Pj Kavanagh

Band of brothers

In bad light, after some confusion, the bails were ceremonially removed by the umpires late in the evening of 12 September 2005, to signify that the game was ended, was a draw and that England had won the Ashes. Less than three weeks later, a handsome, well-written account of that exhausting 25-day battle, Ashes Victory, was landing on the desks of literary editors, an achievement almost as astonishing as the Ashes series itself. Sent to Orion by the Professional Cricketers’ Association, the author is credited as the England Cricket Team, which is fair enough because we spend most of the time in the dressing-room hearing them talk, and, judging by the number of times the phrase ‘to be honest’ appears, the chat is verbatim. It is also articulate and revealing. The linking prose is literate to a degree remarkable in a book about sport. Those bails so memorably taken off because of bad light: ‘Perhaps the greatest series ever ended not with a bang but a light-meter.’ At one stage the Australian plan is to ‘Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of Warne.’

The scheme of the book is simple: a preview of the lead-up to each match, then over to the players themselves, what they thought and felt, then what happened on the field and how the England dressing-room felt about it. (‘Gutted’, quite often.) The game is simple, the players are simple, but not simpletons. After the disaster of the first match at Lord’s, the team psychologist Jamie Edwards detected something wrong about Flintoff. ‘How did you feel after beating the West Indies?’ he asked. ‘Ten feet tall.’ ‘How do you feel now?’ ‘A shrinking violet.’

Edwards questioned on. ‘How would you feel if a bowler walked back to his mark with his head down?’ ‘That I’d got him!’ ‘What would a bowler think of a batsman, shoulders back, head held high?’ ‘That I’d got him.’

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