was also thought one of the finest spin bowlers of the pre-war period, and played several tests for England - including Ashes series in England and Australia.  In 2009, the year that England reclaimed the Ashes from Australia after the debacle of the 2006/7 series, the England cricket team visited the Oxford Road Cemetery where  a stone cricket ball was laid at the grave of England and Kent bowler Blythe. "It was a deeply moving and humbling experience," said captain Andrew Strauss.

Also laid at the grave was a small miniature cricket bat, which was recently and astonishingly stolen.  And so it was decided by members of Kent Country Cricket Club (for whom he played) that it should be replaced and a ceremony was scheduled to dedicate it.  It was a very small, brief (6 minutes) but dignified ceremony – conducted by my father, the Chaplain to the nearby St George’s Memorial Church, Ieper  (which you can watch here on You Tube.)

The whole experience put today's Ashes events in quite startling perspective for me.

It’s an arresting place to visit.  Certainly not one of the large grave yards – for there are several vast cemeteries in the area to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of war dead in the area through 1914-1918.  But the Oxford Road Cemetery in particular is important for its location as well as for its significant resident. Situated just metres away from an important field dressing post on the road back from the  Passchendaele  Battle front.  Of the several hundred graves there, many of them all died within a few days of each other – between the 24^th October and the 7^th November 1917.  Of the graves there, all are of gentlemen younger than myself – which makes me very sad.

But as you tour around the rest of the area, you appreciate how lucky Mr Blythe is to have such a grave at all, let alone one so well attended.  Many of the graves in that cemetery are of an “Unknown Soldier” – sometimes its not even clear of what nationality.  But so many of the war dead were never even found. The grand Menin Gate in Ieper town centre records the names of some 56,000 British Empire dead – Canadian, Australian, Indian, New Zealand and South African as well as British – the remains of whom were never even found amid the mud of the Ypres Salient.

(More pictures of the Oxford Road Cemetery here.)

 

 

I'm of course well aware that there are many in the world find it staggering alone that a game of cricket - of anything in fact - can take five days to complete.  It is therefore even more galling to people that at the end of that process you can still not even have a result!  I recognise that this may seem a little stagnant, stale or futile even.  But I must reassure those worried about the wasted energy, time and money invested in cricket, despite the draw the first  Ashes test in Brisbane has been one of the best examples of why test cricket surpasses anything for sporting drama and excitement and was well worth it regardless.  The drama and significance of the long weekend entirely negated any apparent anti-climax a draw might be accused of. 

In answer to someone asking after my health this past weekend, I did in fact admit that my mood and spirits were entirely dictated by the cricket, and at that particular moment this was not positive.  Its hard to describe the horribly and deeply sick feeling I and millions of others experienced when the English Captain Andrew Strauss was out on his third ball (especially given the ghosts of our last start here); or the disbelief and horror I felt as Peter Siddle savaged through the English batting middle order in one over and in consecutive balls, taking a historic rare-as-hen's-teeth hat trick (only the third in more than a century of Ashes cricket). These miserable events were happening to me almost as much as they were to the players involved.  (The degree to which your own interests are at stake when you are a pom living in Australia cannot be overstated.  That's not to say that it's any more important to a pom in Australia than someone living in Fulham.  It isn't.  But as a collective we are considerably more exposed.  Social media has meant this at times light hearted banter, and at other times verbal combat, is all pervasive of course - as Ashley Kerekes (aka @theashes) can attest.)

The oscillating emotions experienced by a test cricket student (and with a myriad of statistics and history to keep across, to consume an ashes test match is more like study than spectating) covers an entire spectrum from end to end.  Especially when it involves the often unpredictable English sporting temperament.  Shortly before Peter Siddle took three wickets in consecutive balls - on his birthday no less - I had been talking to my father online.  He had just risen, living in the northern hemisphere, and asked how the cricket had gone on the first day.  At that point it was looking relatively comfortable despite Strauss' early and fruitless exit.  "But" I said, "it just depends on how the middle order do."  Not ten minutes later Siddle scalped his three hat trick victims, Pietersen, Prior and Broad -they *were* that middle order!   That is how quickly test cricket can turn.

England were doomed twice during the course of the match and came back twice, with bat and ball, to steal a draw from defeat's jaw.  Australia too were in turn dominant and dictated to during separate phases of the turbulent five day battle.  Hussey and Haddin's 307 partnership was truly awesome in it's perseverance and determination - particularly amid what Haddin describes as the "toughest and highest quality test bowling you’re going to get".  Yet Cooks's historic 235 run contribution to the final 517/1 2nd innings English total was equally inspiring and even miraculous - the highest total ever without losing a second wicket.  (After so many appalling English batting collapses, its also impossible to decribe how much delight those figures brought.)

The match saw the establishment of two new National heroes - Cook and Siddle - yet both were not even certain to make the team only a month before the test.  While it saw the dramatic debut of one new player, the phlegmatic Steve Finn who got a six-for (six wickets from his bowling), it probably also saw the death nail in Mitchell johnson's career who's bowling endeavors cost 170 runs for no wicket, fielding saw a dropped catch and batting saw a 19-ball duck.  

Finally anyone familiar with the history of The Gabba, (affectionately known in Australia as the Gabbatoir) and its usually fatal impact on the ambitions of so many visiting teams cannot possibly deny the importance of a draw there.  But anyway, what is so exciting is that whatever happened in Brisbane, anything can happen.  Despite the most impressive English batting performance since 1924, and the highest Gabba Total since Bradman; Sir Ian Botham's warning about Australian sporting virility still rings true and should deter any complacency - "you can pick eleven random blokes off an Aussie beach and still expect a decent game from them".