This article originally appeared in our Elevenses newsletter.
Good afternoon. For those who have no interest in test cricket, the Long Room at Lord’s will be of very little significance. For those who still harbour an interest in the game, it is about as significant as it gets. For centuries, players from around the world have been paraded in front of MCC members before making their way out onto the hallowed ground in North London. The room, which is adorned with paintings of cricketing royalty, has been described as the “most evocative four walls in world cricket” and was once compared to being “bearhugged by an invisible spirit” by Aussie batsman Justin Langer. For me, it is the physical embodiment of a game that is far bigger than just the sound of leather on willow, than ashes and urns and than in the fierce rivalries that span continents. It is supposed to symbolise that in cricket, manners and decorum still mean something. Yet this weekend, like its namesake tournament, all that was burnt to ashes.
Ahead of the fifth day of the second test, England had a mammoth task in front of them after being set 371 to win by Australia, who had batted far more convincingly throughout. Four late wickets on Day 3 made the chances of achieving it even more improbable, and yet at the crease was a man who had built a reputation in making the improbable probable, a certain Mr Benjamin Stokes, and his batting partner Ben Duckett, who was unbeaten overnight. As the day progressed, flashbacks to the England captain’s heroics at Headingley in 2019 started to cross people’s minds, when Stokes miraculously batted out an afternoon with tailender Jack Leach to secure a famous win. And he almost looked good for it until Jonny Bairstow fell to a highly controversial stumping, leaving a long tail at the mercy of Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood.
Alex Carey’s stumping effectively put to bed any realistic chance of an England comeback, although it is in Stokes’ nature to not know when he is beaten, and his partnership with Stuart Broad showed a remarkable ability to channel his bitterness into swashbuckling cricket. Unfortunately, the same composure was nowhere to be seen in the Long Room, where Australian cricketers were greeted with heckles and boos at the lunch break and bodied through to the dressing room by a baying mob. Three MCC members have since been suspended for their “aggressive and abusive” behaviour, and rightly so, while calls for a tightening of security in the room may now have to be considered.
That Bairstow (also a wicketkeeper) had tried the same thing just two days prior to dismiss Marnus Labuschagne has barely had a mention in the English press, nor has the fact that it is entirely in the rules to do so. The only narrative to prevail is that the stumping was not in the spirit of cricket, to which I say, neither is all this harking on about it. Carey might have scuppered Stokes’ small chance to revive what had otherwise been a lacklustre batting performance, but if this England team was worth its salt, they would never have been in that position in the first place. Little wonder the Aussie media are calling us “whinging Poms” this morning. Time to suck it up.
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