Test Match Special - Ashes Daily: All eyes turn to the Oval

Episode Date: July 25, 2023

Henry Moeran is joined by the BBC's Chief Cricket Writer Stephan Shemilt and Australian journalist Geoff Lemon to preview the fifth and final Test. Plus, we hear from Harry Brook.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. To embrace the impossible requires a vehicle that pushes what's possible. Defender 110 boasts a towing capacity of 3,500 kilograms, a weighting depth of 900 millimeters and a roof load up to 300 kilograms. Learn more at landrover.ca. The Football Daily podcast has turned its full attention to the international stage. With your daily dose of World Cup analysis, debate and news. As we bring you all the action with some of the biggest names in the game.

There's a lot more experience in here than what you think. The team I looked at in front of me, I was like, yeah, we can win this. Join us for a Women's World Cup like no other. Listen on BBC Sounds. Now, back to your podcast. Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. Hello, I'm Henry Moran and welcome to the Test Match Special podcast. England's Ashes Dreams may have been washed away in the old Trafford rain,

but there's still much to play for in the fifth and final Ashes test at the Oval. Not least them trying to prevent Australia winning outright on English soil for the first time in 22 years. The TMS podcast. Take the Ashes with you this summer. Hear every ball live on BBC sounds. Well, almost inevitably, the sun has been beaming down at the Oval today, almost mocking England who have had to lick their wounds and have almost no time to reflect on the disappointment of Old Trafford,

the next test, and the final test begins in just two days' time. We'll hear from England's Harry Brooke shortly. But with me at the ground is the BBC's chief cricket writer, Stephen Schauntler. Gemelt and Australian broadcaster and writer, Jeff Lemon. Hello to you both. Hello. Come on then. First of all, Steph, how are we all feeling after Old Trafford?

The disappointment on the day was palpable. We've had a little bit more time to reflect on it now. I still don't know how I feel, to be honest. I'm a bit, everything, I think, a bit disappointed, a bit tired, a bit like I need a hug. But also, you just think about what might have been, aren't you? what this week could have been to all probably the biggest celebration of test cricket this country's ever seen

and that doesn't mean that this week won't be brilliant because it still will be and should be and there's so much on the line but I guess it's a bit like you know when you were little and you were promised that amazing Christmas present like you're going to get a new bike or something and I don't know your grandma turned up with a sewing kit

still great I'm still grateful for it and I had a lovely boxing day crocheting something in a pattern that came out like Winnie the Pooh but still it's just not quite the same that's how I feel at the moment similar yeah I feel similarly in that you don't see five series like five match series going to a decider at two all it's happened six times in the history of test cricket the last couple were in the 70s there were a couple in the 19th century there was one in the 1950s one in the

1930s that's it those are the the only times that anyone's been in that situation. But part of the reason that it is so rare is that a five-match series is likely to be affected by the weather at some point. There is usually a draw. You know, most Ashes series have a draw somewhere because it gets rain affected. You know, even the one in Sydney last time England visited Australia. So that's why it's so rare.

And we came foul of probability. Probability is a ruthless and relentless thing. Andy Zaltzman, the test match special scorer. crunched the numbers and since 1980 approximately one in eight games played in England in Asher's series have lost a day's worth of cricket and ended in a draw. So it's pretty much 50-50 in a five-match series that you will see a rain-affected draw.

Given the opportunity that this week could have been, is cricket really in a position? Is Test cricket in a position to have that degree of jeopardy remove the opportunity of that bike handing us that sewing kit? that can significantly affect the series. It's something that I think any of us who cover the game have been complaining about for the whole time we've been covering the game.

You have those matches where you sit there and you watch it rain for three days and it's all pointless and a bit of play happens but it doesn't really mean anything. Maybe someone makes 100 and it doesn't feel like there's any significance to the achievements to the feats. And we do sit there and say, well, if only we had this,

if only we had some other method, what's the way around it, blah, blah, blah. But things don't really work that way. You can have reserve days. If you could convince every board to factor in a reserve day, or that adds a week to the series, that adds all the expense of keeping players for that extra period of time, and then maybe it rains on the reserve day anyway.

