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Ben Stokes marked the end of England’s 15-year winless streak in Australia by sharing “a little hug” and a few words of relief with former skipper Joe Root. The England captain will not be bringing the urn back home after defeats in Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide, but he is also leaving an unwanted record behind after overseeing his country’s first away Ashes victory since January 2011.
After two days of pandemonium on a batting graveyard in Melbourne - 36 wickets tumbling inside six sessions and no half-centuries in an Australian Test for the first time since 1932 - it was England who finished on top.
At times it may have felt like a lottery on an unreliable MCG pitch but, in chasing down 175 with four wickets in hand, it was England who held the winning ticket. Of the 18-match drought spanning four separate tours, Root had featured 17 times and captained 10, with Stokes empty-handed from 13.
“At the end there, when all the boys came out of the dressing room, we had a little hug and just said: ‘Finally we’ve won one’,” he said after the pair embraced at the close. “Me and Joe have been here a few times and been on the wrong end of the result a few times, so to end up on the right side after a long period of time is a pretty special feeling.
“I’m sure later on tonight there might be a few words spoken about it. We know Australia is a very hard place to win a game, let alone a series. It will be another four years until we come back here, but there won’t be a narrative that we haven’t won a game - that goes back to zero now.”
Stokes said his feedback to the match referee would not be the best for a pitch that had a centimetre of grass left by the curator on the morning of day one. “When you go out there and you’re faced with conditions, you’ve got to crack on and deal with it,” Stokes said. “But being brutally honest, that’s not really what you want. Boxing Day Test match, you don’t want a game finishing in less than two days. Not ideal.”
Steve Smith, Australia’s stand-in captain, offered a lukewarm defence of MCG curator Matt Page, saying it was a delicate balance for ground staff to strike. But with day three tickets sold out at the 100,000-seat stadium, Saturday was a bad day for the local game, with Cricket Australia to forgo millions in revenue. It was another costly blow following the two-day series-opener in Perth.
“In terms of the wicket, it was obviously a tricky one,” Smith said. “Thirty-six wickets over two days (it) probably offered just a little bit too much. Obviously finances aren’t great. I think it was a sell-out tomorrow if we got there. So, yeah, disappointing for those (fans) that wanted to come along.”
While England’s two old stagers have worked their entire careers to taste a result like the one they scrapped for in front of record crowds totalling nearly 200,000 across the two days, some of their younger team-mates have had better luck.
Josh Tongue, who took seven for 89 in a player-of-the-match performance, was playing just his second Test in Australia, while Jacob Bethell hit a crucial 40 in the chase in what was his first Ashes appearance.
“We’ve got guys this end of their career and guys at the start of their careers, but quite a lot of the players in the dressing room will have a lot more opportunities to come to Australia to win games of cricket for England,” said Stokes.
“Josh has that natural wicket-taking ability that is so hard to come by. He should be very proud of himself and how he’s operated this game because he’s bowled some long, big spells and backed it up. He’s been phenomenal.
“Beth played well coming in under a little bit of pressure and to play the way he did shows a lot about his character and the confidence he has within himself.”
While England’s bowlers teed up the win by rolling Australia out for slender totals of 152 and 132, making the highest score of the match in the fourth innings was still a significant achievement. In doing so they recovered some of the Bazball swagger that has been chipped away over the course of a damaging series, playing some audacious attacking strokes and embracing the risk on a chaotic surface.
They even threw catapulted Brydon Carse from No 10 to three in a bid to use the tailender as a pinch-hitter. Carse only managed six, but his unexpected elevation was a throwback to a less anxiety-ridden time in Stokes’ captaincy.
“There was method in the mayhem,” he said. “The top order from both teams were struggling to consistently score runs or feel any fluency, so we went with the idea of sending someone who’s got talent with the bat and a very good eye for hitting the ball. It didn’t quite come off, but the 15-20 minutes he spent out there made it a little bit easier for Beth to build the innings that he did. On a wicket like that you cannot allow bowlers to put the ball where they want to without putting them under some kind of pressure.”
