THE Ashes! To anyone attracted by the history of cricket - which is to say most lovers of the game - the story is endlessly fascinating. Which were the strongest teams? Who were the best captains? What were the greatest matches? And so on. I am lucky enough to have followed the ebb and flow of success and failure since the Oval Test of 1921 wherein England, under Lionel, the future Lord Tennyson, fought a favourable draw against one of Australia's most powerful sides, led by Warwick Armstrong, who had already retained the Ashes.
This first recollection of a match where the Ashes were not at stake brings me to say at the outset that although the urn and the Ashes are symbolic of the ancient continuing battle, every encounter is a high event regardless of them. Some of the greatest games indeed have been played after the Ashes had been regained or retained. This was so in 1902 when at the Oval, after Jessop's wonderful hundred, Hirst and Rhodes got the necessary 15 runs together for the last wicket. Leonard Hutton's monumental 364 in 1938 was made after Australia had secured the Ashes.
England, after the last war, lost 11 Tests over three series before what we called the Elusive Victory at Melbourne in the fifth Test of 1950-51 came as a vast relief as though a reproach had been wiped away. Again, English relief was the keynote, also at Melbourne, in 1974-75 (at the end of my eighth and last reporting tour of Australia) when victory by an innings and four runs did much to assuage the early batterings of Lillee and Thomson.
From the first there was about Tests between England and Australia a special savour, the relish of raw colonials tweaking the lion's tail. Over the century and more, despite the population disparity, it has happened more often than not: 111 wins to Australia, 90 to England, with 84 matches drawn. On Thursday at Edgbaston yet another series gets under way, the 68th since the first confrontation at Melbourne in 1876-77.
The oldest recollections are generally the clearest, and the picture remains sharp of A P F Chapman's recovery of the Ashes at the Oval in 1926, of his ushering forward, as they made for the pavilion in advance of a vast, cheering crowd, the 48-year-old Wilfred Rhodes who had played his first Test under W G Grace 27 years before. Rhodes and young Harold Larwood had each taken six wickets apiece, but the brightest glory belonged to Hobbs (100) and Sutcliffe (161) who had with utmost skill weathered the attack on a pitch made horribly spiteful by an overnight storm.
I was lucky in that the first Test I ever reported was a classic almost beyond compare wherein 1,601 runs were scored at Lord's inside four days and young Don Bradman's 254 set him on a pinnacle where he has remained ever since. Australia won by seven wickets, thus breaking the sequence of six successive victories by Chapman (despite his own 125), a record no captain is likely to challenge. The Lord's Test of 1934 is a landmark because it denotes England's only victory over Australia at Lord's since 1896, and that gained only because Hedley Verity with 14 wickets in the day took utmost advantage of a pitch made difficult after weekend rain.
The peak of national jubilation after the war was, of course, England's regaining of the Ashes under Sir Leonard in the Coronation year of 1953, the first of three series won before a horrible descent Down Under in 1958-59. Three series out of four were halved in the 1960s before Ray Illingworth's side brought the Ashes home in 1970-71.
The Packer intrusion and attempted takeover of Test cricket scarred the two series at the end of the 1970s, since when the one perpetually recalled to revive English spirits is that of 1981 marked by the heroics of Ian Botham and Bob Willis. England's winning of the Ashes in 1985 under David Gower established his greatness as, I think, the best English left-handed bat since Frank Woolley, after which Mike Gatting achieved a well-fought success in Australia in 1986-87.
When Australia won a consolation victory in the sixth and last Test they were celebrating the end of a barren run without precedent of 14 Tests against all opponents, a statistic which perhaps discounts, if only slightly, England's dismal showing in the four subsequent Anglo-Australian rubbers which we trust may be about to come to an end.
To ponder two of the questions I posed at the outset, perhaps the best-equipped England side in Australia was that of 1928-29. In batting order it was Hobbs, Sutcliffe, Hammond, Jardine, Hendren, Chapman, Larwood, Geary, Tate, Duckworth, White. At home I doubt whether the XI that won at the Oval in '53 has been improved on: Hutton, Edrich, May, Compton, Graveney, Bailey, Evans, Laker, Lock, Trueman, Bedser. This might have fought a rare battle with the 1948 Australians: Morris, Barnes, Bradman, Hassett, Miller, Harvey, Loxton, Lindwall, Tallon, Ring, Johnston. As to leadership, Chapman, Brearley and Illingworth commend themselves especially on one side, Bradman (after the War), Benaud and Ian Chappell on the other. But in such a field they can only be invidious choices.
I expect it may be thought that, while I discount the dire episode of Bodyline, my preferences favour the past as no doubt do those of most in the sere and yellow. There have been fine England cricketers of late if no recent sides of the old quality, up to and certainly including Michael Atherton. Forgive me if I paraphrase Francis Thompson's lines: As the run stealers flicker to and fro, Oh, my Hobbs and my Woolley long ago.