Who knows? That's the only really viable sort of method of trying to shift that. But I also quite enjoyed Andrew McDonald's point as well, which is everybody's assuming that England would go to win that 10th, but not necessarily. We're only 60 behind. and you only need to get 150 in front to be in with a chance on the last day

in a test in England. So, you know, it was, England were most likely to win it, but I think it is worth making that point as well. It wasn't a foregone conclusion. Nothing's perfect, is it? You know, we have penalty shootouts to decide football World Cup finals and, you know, teams will take away the trophy

and claim to be the best team in the world. Well, on that day, they might not have been. They just happen to be the best at taking five kicks from a penalty spot. and rain, for as much as rain took away from what could have been a brilliant conclusion to that match and I'm not saying it's not going to be a brilliant conclusion to this series but the match means something different now it's also given us stuff before

if it hadn't rained in Cardiff in 2009 Montepanus we wouldn't have had that Jimmy Anderson Montepanassar finish so what it gives in one hand it takes away with another I've got no problem with the way that test cricket is played at the moment with the provisions or lack of provision for rain. It is just the game and that adds to the game in my opinion. What about the fact that there is such rigidity in starting at a certain time, finishing at a certain time when weather forecasting means we knew there was going to be a significant impact?

But if you played more days over, sorry, in the first three days at Old Trafford and then it subsequently hadn't rained, then that would have been massively unfair. possibly to the Australians. You can't just alter your conditions just because of a weather forecast that might be wrong. And it turned out that the forecast at Altrafford was spot on, but how many times have we sat and gone, definitely not going to play tomorrow?

And they do. And which brings me to my point, Henry, actually, that you and I had a £10 bet at Old Trafford, that there would be no cricket played at all on Saturday. There was cricket played, and I still haven't seen my tenor. And you also had a bet with me that you never actually shook hands on that you said England were going to win. win the game on Saturday afternoon.

Exactly. So more power to me. There was a double or quits on the table that I didn't take. I'm still £10 up. Where's your cash? Jeff. I think what you say about forecast is right. They are only an indication.

On Friday we expected to get no play on Saturday and some play on Sunday. In the end, that was the other way around. So I don't think you can turn the house upside down on the basis of a forecast. But I do think it is a no-brainer for test matches in England to start a bit earlier. whether it's 1030 or 10 or whatever it may be, it gets light so early here. It seems absurd that you wait all the way until 11 o'clock and then have situations where you're going off for bad light because the weather's come in late in the day. I think if you know, there's a compromise to be had.

If you know that time's likely to be lost, then tweaking an extra half hour here or there can help get, you know, buy you a session across four days, for instance. And it might also help with the terrible overrates because England and Australia both bowled too slowly again and we lost a lot of overs from that too. My overall concern in all of this and there's been lots of dogs abuse from Australia towards a lot of people on this side of the planet who have said, oh, it's just sour grapes, all of this talk about changing how cricket's done. But I think the point that's slightly missed is that those of us that love test cricket

saw what this week could have been and we speak about main eventers, sports fans that will follow the big events. and you can understand as somebody who's loved the ashes has watched all of it sees the old Traffatess and think why am I bothering with this ludicrous sport

that has such a lack of flexibility and cricket had such a chance but that's why you're bothering with a ludicrous sport because it is ludicrous right Steph I mean that's your that's why you love cricket because it's ridiculous

there are many many more reasons than rain as to why I wonder why I bother with cricket and we haven't got enough time to list them. But just right, cricket is a ludicrous sport and that is why we love it. I think all this chat about overrates as well, I'm not convinced by it at all. I don't think that swifter cricket necessarily means better cricket. England could have tried to bowl their overs quickly and not bowled as well and not found themselves in the position they were in on Friday

evening. There are other reasons why the game has slowed down and not just because of bowlers or captains dawdling in setting their fields. We have DRS reviews that we didn't have a number of years ago. I saw a replay as it rained at Old Trafford of Mark Taylor being hit on the head by a Dean Hedley bouncer. The game just carried on, no one minded, whereas now we'd have had a five minute, quite rightly, a five minute break for a concussion test.

All of these things do not get factored in. They slow the game down more than they used to, and maybe we just need a little bit of a rethink of how much time we add on to the end of the day to get the overs in, but I don't think that is the magic pill that solves pace of play or getting more results in test cricket. They do get factored into a point because that extra half hour used to be occasionally used and now it's routinely used.

