Botham’s Ashes was even more of a slow burner, taking until the rest day of the Third Test to spark into life. By modern standards, that series could have ended up as memorable as England’s recent tour of New Zealand, which required some hasty revision after Matt Prior’s final-day rearguard at Auckland enlivened an otherwise humdrum tour. Unfortunately, three and out is the standard rule for modern Test series. In the course of his 198-Test career, Sachin Tendulkar has played in just three five-match rubbers, most recently in the West Indies in 2001-02, and he has never made more than 500 runs in a series (though he has come mighty close, with 493 in four Tests in Australia in 2003-04). More’s the pity for such a box-office performer because, like a beautifully woven film dialogue in which passing conversations hold the key to future plot twists, little details crop up in the course of fiveTest series that only become fully apparent in the final act of the play – Ian Botham’s frosty reception from
the MCC members in 1981, for instance, or Kevin Pietersen’s insouciant six-smacking in an otherwise tame defeat at Lord’s that set the parameters for the Oval onslaught to follow. What’s more, in an Ashes summer, it’s best to start watching even before the title sequence appears. In 2005, Darren Gough’s vein-popping display in the Rose Bowl Twenty20 was a hint of the lively fare in store, as was the character Paul Collingwood showed in his confrontation with Matthew Hayden in the Edgbaston one-day international. And who knows, by the end of August, David Warner’s indiscretion in the Walkabout may come to be viewed as the first sign of Aussie disintegration, or the first sign of a fighting spirit that is crying out to be corralled. Either way, the beauty is that there is so much time for all of this to matter. Even to the Friday night gameshow fraternity. Alistair Gildard is a freelance cricket writer
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WisdenEXTRA • The Ashes in England