Cricket: Rewriting history

So, Australia’s losing the Ashes series. I’m shocked.

For the non-cricketlovers, the Ashes is an annual series of 5 cricket matches between England and Australia. Given our natural rivalry, it’s not surprising that this is the biggest sporting event of Australia’s calendar year. The history of the series goes back to 1877 (and to put that in context, Australia was only colonised in 1788). There’s a lot of pride at stake, a lot of history, and a lot of contemporary context, given recent pushes within Australia to become a Republic. And, unfortunately for us, in the last few years England has dominated.

And so it is that after two tests, Australia finds itself 2-0 behind. The newspapers are having a field day with the obscure statistic that only once before in all of Ashes history has a side come back from 2-0 behind to win 3-2, with a typical cynical sentence going, “…and that was back in 1936-7 when Don Bradman made scores of 270, 212 and 169 in each test.” Don Bradman’s name is uttered with deity-like reverence in Australia, being not only the world’s greatest ever cricketer but also probably the most famous Australian of all time (at least up until Kylie Minogue donned the gold shorts).

The journos just love quoting this statistic; in fact, I bet one of them got the stat from their analyst and it’s subsequently been copied-and-pasted all around the media park. It’s meant to represent that we have next to no chance of pulling through.

But if you’re going to quote obscure historical similarities, you may as well go the whole hog. Let’s analyse the 1936-7 series, tealeaf-style, and see if we can find any other peculiaralities to give us Aussies some hope.

Let’s start with just how badly we lost. Okay, in the second test Australia got hammered pretty badly, losing by 347 runs, scoring a piddly 128 in our first innings. But back in December 1936, Australia lost by an innings and 22 runs, having been slaughtered for just 80 in its first innings. 80!!

Comparing the first tests looks even better for the modern Australia side. While the team narrowly lost a few weeks ago by the tiny margin of 14 runs, the 1936 team lost by a whopping 322 runs, largely thanks to Australia scoring 58 in its second innings. Yes, that’s right. Five. Eight.

That’s probably the lowest score Australia ever scored. To put that in context, each side gets to use 11 batsman, and usually about three or four will score over 50 each. Here, the whole Australian team scored about that. Bradman, only ever thought of as a batting hero, got out first ball.

I can only guess what the Australian and – *gasp* – English journalists were saying back then after the first two tests. Surely the roasting would have been several degrees hotter than the one the Aussie team is getting now.

And yet…Something amazing happened. Sure, a lot of it had to do with Bradman, the captain and world’s best batsman. But we keep forgetting that the current Australian captain, Michael Clarke, is also currently the world’s best batsman. Sure, he’s misfired so far… but so did the Don 78 years ago. He’d made scores of 38, 0, 0 and 82 in the first four innings; by Comparison, Clarke’s made 0, 23 28 and 51. Sound familiar?

Okay, I’ll admit it’s a stretch, but one could argue that Australia’s in a better position now than they were way back when. And as the journos rightly mention, the rest of the series was all Ozzie – wins by 365, 148 and an innings and 200 runs. Beautiful stuff if you come from the sunburnt land.

…or am I dreaming too much?