In reality, I invented the Barmy Army, although I played the recorder, not the trumpet.
I have had a long-distance interest in English cricket ever since.
Frank Tyson sending down a thunderbolt in 1954.Credit: Fairfax Archive
After a disastrous box office, director McCullum and leading actor Ben Stokes have promised a review “moving forward”.
To move forward they need to look backward. If McCullum can put down the crossword book and was looking for some fresh reading material he could do worse than pick up the riveting book, Victory In Australia – The Remarkable Story of England’s Greatest Ashes Triumph 1954-55, by Richard Whitehead.
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The modern side turned up in WA to play one dance-with-your-sister warm-up game against an English reserves side. It was the equivalent of preparing for a Formula 1 race with 10 minutes in the dodgem cars.
By the time the 1954-55 side walked out for the first Test they had been in Australia 50 days and had played seven games against strong opposition. And they lost, then recovering to win the series 3-1.
After the present side had lost the Ashes, Stokes said, “A dressing room that I am captain of isn’t a place for weak men.”
This was something the 1954-55 captain Len Hutton knew before a ball was bowled. “The grounds are hard, the ball is hard, the men are hard – you need to be harder than they are to beat them.”
Putting down 17 catches didn’t help Stokes’ team that didn’t have a fielding coach, one of many self-inflicted wounds. Again Hutton could have put them right. “Cricket in Australia requires quicker reflexes simply because everything by which I principally mean the pace of the ball … happens more swiftly than in England.”
This was a lesson lost on the modern players. They apparently misplaced their spinner in the Dubai duty-free lounge, warmed up with a darts game at an Irish pub in Perth, were subjected to third umpire technology that consisted of a drunken pensioner playing the spoons, had bowlers who left a pitch map like Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles and had batters whose best shots were not on the pitch but tequila ones in after midnight bars.
Jackson Pollock’s painting Blue Poles.Credit: Getty Images
The only spinner they faced was the roulette operator at Perth’s casino.
Hutton was England’s first professional captain although, according to Whitehead, some of the blue noses at the MCC wanted him sacked. It is therefore delightful he was eventually knighted, placing him in front of the snobs in the pecking order.
He was armed with one of history’s fastest bowlers, Frank “Typhoon” Tyson, and that perpetuated the myth that you can only win in Australia with express pace.
It was such pace that invented whingeing in Ashes cricket – not by the Poms but the Australians. When Douglas Jardine used the entirely legal tactic of fast leg-theory bowling against Don Bradman, Australia sooked, threatening to break off relations, ban the production and consumption of Yorkshire puddings and block shipments of butter to the motherland. Inside the dressing room there were complaints that it wasn’t cricket – in-house comments, according to Whitehead, leaked by the Don himself.
Keith Miller on the charge.Credit: Getty Images
Tyson was at times unplayable, but at the other end the superbly accurate Brian Statham took 18 wickets at 27. He always aimed at the stumps with the motto, “If they miss, I’ll hit.”
Much has been made of this side’s drinking culture but before social media the 1954-55 series was sprinkled with lads. England’s Bill Edrich, Dennis Compton and Australia’s Keith “Nugget” Miller had been shaped by the dangers of World War II, and so they played hard and partied hard.
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The three played “Bazball” before there was Bazball. Miller was perhaps the best captain not to captain Australia. In Whitehead’s book a journalist is quoted as writing, “Miller realises more than anyone that cricket should be regarded as a game and that it is more important for the spectators to be satisfied than the match should not be lost.”
One cricketer played Bazball this summer and that was Travis Head, although England fed him his favourite cut shot like a queen bee is fed royal jelly. Their plan to Head was to bowl short outside the off stump until he was forced to retire hurt with a repetitive strain injury from hitting boundaries square of the wicket.
Meanwhile, their fielding practice was supervised by an arthritic line dancer from the Cotswolds, the outfielding by a Dalek from Dr Who, while the close catching cordon consisted of two sloths.
England cricket has promised yet another review. To save time, here are the 10 rules to Ashes success.
1. Prepare for the Ashes by not preparing for the Ashes
Every Test England plays is performed with the backdrop of the next Ashes series. Forget about it. Select a side to win the next Test and then the next no matter the opposition. Every England side that has won the Ashes have arrived with a history of success.
2. Stop looking for a superhero
England crave a Winston Churchill-type saviour. They always want to play 12 in their XI, with a warrior all-rounder such as Ian Botham, Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff or Stokes expected to pull off miracles with bat and ball. Instead, have a team where 90 per cent of the players put in 90 per cent effort 90 per cent of the time.
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3. Lose the siege mentality
Even before the wheels fell off, Stokes was complaining about the media and calling former England greats has-beens. It is a wonder their media manager didn’t get on the drink and punch on with a bouncer. Australia is a wonderful country to visit, the players stay in five-star hotels, have first-class training facilities and play in front of giant, good-humoured crowds.
4. Do your homework
Arriving with a battery of fragile express bowlers was dumb because for several years now a revamped Kookaburra ball and spicy wickets means that seam and accuracy have been bankable assets. They ignored precision, preferring a blind man with a machine-gun approach.
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5. Play cricket to build resilience
In the 1954-55 tour (including New Zealand) Tyson and Statham bowled a combined 5209 balls of serious pace in first-class games. They took a combined 118 wickets. This year’s England attack of 10 bowlers managed 3679 balls between them with four ending up disabled. They took a combined 77 wickets. The modern bowlers drink pickle juice. Statham and Tyson were fed sherry with raw egg at drinks breaks.
6. Come early, stay late
Encourage young players to come to Australia to play grade or Shield cricket. Explore the possibility of a young Australia entering a side in the county competition and England in the Shield.
7. Demand three non-negotiables
Class, commitment and consistency. Want to play Test cricket? Make it your priority. Is it a surprise that player-of-the-series Mitchell Starc, who was still bowling brilliantly on the last day, has always made red-ball cricket – the format that really matters – his No.1 priority? The difference between Australia’s best to worst performances is not that great. The difference for England was between audacious and atrocious. So when Australia need to replace a star, the understudy knows his lines.
Mitchell Starc had a phenomental Ashes series.Credit: Getty Images
8. Stop saying how talented the ‘group’ is
Talent without ticker is tragic. It is entirely possible England deep down don’t want to win. Hard men with an appetite for the fight such as Jardine, Harold Larwood, John Snow, Colin Milburn, Geoffrey Boycott, Brian Close, Fred Trueman, Stokes, Flintoff, Mike Gatting, and Botham had their careers disrupted by officialdom. It is the Ashes for goodness’ sake, not Antiques Roadshow.
9. Get a spinner
Playing bits-and-pieces players is so English and so stupid.
10. If you hit the ball along the ground, you can’t get caught
Bradman made 6996 runs in 80 innings. He hit a total of six sixes. He believed a ramp was for wheelchairs, a reverse sweep was something you did to chimneys and a charge should be restricted to the Light Horse Brigade. Bazball expert Zak Crawley has a strike rate of 65. Bradman’s was 71.
John Silvester lifts the lid on Australia’s criminal underworld. Subscribers can sign up to receive his Naked City newsletter every Thursday.
