It's Ashes morning. It so often is nowadays. By early September, Australia and England will have played each other 15 times in Test matches in little more than two years. Barring mishap, Michael Clarke and Alastair Cook will have been captains for all 15. Ian Chappell seemed always leading the Ashes line, but skippered Australia against England in just 16 Tests in his career. Even for Don Bradman, it was only 19 times.
Part of the thrill of the cricket World Cup earlier this year was that it was four years since the last. Ditto for the FIFA World Cup last year. In each event, there was a real sense of an upped ante. The AFL, with its bastardised draw, could learn a lesson, but won't: fewer is not necessarily lesser.
It is not that anyone is sick of the Ashes. The mystique lives, the premium so enormous that already the English are taking out a form of insurance. A British newspaper recently ran two lift-outs, one anticipating this series, one reliving 2005. 2005 also bobbed up twice in the pre-match captains' press conferences, as a non sequitur both times. Highlights reels from the England triumphs of 2005 and 2010-2011 are at hand, ready for (inevitable) rain breaks. When down, Australia also goes all retro: if you can't win this series, win the last again. It's much more reliable.
The sentiment this time is the same as last, but the tone has changed. It would have been disingenuous for either captain to say on Tuesday they had been looking forward to this series for a long time, because they were still playing the last series only a short time ago.
Compression has bred familiarity, and in turn, if not exactly contempt, at least a formulaic outlook. Before the first Test in 2013, Clarke and Cook each heading into his first full Ashes series as captain, were almost wide-eyed in their wonder. On Tuesday, they dealt in all the cliches, tropes and blandishments of the modern professional sportsmen, in voices almost metallic: hard work, team game, respect, not looking back, etc etc. Cook managed even to get the sponsor's name into his ruminations. Incidentally, the sponsor was represented this day by a life-size plastic zebra, and the rival captains were obliged to pose together with it. If they were cranky, no wonder.
Clarke and Cook, interviewed separately, talked in identical terms about sledging. It was all about the line, they said. Clarke thought he might have crossed it once, but wouldn't again, wherever it is. It's somewhere in the sand, said Cook. You knew then they were reciting from the manual.
The lower key this time might in part be attributed to the venue. Cardiff is a lovely city, but - let's face it - so much an outpost of English cricket that it's not even in England. Glamorgan is a respectable county club, but the only one from Wales in the championship, to set against 17 in England. Swalec stadium, nee Sophia Gardens, is charming in an olde England way, sited in the grounds of an old castle and made to look as if nestling deep in the woods. But who pays on charm now? Who pays FOR charm? More to the point, charm has paid, and that is why we are here. And all tradition begins at some point, with the lack of it.
One English tradition holds in all places and times. Rain has fallen on every lead-up day, and squalls twice sent the Australians scurrying from the nets on Tuesday. More is expected.
But it would not do to be too cynical. This is the Ashes, after all, the competition of endless make-believe. Of the 22 who faced up at Trent Bridge two years ago, only 11 remain. Two are retired, one tragically dead. The series come and go more quickly, and so do the players, in a sporting world spinning ever faster. It means that for all Australia and England know of each other, there is still plenty of room for the unknown, the animating factor in great sport. Day two at Trent Bridge in 2013 sprung Ashton Agar onto an unsuspecting cricket world. On day two in the first Test of the next series in Brisbane a few months later, Mitch Johnson suddenly turned from Dr Jekyll into Mr Hyde. Fans might not have to wait even until day two this time for the next twist, to judge from the look of the pitch and the weather forecast.
Johnson was on all minds on Tuesday. Faster than ever, and swinging it, said Clarke, adding that he was not fun in the nets. But for the English veterans of 2010-11, it's 1-1 against Johnson, said Cook, affecting nonchalance. In his case, it might not have been an affectation. Stoicism has made him the most prolific run-scorer in English Test history, and rejuvenated him as captain.
Then, unexpectedly, Cook relaxed and expanded. Asked to nominate the Andrew Flintoff of 2013, Cook for once did not hide behind team-think, but nominated Ben Stokes, saying he had hurt to be excluded from the World Cup, had matured rapidly as a cricketer in the last six months and was ready to make his mark. Cook also talked about how England was a much changed team since he first became captain, less relentlessly methodical, more free-spirited, no longer intent on "banging it on a length", liable to concede more runs, but also to bowl more "Jaffas". In batting, it was the same. New players and the memory of a dour and ultimately diabolical World Cup had made for a fresh and bolder dynamic.
This was evident in a lively 1-1 drawn series with New Zealand recently, and in a subsequent one-day series of astronomical scoring, won by England. Some of the glow of those matches suffuses the English (and Welsh!) cricket community still, giving rise to expectation at least of an entertaining series, with its unspoken corollary, the chance of a counterintuitive result. Australia looks the stronger team, but there is a dossier full of Ashes history to say that the favourite sits on a vulnerable perch. As Cook warmed to this theme, suddenly the dawn of this latest Ashes instalment, though tumbling on the heels of the last, could not come too soon.
