Sitting high up in the team hotel, the Optus Stadium looming like a giant spaceship in the distance, Ben Stokes paused a moment and acknowledged the enormous opportunity ahead to join the select band of England captains who have won an Ashes series. The measure of this particular challenge is that, in the past hundred years, only two of his predecessors, Ray Illingworth and Douglas Jardine, have done so to regain rather than retain the Ashes on Australian soil.
Undoubtedly, Stokes has the leadership qualities to join those two distinctive characters who, despite their contrasting backgrounds, were similarly tough and stubborn and shrewd. Stokes is a remarkable cricketer who leads in his own forthright way and, as such, has transformed the mentality of this team. Whether he has the players to do it will be revealed over the next two months but with Australia shorn of their captain and two outstanding bowlers, and filled with indecision over the make-up of its team, he has been granted a golden chance to make a winning start.
Four years ago, Australians saw the worst of English cricket. A wretched, beaten-down team who had been pulled from pillar to post by the demands of Covid, eventually bypassed the hermit state of Western Australia on their way to a 4-0 drubbing. It was a result that heralded a fundamental shift in personnel, the consequences of which will play out over the next two months. Australia will see a very different England team this time; confident and assertive in a way that the travellers of four years ago were not.
Although the mantra under Stokes has been to live in the moment, he and Brendon McCullum have always had an eye on this series ever since they were paired together by Rob Key and they have shaped the side in a way that they believe will give them the best chance of winning here. They take no heed of outside noise. They have backed their players and have a clear strategy based on aggressive batting, fast bowling and an optimistic outlook. That could not be more different from four years ago.
Stokes has something to prove himself, having scored only one hundred in Australia
PHILIP BROWN/GETTY IMAGES
Although there are only five players who have experienced the intensity of Ashes cricket in Australia — Joe Root, Mark Wood, Zak Crawley, Ollie Pope and Stokes — this is not an inexperienced, wet-behind-the ears outfit. The batting line-up is now set in stone and boasts 476 caps, with only Jamie Smith, the wicketkeeper batsman, finding his way in Test cricket. It includes Root, one of the greatest batsman England have produced, and Harry Brook, who may, in time, join in him in that status.
For England to win, one imagines their key players, of which Root and Brook are two, will have to make their mark on the summer. It is hard to imagine that Root will leave Australia without scoring a hundred and he only has to be mindful that his strength, working the ball behind square with an open blade, can be his weakness here with the extra bounce bowlers generate from Australian pitches. Brook’s enthusiasm can sometimes get the better of him, and he must be wary of the size of the grounds when taking on the short ball.
Jofra Archer and Mark Wood were both announced in a 12-man squad on Wednesday, which means that England are as certain as they can be about Wood’s fitness, the final decision being on the balance of the team and whether to play a spinner or not. Pairing two of England’s fastest bowlers ever is an enticing, mouthwatering prospect that has happened only once before, at Southampton five years ago. Archer’s path to the Ashes has been planned in microscopic detail and this will be a last hurrah for Wood. Between them, and the other fast bowlers, Stokes has the requisite ammunition to take 20 wickets, as Jardine had with Harold Larwood, and Illingworth with John Snow.
Much depends on Stokes the cricketer as well as captain. His presence over five Tests as an all-rounder is critical but the last three Tests come quickly over the holiday period and will test his 34-year-old body to the limit. He has something to prove as a player here too. Although he etched his name in Ashes folklore with that innings at Headingley in 2019, he has not been seen at his best on Australian soil. He has only made one hundred — his maiden Test hundred, in Perth over a decade ago when he first gave notice of his talent and character — and taken one five-wicket haul here. He has endured eight defeats in nine matches.
That history, distant and recent, is against England, but from the outset it feels like a different moment in time and this week in Perth represents a wonderful opportunity to begin to change that narrative. It is likely there will be a couple of debutants in Australia’s line-up to have a crack at. The top order has shown some vulnerabilities and, all of a sudden, the bowling attack is missing 604 wickets with the absence of Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood. The home team have vulnerabilities for sure.
Starc will lead an Australian bowling attack missing Cummins and Hazlewood
ROBBIE STEPHENSON/PA WIRE
The Optus Stadium offers a distinctive start, given that England have never played a Test at the ground. At least they are spared the Waca, where they have won only once — and that back in 1979 — and the Gabba, where Australia historically start strongly and England have not won since 1986. Mitchell Starc, on whose shoulders extra responsibility now falls, aimed a jab at Australia’s administrators before the game for not starting the series in Brisbane, which would have been, he said, the players’ preference.
The calamities there bear no repeating. Rory Burns lost his leg stump to the first ball of the match four years ago. Steve Harmison sent the first ball of the 2006-07 series into the hands of second slip. In anticipation of some further horror, Cricket Australia has set up 600 digital screens around the country for viewers in city centres to share the experience. Demand for tickets for the five matches has been intense and between 30,000 and 40,000 supporters from Britain are expected. The demand for cricket of consequence and meaning is strong.
Expectations for a competitive series, which would be the first Ashes series here to be so in 15 years, are high and that in itself is a measure of how far England have come since Ollie Robinson backed away and was bowled neck-and-crop at Hobart four years ago to complete a dismal Ashes series. The transformation has been driven by a collaboration between Key, McCullum and Stokes, but no one has done more than Stokes to imprint his character on this team and change its culture.
He now readies himself to embrace a challenge that will define how he is remembered as an England captain. Whatever happens over the next two months should not, in my view, diminish what has gone before. Nevertheless, England captains are judged by the Ashes. That is how it has always been. As long as this contest remains that is how it always will be.
First Test
Optus Stadium, Perth
Friday, 2.20am
TV TNT Sports