It's just assumed that the extra 30 minutes will be used. So there is that and that should broadly account for the DRS delays and a concussion delay or two. But what you have, you still do have the dawdling the rest of the time. And so even with the extra half hour teams are getting through. 78, 80, 82 overs instead of 90 in a day. I think if you want to make the argument that 90 is too many, that's an argument that can be made, but I don't think the argument that it doesn't matter if they don't reach the required minimum is a sound argument. The required minimum could be

adjusted to suit the era. Without wishing to broaden this too much, is Test cricket in a strong enough place to accept that it's ludicrous, it just stays as ludicrous? It's in a strong enough place in a couple of countries. But the fact that Test cricket has an uncertain future has nothing to do with whether it's frustrating as a sport to follow. It has to do with the fact that it's chronically underfunded almost everywhere that plays cricket because there are three countries that hoover up all the money and don't care about anyone else. And this was the first draw in 17 attempts that England have played in matches under Ben Stokes and Brendan McCollum.

And now that is an extreme end of the scale because of the way that England played their cricket. but Jeff's right, the future of test cricket is not threatened by results. By results, yeah, or its attitude to the elements or how quickly it gets through the action, it is threatened by the attitude towards looking after it in everywhere other than England, Australia and India. Right then. Okay, we could have talked about this all day easily and we may yet, but England and Australia, respectively, how are they going to be feeling coming into this test match? I think the Australians would have been pretty shaken after three days at Old Trafford, but maybe the rains helped them in giving them a couple of extra days where they weren't in the furnace.

You know, they were able to take some time out, do some deep breathing, I don't know, get the shoes off and wander around on the grass, whatever it takes to try to calm things down a bit. And so by now they might be feeling a little more level, but I think a fair bit of it rests on what they do at the selection table. I think that will show us whether they're actually going into this fifth test with a clear mind and the right sort of ideas about how to play cricket. That selection at Old Trafford looked all over the place. It looked backwards, sort of assembled upside down. And Andrew McDonald was not accepting after the game that there was anything wrong with that.

It was totally fine. It was the right 11. It wasn't really, but they're not willing to back down from that. I think so much of this week hinges on how England bounced back. from the disappointment of Old Trafford because even if Australia had lost at Old Trafford, they still would have had the chance to do here what they said they came here to do, which is win the ashes. Now, maybe they wouldn't have been in quite as good a place to do that because of what they

went through there, but surely, whichever way you look at it, even if they are feeling like they didn't have their best week, which they have fully admitted, they know that they still go out there with the draw. They would have been buoyed by the fact that, all right, yeah, it did rain. We got our draw. We can't do anything about that. We're here and we've got the opportunity to do what we came to do. For England, they can't do what they wanted to do this summer, which is regain the ashes. So how do they bounce back from that? The feeling, or what they are saying is, well, we still can draw this series 2-2. We don't want to give up that proud record of Australia and not having one in this country since 2001.

England haven't lost a test series under Stokes and McCullum and actually they've done quite well in inverted commas dead rubbers even though this isn't a dead rubber over the past couple of since Stokes and McCollum took over they did well against New Zealand at home last summer they did well in Pakistan when they'd already won the series and they went on won both of those series 3-0 a lot depends on how England approached this week

I'm expecting them to be up for it the bigger question is how weary are some of those ageing fast bowlers. Well, let's hear from inside the England camper. Earlier on today, I spoke to England batter Harry Brooke and asked how the team were bearing up after the disappointment of Old Trafford. Obviously, frustrated.

I thought we couldn't really do anything, but I feel like we were, well, we were dominating the game. It's in Manchester, and unfortunately, the weather stopped us from having that dream, like he said. Has it been any conversation about declarations, that sort of thing, have done differently in the game. No, not really. I don't think we haven't really

spoken about it much to be honest. Obviously we were all a bit frustrated and upset really but yeah can't do anything about it now and yeah we've got to crack on and try and win this week. A lot of talk as well about whether cricket does enough to get the playing hours in. Joe Root said he wanted 90 overs in the day

regardless. Is that something that as a player it's brought into focus by a game like Old Trafford? Do you think cricket does need to maybe just look at ways of ensuring as much players possible is achieved you can't do anything about the weather can you if it rained for five days you can't just say oh we'll play the next five days after that so obviously we we've been stuck with balling the amount of overs

and we haven't been able to get them in and yeah I probably agree a little bit with Rudy there that probably should potentially ball 90 overs in the day but yeah it's been the same for however long the game's been played now so I don't know how much you can change it, to be honest. But there's plenty to play for this week at the Oval. What's been the conversation from Ben and Brendan? We haven't spoken about it yet. Ben's not even here today, so I'm sure I might say something tomorrow.

