The five-act drama of England’s Ashes comeback

What a day! What a match! What an innings! Clips of Ben Stokes’s extraordinary hitting will be replayed time and again for years to come. They will stay in the mind’s eye too. Yet one other image was equally memorable for what didn’t happen. There was no wild celebration when he reached his hundred, merely a touch of his helmet’s peak in acknowledgement of the delirious crowd, then back to business. If Steve Smith is indeed the new Bradman, this too was Bradmanesque.

Sir Alastair Cook says it was the greatest Ashes innings ever played by an Englishman. Was it? I’ve no idea. What I do know is that I’ll remember it as long as I remember anything. And teenagers today will hold it in their memory as clearly as I retain the memory of that day at The Oval in 1953 when Jim Laker and Tony Lock spun Australia out for 162 and set England on the way to winning the Ashes for the first time since the Bodyline tour twenty years before.

One-day cricket is a One-Act play, Test cricket a drama in five-acts, and a great Test Match has its ebbs and flows, its troughs and peaks. On Friday England were in the deepest pit of the Inferno, shot out for 67, abject and despised, and Sunday’s hero Ben Stokes was guilty of an atrocious shot, the kind that would have had an old-style schoolmaster saying, “another shot like that, boy. and you’ll never play for my team again.” He went some way to redeeming himself with a whole-hearted spell of bowling: 24 overs, 3 for 56. Even so, Australia’s last 4 wickets added 82 runs, and seemed to have taken the game out of England’s reach.

If a Test is a five-act drama, England’s second innings was a five-act drama condensed.

Act I:  Rory Burns and Jason Roy go quickly. England 15 for 2, the target 359 a distant Alp.

Act II: Captain Joe Root, with no runs in his last two innings, and Joe Denly, his future in Test cricket hanging by a thread, painstakingly, even painfully, rebuild.  Boundaries are rare, those from the middle of the bat rarer still. Singles are cheered as if they were sixes. Gradually, first Root, and then Denly, rediscover fluency. From 15/2 England climb a  foothill: 141/ 2, both men with half-centuries. Then Denly goes, caught behind off the excellent Josh Hazlewood. Enter Stokes, in self-denial mode. There’s a hair-shirt under his cricket shirt. When he plays like this, one realises that his defensive technique is classically orthodox. Straight bat, well forward or right back on his stumps, no playing half-heartedly from the crease.

Nevertheless he is in trouble against Nathan Lyon’s clever off-spinners. Still they get through to the close. Hope springs faintly, principally because Root is looking like himself again. Overnight we mutter, “if Joe can still be there at lunch…”

Act III: Sunday morning. Tense as can be: the new ball will be available in 8 overs. The first four overs of the day are maidens. The first single of the day from Root gets a rousing relieved cheer. Then disaster. Lyon comes on. Root goes to drive, plays the ball onto his boot or pad. It flies over the wicket-keeper, but Davey Warner at first slip makes a diving catch. Stokes is still 2 not out after more than an hour at the crease. The Root-Stokes partnership has lasted 18 overs, in the course of which they have scored 18 runs.

One of Yorkshire’s favourite sons has gone, but here comes another, Jonny Bairstow. The mood changes. It’s as if, striding to the wicket, he muttered “sod this for a lark”. A couple of lovely cover- drives pierce the field and reach the boundary. Australia take the new ball. It flies to all parts of the field. Stokes removes the imaginary hair-shirt and flicks Australia’s fastest bowler, Pat Cummins, for a leg-side six. In 20 overs before lunch some 80 runs are added. This is great stuff. Another hour of Bairstow and Stokes will surely take us well up the Alp, within sight of victory. Meanwhile we can enjoy our lunch, if nerves permit us to eat.

Act IV:  The flame of hope sinks to a flicker. Bairstow goes quickly, caught at slip, a poor shot. Enter the one-day genius, Jos Buttler. He looks tentative, not at all a  genius, but before he has time to prove himself, Stokes calls him for a run, then sends him back, and he is run out. Chris Woakes has a Test century to his name, but not today. He drives weakly into the covers and is out caught. Young Jofra Archer smites three fours, then going for another off Lyon is skilfully caught on the mid-wicket boundary. Stuart Broad is lbw straightaway. Stokes is batting wonderfully now, but isn’t it too late, gallantry in a lost cause?

Act V:  The score is 286/9, with 73 still needed. Impossible: this isn’t an Edwardian school story. Enter Somerset’s Jack Leach, lovely slow left-hander. He can bat a bit, we know. Going in as night-watchman against Ireland, he batted on and on to make 92, but with all due respect to Ireland’s Tim Murtagh and his mates, they aren’t much like Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, James Pattinson and Nathan Lyon. Bespectacled Jack looks less like a Somerset yeoman than an old-fashioned bank clerk, but he’s the man for the moment. Removing his helmet to mop his moisting-up glasses, he contrives – the Lord knows how – to appear calm. Meanwhile Stokes, the marvellous Stokes  “Oh for a Muse of Fire”. One has seen nothing like it, well, not since Ian Botham at this same Headingley almost forty years ago. Which is more extraordinary? His virtuosity? His power? His nerve? I’ve no idea. Fours and sixes fly from his bat. Fielders on the boundary rope leap high but the ball soars out of their reach. There’s one moment when Josh Hazlewood, who has bowled beautifully all match and had batsmen in trouble and chains, looks bemused, incredulous.

The improbable victory is in sight, but the director of this drama thinks our nerves haven’t yet been stretched tight enough. Stokes goes for another mighty drive. This time it flies high off the edge towards deep third man. Marcus Harris sprints in, dives forward, get his hands to the ball..and drops it. It’s a difficult catch, but the kind we see taken any summer evening in T20 cricket.

Stokes goes on. The admirable Cummins hits Leach on the pad. The umpire says not out.  Cummins is doubtful but Tim Paine calls for a review. Pitched outside leg – so the umpire got it right. Then Stokes calls for a run. It’s not on. He sends Leach back. He’s going to be run out by yards. It’s all been in vain, glorious failure. But the throw is a poor one. Lyon fails to gather it. Leach, Stokes and England survive. Two to win. Stokes goes for a sweep to win the game, misses, is struck on the pad. Not out, says the umpire. Australia have no reviews left – and the replay shows the umpire should have raised the finger of doom.

Later it will be said that Australia mismanaged their reviews. I can’t blame them. Umpires in this series have made so many mistakes and had so many decisions overturned on review that the decision to review that Cummins lbw against Leach is all too understandable.

Two to win, and that missed sweep shot means that for the first time Cummins has the prospect of a full over at Leach. Stokes can barely bring himself to watch. But the imperturbable Jack nudges the second ball off his legs for a single. The scores are tied. There has only been one tied Test in the history of the game. A majestic front-foot cut flies through the covers. Stokes lets out a roar loud enough to soar across the Pennines to Old Trafford where the drama will resume next week.

Lord, help us. Can our nerves take it?