The English Team, We Urge You to Be Competitive: Cricket's Greatest Claim as the Top Contest Depends on It

Don Bradman was the subject of the first adult book I recall reading as a youngster. In the mind of a primary school student, the unfairness of an England's skipper instructing his countrymen to target a talented Aussie was hard to grasp. Thus, like many, I came to hate England.

Anticipation for the Ashes? It goes without saying. Cricket’s calendar makes this a rare treat to watch two of the top cricketing nations challenge and provoke each other over what we anticipate will be five Tests of interrogation with the traditional red ball.

As Ian Botham reminded us last week at the launch of the ticket draw for the historic 2027 match, the Ashes has a special charm. “Historically, fans globally watches the Ashes,” he said. “It’s the tradition, the rivalry, it's always full throttle.”

In England, those two tightly fought contests – marked by Steve Smith’s mountain of runs and Ben Stokes’ Headingley masterpiece in 2019, and the Lord’s Long Room disgrace of 2023 – have met the expectations of what an Ashes battle should be. However, they have not had the equivalent resonance on the Australian shores when half of Australia falls asleep before the end of the lunch interval.

On Australian soil, the Ashes has been less flat out than just flat for more than a decade. Fans down under anticipate their team to win and win handily, as it has been since the nineties. Scott Boland’s 6-7 at the MCG wasn’t wrought in a furnace of competition, it was a comical English collapse confirming a worldview. A true rivalry should not be so one-sided.

The Sport's Commentators Must Now Lean In at the Ashes’ Waning Embers and Fan the Flames

The English team were greeted upon arrival by a predictable front page in the local tabloid, “Bazball”, accompanied by a description of the widely respected Ben Stokes as “cocky”. The paper then had a go at “Average Joe” Root, aka “Flop Root in Australia”. This sufficed to prompt a predictable Fleet Street reaction, allowing the press to squeeze what juice is left in the lead-up before the first ball is bowled.

In contrast, the previous Border-Gavaskar Trophy between Australia and India sparked something all by itself. The spiritual peak was that MCG experience, a memory that will linger forever. The numbers, too, overwhelmed. 838,000 were present across the series, the fourth highest for any contest in Australia and the highest for any non-Ashes contest. Viewers were captivated, not unlike the ratings surge for India's UK visit this year, and eight sessions drew more than 2m television viewers.

In recent weeks, the emotional if unofficial farewells of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli at the SCG made one-day cricket actually mean something. Contrast the news title following the previous occasion England visited for a limited-overs series: “Smallest attendance for an ODI match sparks concerns for future of 50-over format”.

India’s Rising Influence

Even though bad weather disrupted the short-format games with India, what play we saw indicates Australia are some way off the T20 international standards. In women’s cricket, at the global tournament last month, the home side knocked off the defending champions. The multi-format series starting in Sydney is primed as a de facto world championship.

One might to overlook the colorful fan groups that gather at India’s matches – across all formats – as a simple reflection of the huge expat community of the planet's largest country. However, to bean counters and broadcast bosses, they are an boon.

The world’s largest democracy now means more to Australia than its motherland, given the nations have in common an ocean, shared colonial history, and increasingly their peoples. India is set to overtake the UK, per ABS migration data, as the source of the biggest contingent of foreign-born Australian residents as soon. The failing Aukus relationship is driving a recalibration of defence interests respecting the rising power of regional giants, a shift that long ago happened in the cricketing world.

The former Australian skipper, who also led the Indian team, said last week that England was “the classic foe”, but also that “to be fair, without India, cricket wouldn’t be the same”.

The Ultimate Test

Before Australia claimed the trophy last summer, India had retained it for ten years. In India, Australia haven't triumphed in more than 20 years. Even if the home side reclaim the Ashes easily this summer, losing the five-Test Border-Gavaskar Trophy in India in the coming years would leave the Cummins era incomplete.

The long-awaited win on the subcontinent remains the ultimate test for this generation, and a blip against England this summer – put down to an untimely injury, just like 2005 and Glenn McGrath’s freak rolled ankle – would only fuel the story.

The tourists have not won an Ashes Test in Australia for almost 15 years, and despite the history, it cannot sustain a lopsided rivalry indefinitely. So, with a gaudy, engrossing India having only just flown out, Ben Stokes’s players have a lot at stake. Triumph in the Ashes and remain significant. Alternatively surrender the trophy and with it an irreplaceable asset: the right to being the top opponent. Please England, just be good.