Why The Ashes Is Cricket’s Greatest Series

The Ashes is cricket’s biggest series (Photo by Philip Brown/Getty Images)

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Cricket is a favorite pastime in Australia, a bat and ball sport that once ruled the months from October-March.

But with the hugely popular football codes infatuated with the Americanization of player movement, cricket has largely been consigned to the holiday periods of December-January. The only months were cricket can emerge from the shadows of their football rivals.

There is an outlier every four years when the Ashes, the traditional Test series between Australia and England which first started in 1877, sparks a frenzy much to the chagrin of the football codes.

Even the Australian Football League draft, conveniently held on first Test eve with the sport so clearly starved of attention, has been overshadowed by the Ashes which has dominated the headlines of the local tabloid.

Perth’s daily newspaper, The West Australian, has jumped on the bandwagon ever since Ben Stokes, England’s captain they’ve branded as ‘cocky’, arrived at Perth airport. The coverage has been relentless with front page after front page devoted to taunting and mocking England with word salads that appear to be concocted by a schoolyard bully.

Australian media – and the famous Fleet Street tabloids – have a long history of stirring the touring teams, with Brisbane’s Courier Mail usually the attack dog during the traditional series-opener in Brisbane.

But the juvenile name calling gleaned in Perth is so shamelessly clickbait, desperate attempts for relevance, and on the back of a rather creepy obsession over India’s superstar Virat Kohli last summer.

However, the good news, it does mean that the Ashes has been the talk of the town for quite a while and is fever pitch ahead of the series-opener at Perth Stadium starting on Friday.

India might be cricket’s money-spinner, but the rivalry between Australia and England still means so much more for the traditional powers. The battles on-field, decidedly one-sided in Australia, pale in comparisons to the insults that fly off it.

Both countries love to wind each other up and the verbal volleying has peaked with England’s ultra-attacking style of play dubbed ‘Bazball’ in a nod to their coach Brendon McCullum.

Australians takes great exception to ‘Bazball’, loving to rile up the English over their middling record since taking up this flamboyant style of play. But the ribbing probably masks some insecurities, with traditionally macho Australia playing the role of the aggressor, a cavalier team standing over the staid and conservative England.

That stereotype has mostly played out in Australia, a harsh land that has doubled as a graveyard for England for most of the last four decades. Their dreary style stood no chance in these hostile surrounds and after their last pounding during the wreckage of the miserable Covid-affected 2021-22 series, Bazball spawned.

In the intervening years, England has plotted meticulously knowing that this era would be defined by the tour of Australia. A thrilling 2-2 result in 2023 in the U.K. was a taster, but anticipation is through the roof in what might be an Ashes swansong for a number of players.

After some nasty controversies in 2023, it has felt rather tame until stand-in Australia captain Steve Smith made a bizarre retort to former England spinner Monty Panesar, ensuring there would be shenanigans on series eve. A bit of nonsense to keep everyone distracted before the real stuff started.

It remains to be seen how the Australian public will respond to England in the flesh. Will they be whipped into a frenzy by the local tabloid? Time will tell.

Most of the fans roaming around the massive Perth Stadium in the lead-up have been English and so too were those who attended England’s gentle warm-up game amid a popular wineries region in Perth.

However, there was one local keen to get into the heads of the tourists very early on tour. During the early stages of the warm-up game in an area dubbed the ‘Swan Valley’, a slowing motorist wound down the window and shouted a crass, very Australian, expletive laden barb that echoed around the quiet ground.

“It was probably the editor of The West Australian,” quipped an English journalist.