Ashes 2019: Australia tear down England’s fortress to leave Joe Root’s side in a spin

Winning in England is a fixation for this Australian side and they started as they mean to go on in fine fashion at Edgbaston

Just under three years ago, after Australia were soundly defeated by South Africa in a Test match in Hobart, Steve Smith remembers being visited in the dressing room by James Sutherland and Pat Howard, Cricket Australia’s chief executive and performance director. They were, to put it bluntly, unimpressed with what they had just seen. And so they laid out to a stunned Smith and his team just what was expected of them. “We don’t pay you to play,” they were told. “We pay you to win.”

In many ways, this was simply an indelicate enunciation of what Australian cricketers have innately known for decades, an unspoken truth that no amount of culture reviews and fancy slogans and tearful interviews can ever fully elide. Australia’s win-at-all-costs mentality led to plenty of things: an uncompromising attitude to player welfare, a spiteful on-field demeanour, and ultimately downright cheating. But - and this part is often forgotten - it also led to a hell of a lot of winning.

It’s in this context that we need to understand Australia’s quest to win on English soil, a quest that began with this ominous statement of intent at a half-full Edgbaston. And this was some statement: England’s fortress torn down, their batsmen spun to ruin by Nathan Lyon, their bowlers ground into the dirt by Smith and other players not quite as good as Smith. Moreover, the celebrations of the Australian team afterwards spoke not just of a Test victory earned, but of something more: a sort of catharsis, an itch scratched, a plan on the verge of coming to glorious fruition.

The summer of 2001, the year Australia last won at Edgbaston, was also the last year Australia won an Ashes series on foreign soil. I was at that game, and it certainly didn’t feel like the end of an era at the time. Losing to Australia was, after all, what England did. And so we politely applauded the brilliance of Adam Gilchrist and chuckled along as Mark Butcher picked up four wickets with his filthy medium pace, and then packed up our half-eaten sandwiches and went home. It would have startled us to learn that a baby born on that day would be eligible to vote by the time Australia next won here.

Australians are not bred the same way. Eighteen years to an Australian cricket fan is not the same as eighteen years to an English fan. It’s an existential crisis, a top-to-bottom failure, a national bloody disgrace. It’s a run without precedent in the history of Ashes cricket. For Mark Taylor and then Steve Waugh, the search for a win in the Caribbean (no win between 1973 and 1995) and India (no win between 1969 and 2004) became a sort of all-consuming obsession. India (15 years and counting) may yet become the next frontier. But for now, winning in England is the fixation.

And the signs were there, if only we’d been minded to read them. Around 18 months ago, according to a report in The Australian, Cricket Australia were so concerned about finding a decent standard of warm-up opposition ahead of this series that they seriously considered offering a cash prize to any county who could defeat Australia A in a tour game. That plan was shelved, but the commitment to securing Test-standard preparation was the main reason why Australia spurned tour games this time round and opted for a 25-man, Hunger Games-style shoot-out at the Ageas Bowl last month.

It was also the impetus behind the introduction of the Dukes ball in the Sheffield Shield, in the aerial bombardment of county cricket with Australian players, in the experimental selections of the last year: a move partly forced by suspensions but also made with the aim of expanding the talent pool ahead of a series that has been double-ringed in the calendar for years. No wonder, at the end of the last Australian summer, when Tim Paine was asked when he would begin his Ashes preparations, he answered: “Six months ago.”

For England, could you make remotely the same claim? This is a team still high on the bubbles of their World Cup triumph, whose all-consuming obsession for the last four years has not been the defence of their proud Ashes home record, but with white-ball cricket and all its trimmings. Many of their players have barely hit a red ball in months, and it shows. Did they have a plan to Peter Siddle, whose 44 when Australia were 122-8 on the first day could end up being one of the low-key turning points of the series? It certainly didn’t look like it.

Nathan Lyon took six second innings wickets for Australia (Getty Images)

Perhaps it’s a stretch to suggest that England thought they could beat Australia simply by turning up. But from Jason Roy’s flight of fancy against Lyon on day five, to the selection of a clearly undercooked James Anderson, to some of the brainless lines to Smith, to Joe Root’s dismal field settings, England have simply not looked like a team with their wits about them. It’s no coincidence that their only two red-ball specialists - Rory Burns and Stuart Broad - have been their outstanding performers.

Unless England can summon some Test match nous in the next couple of weeks, this series could be over in a hurry. Australia have simply been smarter, slicker, more clinical, and the reason for that is that while English cricket was consumed with kit launches and death over strategies and whether to pick David Willey or Tom Curran, Australia were quietly touching down in England, putting down roots, plotting their Ashes campaign with military precision. Perhaps, ultimately, the difference comes down to this: England’s World Cup is over. Australia’s is only just beginning.