Ashes 2017: The mindless chatter is at an end, it's time for new history and new heroes to rise

Even if both sides aren't what they once were the stakes are still as assuredly high as ever

The time for talking is over, the 2017/18 Ashes series is very nearly upon us (Getty)

The screen takes on a militaristic, dark greenish hue. The soundtrack is percussive and warlike. Slow-motion footage of hapless English batsmen: not getting out, but getting hit. Explosions everywhere. And over the top of the trailer for the forthcoming Ashes series on Channel Nine, a deep and ominous voice speaks. “Let’s smash the Poms with fire and fury,” it says, “and return the urn to where it belongs. The Magellan Ashes. Starts Thursday.”

In a way, the difference between cricket in England and Australia can be summarised in that little clip. They get heavy metal, unfettered jingoism and what looks uncannily like an advert for industrial flamethrowers. We get Soul Limbo, the Shipping Forecast and Jonathan Agnew gushing about what a marvellous day it is. They do things differently over here, you see: a place where aggression and enmity are hard-wired into the nation’s cricketing DNA.

Or so, at least, most people would have you believe. For as England and Australia prepare to take the field (do battle!) at Brisbane (the Gabbatoir!) and take a 1-0 lead in the series (draw first blood!), it has been interesting to note not just how readily Australia have been prepared to revert to belligerent type, but how insincerely they have done it.

If David Warner comparing the Ashes to war had at least the ring of ham-headed authenticity to it, then Nathan Lyon declaring his intention to “end some careers” over the next few weeks - dude, you’re an off-spinner - was probably the point at which the real-life drama lapsed into scripted pantomime, and not necessarily a very good one either. As Joe Root, the England captain and a former team-mate of Lyon’s from Adelaide club cricket, put it on Wednesday: “It’s slightly out of character. It doesn’t seem very… real.”

This, surely cuts to the heart of things. Of course, sporting stature has always been two parts ability to one part bluff. But it is still hard to escape the idea over recent weeks that Australia are characters playing a role that does not always come naturally to them. There is a certain masquerade there, a certain insecurity, perhaps even an element of self-kidology: almost as if it is not the ticket-buying public or the opposition they are trying to convince, but themselves.

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One of the many reasons the Ashes is one of the greatest of all sporting encounters is its rich and treasured heritage, 140 years of golden memories from Bannerman to Botham via Bradman and Bodyline, from Trumper to Tyson via Hammond and Hutton, from Waugh to Warne via Ponting, Pietersen and Gary Pratt.

The Ashes could well spring another unlikely hero like Gary Pratt in 2005 (AFP)

Yet for all this fixture’s glittering past, for all the thousands of words of nostalgia and the hours of sepia-tinted archive footage this series has already produced, the stinging irony is that, in this post-Twenty20 era, history actually counts for very little.

Australia’s traditional dominance - between 1934 and 2005, England held the urn for just 18 years out of 71 - has been upended. The draw has practically been eradicated: 19 of the last 20 Ashes Tests in Australia have produced a positive result. Adelaide is no longer a spinner’s paradise. Perth is no longer the quickest track on the circuit. The more things stay the same, the more they change.

Most seismically of all, Australia v England is no longer a crystal-clear hallmark of sporting excellence. For the first time since the 1980s, and perhaps only the second time ever, we can say with confidence that neither of these teams is among the two best in the world. Across their last 15 Tests, both England and Australia have lost more than they have won. This is a contest between two, if not mediocre, then wildly imperfect sides, both banking on the fact that their opponent’s weaknesses will be exposed before their own.

This series is as anticipated as any other (Getty)

Australia, with home advantage, begin as justifiable but not prohibitive favourites. England have had plenty of time to acclimatise to conditions - perhaps too much, if you take into account the injuries that have afflicted Steven Finn, Moeen Ali, Jake Ball and Jonny Bairstow. And in any case, the importance of local knowledge can be grossly overstated. Michael Vaughan had minimal experience of Australia before his life-changing 2002-03 tour. So too Chris Broad in 1986-87. Form, fitness, mentality and a capacity for adaptation are far more reliable barometers than stamps in a passport.

In this respect, England are quietly confident. Their inexperienced batting line-up has slowly been crystallising over the last few weeks, with Mark Stoneman and Dawid Malan both looking in good touch. Meanwhile, it is Australia chopping and changing on the eve of the contest, parachuting in a rookie opener (Cameron Bancroft) and a wicket-keeper straight out of left field (Tim Paine), while sweating on a neck injury to David Warner that has forced them to call up Glenn Maxwell as cover.

Such is Warner’s importance to the Australian cause that his absence has the potential to upset the entire balance of the series. In most respects, these are two uncannily alike sides: two world-class batsmen each, at No1 and No4 (Warner and Steve Smith; Root and Alastair Cook), three fine seam bowlers each, one decent off-spinner each, and beyond them little but pure potential and crossed fingers.

