Napoleon once said he preferred a lucky general to a good one. This morning the jury is out on whether Napoleon would call upon England captain Ben Stokes for a rerun of the Battle of Waterloo. Brave and bold he was – lucky, not so much.
Battering Bazball bashing
At the heart of the England captain’s battle plan was this exhilarating “Bazball” as many are calling it. That is, aggressive, bold, bashing and battering of the ball as if each batter is living out his last day on earth. It is exhilarating and entertaining; it exorcises England’s conservative past when batters like Geoff Boycott ground out centuries over what seemed like centuries.
Aussies win by the skin of their teeth
England great Ian Botham once complained that if an English cricketer needed four-and-over and hit the first ball to the boundary, he would block the next five!
In the brave new world of Ben Stokes, the batters hit with abandon. This, along with a cavalier early declaration, set up one of the greatest Ashes finishes of all time at Edgbaston. It was a game over five days that, despite heaving rain on the last day, went down to the last hour with a capacity crowd roaring every ball.
An extraordinary game of cricket won by the Australians by the skin of their teeth. If Stokes had held onto a brilliant one-handed catch it could have all been different. Now that’s entertainment!
“If you don’t like this, you don’t like cricket,” said one of the breathless commentators.
Test cricket T20 and Mark Twain
I thought it was likely to be a special game when I was there among the 25,000 faithful at Edgbaston on the first day of the Ashes series on Friday. It was a glorious day under the baking sun and blue sky with an atmosphere that made the hair stand up at the back of your neck.
It was good to see test cricket – the purest form of the game that was supposedly killed by T20 cricket – in rude health.
When T20 emerged with all of its crash, bang, wallop marketing, it was the death knell of Test cricket – some fools wrote in the press more than a decade ago. It seems, in the words of Mark Twain, the reports of the death of test cricket were greatly exaggerated.
Of the 25,000, most were late middle-aged and spreading, and all of them had money to spend.
Fleece the Fans
Test cricket could teach the short form of the game a trick or two when it comes to fleecing gently the fans.
The huge concourse behind the stands was packed throughout the day with affluent males prepared to spend eight pounds on a pint of low beer, or even more for a bucket of what these days is called street food. When I saw my first Test match, street food was fish and chips walking down the street or a bag of egg sandwiches made by mother. It was cheap, it was cheerful.
Anyway, these packed concourses – where it was difficult not to bump into a man carrying six pints and two ice creams – not only made COVID a distant memory – but also showed what a well-oiled money-making machine test cricket is. Even a sponsored device to pick up radio commentary, on the action that you already paid to see, went for £15.
Most people would have parted with a few hundred pounds each without even noticing it.
England victories may come and go, but the business case for test cricket looks as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. For anyone who loves the game, that is good news.
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