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You always remember the first. Senses heightened, clammy palms, not quite knowing where to look or what to focus on. It is OK to be nervous … but is it normal to be this nervous? Castanet heart and goosebumped skin as the moment gets nearer. Just get this one out of the way, don’t put too much pressure on it. Calm down. This is supposed to be fun.
Your mind wanders to Zak Crawley lacing Pat Cummins across the Edgbaston turf like a pebble skimmed across a glacier. You really can’t help who pops in at these moments. But who is this now? Oh it’s Rory Burns toppling over, Brisbane rug pulled from underneath him, leg stump knocked back and bails sent upwards like a pair of forlorn eyebrows. What to do now, just lie back and think of English turmoil?
The first ball of an Ashes series is an end and a beginning. That first delivery puts a full stop to the increasingly frenzied buildup, conjecture and speculation. The action can begin to replace all the what ifs and whataboutery, at least for a little while. Increasingly the first ball is also seen as both portal and portent, a seven-second snapshot of things to come, a tone setting prophecy and harbinger all rolled into one, a five-Test series in microcosm. The postmortems at the end of the series will almost certainly make some mention of its very first breath.
“The Gabba, Brisbane – Thursday, 23 November 2006. I’m stood at the top of my mark … and I’m feeling the heat. Not so much the heat of the sun, rather the heat of expectation. The hype leading up to this moment has been a never-ending storm of craziness, and I’m right in the eye. The ball is in my hand. It’s up to me to bowl the first delivery of an Ashes series that’s been talked up, pontificated over and bullshitted about since I bowled the final ball of the last one.”
Steve Harmison dedicated an entire chapter of his book, Speed Demons, to the derailed train of a first ball of the 2006-07 Ashes that he sprayed into the hands of Andrew Flintoff at second slip. He later added: “I can’t think of a worse ball to bowl than that. In fact, I can’t remember ever bowling a ball as bad as that. I guess it set the tone.”
Of course there is plenty of historic revisionism afforded to Ashes first balls. Harmison’s nervous and careering wide came to symbolise the wheels coming off England in the aftermath of their historic 2005 victory, the 5-0 whitewashing that ensued fit the very first delivery hand in glove.
With a bit of crowbarring you can make a few more Ashes first balls fit. Crawley’s carpet scorcher off Cummins in 2023 encapsulated England’s Bazball swagger, even if England lost that match and were staring down the barrel at 2-0 down before Chris Woakes and Mark Wood led a cavalry charge back to parity. But for that Manchester rain, Crawley’s cover drive would be exponentially more indelible.
Burn’s Gabba first-ball stump splattering at the hands of Starc fit the narrative of a confused and overawed England side scrabbling in the Covid affected (but definitely still counting, Stuart) series of 2021-22. The only other man to fall to the very first ball of an Ashes series was the England opener Thomas Worthington who was bounced out by Ernest McCormick. Burns’s fate made front and back page news across the globe, I was curious to see how much of a hoo-ha was made of Worthington’s first-baller 89 years previous.
You have to scour past quite a few densely worded pages of the Manchester Guardian’s 5 December 1936 issue – past an article about a dog being kicked to death in Barnsley and a woman in Blackburn choking to death as a result of a bone being lodged in her throat when she was “taking soup” – before you get to Neville Cardus’s evocative report of Worthington’s demise at the crease on page 13.
“In the atmosphere of an inferno” and “amongst a sweating multitude” Cardus writes of that first morning at Woolloongabba. “The noise is terrific … we are a long way from the green fields of Hampshire. The beginning was catastrophic and pandemonium was unleashed; McCormick’s first ball, which he bowled like a hurricane, pitched short and rose high at Worthington’s left shoulder; Worthington hooked without an idea, edged his stroke and skied it.”
And yet, despite this chastening start England went on to win the game by 322 runs. But wait, it was a prophetic first ball after all – though Gubby Allen’s side later went 2-0 up after the Sydney Test they ultimately lost the series 3-2 with Don Bradman averaging 90 and piling on 810 runs.
Deep down we know that it doesn’t really work like that. One swallow doesn’t make a summer just as one ball doesn’t decide an Ashes. There have been plenty of Ashes first balls that didn’t set a precedent, any number of harmless deliveries, shouldered arms and dare I say damp squib opening salvoes. The first ball of the 2025-26 series at Perth is now less than 10 days away, the second will be along moments after.
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