the Guardian\u2019s over-by-over coverage<\/a>. One, from Tom Van der Gucht, countered the prevailing view among England fans that the apocalypse was due before sundown.<\/p>\n\u201cI have a feeling this is our Lord\u2019s 2005 moment and we\u2019ll come back and win the series from here,\u201d he wrote. \u201cOur bowlers, for at least one innings, went toe to toe while our batters effectively blew it with a rush of blood to the head. Australia are there for the taking. You mark my words \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Cricket nerds love a precedent. In this case, England fans will cling to anything that doesn\u2019t involve a wearingly familiar story: England lose the first Test in Australia, then the second, then the third \u2026<\/p>\n
The manner in which Steve Smith was made to feel uncomfortable on day one in Perth should encourage England. Photograph: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake\/Reuters<\/p>\n
The parallels with Lord\u2019s 2005 are compelling if imperfect. Some of the details have been twisted, like dreams in a David Lynch film. In that game, for example, it was Australia who batted first and drowned in testosterone, bowled out for 190 in 40.2 overs. An immense bowling performance on the first evening \u2013 in this case by Glenn McGrath rather than the entire England attack \u2013 gave them a first-innings lead. This is where the stories diverge: Australia batted England out of the game in the third innings, with Clarke strumming 91 from 106 balls. They won handsomely in the end, but like Perth the victory was built on individual greatness (for Mitchell Starc and Travis Head, read McGrath and to an extent Clarke in 2005) rather than a complete team performance.<\/p>\n
In both Tests, a much-hyped England pace attack showed they could unsettle and unseat the Australian batters. Smith hasn\u2019t struggled as much in a Test innings since he was a leg-spinner who batted a bit. In 2005 England didn\u2019t really wound the Australian batters after Lord\u2019s \u2013 partly because that was the liveliest pitch, mainly because the physical threat, unprecedented for an England attack against Australia, had been established.<\/p>\n
There was also, hiding in plain sight, a detail that would define the series. In an otherwise poor individual performance \u2013 \u201cI bottled it\u201d \u2013 Flintoff dismissed Adam Gilchrist twice. For the rest of the series, Flintoff was the bogeyman\u2019s bogeyman. There are no obvious parallels at Perth but then we didn\u2019t appreciate the significance of Flintoff\u2019s wickets at the time. Harry Brook\u2019s first-innings fifty also had echoes of Kevin Pietersen\u2019s outrageous batting (57 and 64 not out in totals of 155 and 180), including a gobsmacking six off Australia\u2019s postage-stamp seamer.<\/p>\n
Most of all, on both occasions there were industrial quantities of opprobrium. England \u2013 who went into the 2005 series on a run of 14 wins in 18 Tests, all achieved playing ultra-aggressive cricket \u2013 were savaged after Lord\u2019s. They were just another English Ashes shower: \u201ca bunch of drips\u201d according the Mirror, \u201cVaughan Again Losers\u201d in the Sun.<\/p>\n
Between Tests, the captain, Michael Vaughan, bowled twice at Lord\u2019s, met the coach, Duncan Fletcher, to do some technical work in the nets. They kept talking about how submissive, Pietersen aside, England\u2019s batting had been at Lord\u2019s. \u201cThe loss in the first Test actually was the switch,\u201d said Fletcher later. \u201cWe said: \u2018Enough is enough now. If we carry on like this we will get drilled again.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Marcus Trescothick led England\u2019s counterattack on the first morning at Edgbaston in 2005. Photograph: Reuters<\/p>\n
With McGrath absent \u2013 another twisted detail, given Pat Cummins may return at Brisbane \u2013 England skedaddled to 132 for one from 27 overs on the first morning at Edgbaston. They eventually belted 407 from 79.2 overs, an unprecedented onslaught at the time; their approach veered from calculated risk to giddy recklessness. \u201cThe manner in which we played on that first day was the turning point of the entire series,\u201d said Vaughan.<\/p>\n
Stokes\u2019s team crave a similar turning point, but they are not for turning. At Perth last week they were ultimately beaten by an all-time-great innings from Head, the platonic ideal of Bazball. He just had a much smarter gameplan.<\/p>\n
Quick GuideScoreboards from Lord’s and Edgbaston, 2005Show<\/p>\n
First Test, Lord’s<\/p>\n
Australia 190 (Harmison 5-43) and 384 (Clarke 90, Katich 67, Martyn 65)
England 155 (Pietersen 57, McGrath 5-53) and 180 (Pietersen 64*, McGrath 4-29)
Australia won by 239 runs<\/p>\n
Second Test, Edgbaston<\/p>\n
England 407 (Trescothick 90, Pietersen 71, Flintoff 68) and 182 (Flintoff 73, Warne 6-46)<\/p>\n
Australia 308 (Langer 82, Ponting 61) and 279 (Lee 43*, Flintoff 4-79)
England won by two runs<\/p>\n
Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n
Fletcher\u2019s quote from 2005 can be adapted to suit this team\u2019s wants and needs. Hyper-aggressive cricket is their only chance of winning in Australia, but they also need to tweak their approach. If, at Brisbane, they continue driving on the up well wide of off stump, they will get drilled again. And if that happens, the montages of the 2025-26 Ashes will be full of English batters getting out, not their bowlers landing symbolic blows on day one of the series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty years on, a montage of the 2005 Ashes still tingles the spine. Close your eyes and you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-287594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}