Warner's importance to Australia cannot be overstated (Getty)

The temptation is to look at the new ball battle as the pivot of the series: whether Cook, Stoneman and James Vince will be able to resist the nuanced challenge Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, whether James Anderson and Stuart Broad will be able to make early inroads against Warner, Bancroft and Usman Khawaja. Yet the top-order tussle, while important, is unlikely to be decisive. England’s top three actually performed worse in victory in 2015 than in catastrophic defeat in 2013-14, where Cook and Michael Carberry frequently got England off to a decent and inevitably squandered start.

No: if you’re looking for bellwethers, then look further down. Ashes series tend to be won in the engine room, on whether or not the middle and lower order can hold out, dig in, kick on against an ageing ball. Four years ago, Australia’s next-most important player after Mitchell Johnson was Brad Haddin, hauling them out of trouble, doubling their score, breaking England’s spirit. England’s lower order, meanwhile, failed to produce a single 50 partnership, blown away time and again, depriving their bowlers of rest and their supporters of momentum.

In this respect - and despite the projected absence of Ben Stokes - England retain a slight advantage. The tail could be a touch fragile if Mitchell Starc locates his yorker range, especially with Ball preferred to Craig Overton. But you would probably just about take Moeen, Bairstow and Chris Woakes over Shaun Marsh, Paine and Starc.

Both skippers know the importance of the Ashes even if it won't be a meeting of the world's top two sides this time around (Getty)

Away from the cricket, too, England have cut a mature, well-adjusted bunch. The absence of Stokes has restored the balance within this England squad between introversion and extroversion, and while his altercation outside a Bristol nightclub may have deprived them of a star player, better to have something like this happen before the series, when lessons can be learned and values reinforced, than during.

How England’s fabled team ethic holds up once the bats and balls are flying, of course, is the great unknown. They can certainly expect to have their patience tested by Australian crowds, who in their worst incarnation operate a form of abuse that goes some way beyond rudeness. But in an age of instant social media reaction and packed T20 stadiums, you sense this sort of thing is no longer the shock to the system it might once have been.

It's nearly time for the talking to stop Down Under (AFP)

Likewise, shared Big Bash and Indian Premier League dressing rooms have created friendships on both sides. The frequency with which these two nations are pitted against each other - 65 times already this decade in all formats - has whipped away much of the mystery. In this respect, and many others, the modern Ashes series has very little in common with its antecedents.

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Test cricket is fast becoming the game’s weakest format. While the evolution of Twenty20 has dragged 50-over cricket along with it, Test cricket seems to have regressed, with shortened series (it is 2002 since the last five-Test series not involving England), a dearth of great teams and the sport’s most gifted players increasingly to be found elsewhere.

Neither of these two sides exactly has the ring of greatness to them, either. Even Australia’s whitewash in 2013-14 was achieved despite only passing 400 twice in the series. This is a fixture whose only defining characteristic in recent times has been chaos: addled minds, addled bodies and three-day finishes, international sport on Jagermeister and poppers. There is little reason to expect anything different here from two such skittish, unpredictable squads. If the weather holds out, another oscillating 3-2 scoreline seems possible.

The weight of history remains on the shoulders of Root and his team (AFP)

At the start of the last Ashes in 2015, I wrote that we hadn’t been served a great series for a decade. Ten years has now become 12: four walkovers, and two flawed slug-fests with barely a close finish among them. There is even an argument to be made that an Ashes tour is no longer the toughest test for an English cricketer. India are the world’s best Test side by a distance, with conditions far more alien than anything we can expect in Brisbane or Sydney.

Yet still the tills continue to ring. Over 10,000 England fans are expected at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Boxing Day, and in terms of ticket sales, this could well be the biggest Ashes in modern history. No wonder the likes of Warner and Lyon have been so keen to talk up the rivalry: it is tempting, at least, to speculate the extent to which sporting antagonism is simply good salesmanship.

The hope, then, is that these two sides dish out a spectacle to match the fervour, a contest befitting its treasured history. For all its faults, there is still nothing in the sport quite like the start of an Ashes series: alarm set, long-wave radio under the pillow, a sleep full of distracted dreams. This will be the first Ashes series to be broadcast on BT Sport, after more than two decades on Sky Sports, and the hope too is that its coverage will reach enough people to give the contest some semblance of wider resonance.

Root and Cook have both talked about the power of a successful Ashes series to change one’s life. This may no longer be the case as it once was - just compare David Steele (four half-centuries against Australia, winner of 1975 BBC Sports Personality of the Year) to Ian Bell (three centuries, tenth and last in the 2013 contest). Perhaps 2005, the most cherished British sporting triumph in a generation, will remain English cricket’s unsurpassable high note.

But for now, this is what we have, and even if a little of the romance has gone, the stakes are still as assuredly high as ever. English cricket demands a great Ashes series. Test cricket demands a great Ashes series. The weeks of mindless chatter and computer-generated fire are finally at an end. Time for new history, and new heroes.