Yeah, we're just going to go out there and try to play the same way we have them. And there's a test match to be won there. So, yeah, we're going to go out there and try and take it to them again. Do you feel that having missed out on the chance of that, what looked like a heavy win at Old Trafford, there's that real incentive now to show what you're going. you can do as a side. Yeah, absolutely.

I think we have that every time we go out to play, to be honest. I don't just think it was that game. Obviously, there was a lot on the line there, and so be it that it's happened now, you've got to move on. And there's certain points in all three test matches, all four test matches, which we could have won the game, they could have won the game. There's all sorts of different little aspects of the game.

Obviously, the weather last week clearly didn't help, but yeah, it had been class coming here, two all, and playing this week. week but yeah we can't can't think too much about that is there a degree of freedom now that the ashes dream has gone but you know there is still an ashes test match to play does that give you a little bit of psychological freedom i think we have enough freedom as it is i think i don't think we need much more well harry brook jeff following the mantra that we've heard from england all summer which is we play with freedom we go out there we're going to try and entertain it's another

week and we get on with it. Just another cricket match, isn't it? That's been his mantra through the series and he's grown into the series as well, Harry Brooke. You know, the innings at Headingley was incredibly influential. It seemed like that was an adjustment from

that fairly mad play that he was employing at Lords. He did change his approach a bit. He changed his approach further at Old Trafford. Came in late in the day when he was batting with Stokes and didn't do anything outrageous and ticked along at sort of three and over for a while just to make sure they got to stumps and then came out and was more attacking the next day, but not

outrageously. So he seems to have struck the balance now between attack and defense and just ticking the board over as well, finding gaps, that sort of thing. So I think we've seen a more mature version of Harry Brooke appear after the first couple of tests when, I don't know, it seemed like everybody in the England room had just been drinking red cordial and was so fired up to just get out there and tear into the test series. Maybe by the Oval, this will be the kind of place where he can ton up and add that to the string of 50s that he's put together. I think Brooks almost the ideal personification, I think, of how England have altered their approach across this series. And I don't think they would necessarily admit it publicly to us, but we can see that, and I'm going to use the Basball word,

basball has been distilled over the course of these four matches. And I'll think back to the third morning at Lords when Ben Stokes was out second ball of the day after he'd seen the way his team had batted the night before when they were going down in a haze of hook shots. He got out second ball, went and sat on the balcony, on his own. There was only Brendan McCollum with him. No other players around him had a face like thunder.

It was almost a very public showing of how, not displeased, but of how maybe he thought his team had got it wrong. Since then, the way England have played has been exceptional. They have known when to attack. They have known when to defend. They have known when to soak up pressure. I think we've seen the maturing of Basball across this series.

It was almost like at the start of the series they were drinking the cheap whiskey. Now they've stuck it in a cask for an extra few years and you've got the real mature, classic stuff that's come out. We really saw that. And the way they played in the second half of the game at Headingley, because if you remember at the start of heading they were behind the game and then in the way that they batted in the first innings at Old Trafford or their only innings at Old Trafford. I asked Travis Head earlier on if Australia had ever wondered during the past year

or certainly when they were going 2-0 up what all the fuss was about with the way England play. If they ever looked at it and gone we're not quite sure why this is so good. they'll know now after England racked up 592 at Old Trafford what it is all about. Gideon Hay writing in the Australian newspaper, quite an interesting quote. He said, let's see what happens at the Oval, but there's a good argument that England will end this series, a better team than when they began,

and Australia a little poorer. Jeff? It's not the most unreasonable contention. I suppose Australia came into this summer looking at the World Test. championship final first, you know, the Ashes was immediately post that. It was a strange situation where the supposedly biggest game, the one for the silverware, was also being treated as a warm-up for another series that's in the next World Test Championship cycle. And so that Australian team at this ground a couple of months ago looked incredibly high quality,

you know, the way they came out and resisted when India were bowling well on the first morning put a big score on the board the quality of the bowling all of it was there whether it's i think people are talking about fatigue a lot i'm not sure if fatigue is there in terms is a big factor in terms of the matches that have been played because australia's bowlers haven't actually had to bowl that many overs compared to what you might usually we've had short matches we've had rain interruptions um we've had not that much actual play and they've also changed over you know they've switched up their bowling attacks here and their comments is the only one who's played every match. But there might be something about just the mental exhaustion of being in the

middle of a high stakes, high pressure, high attention, long tour for a period of time. This isn't ducking over to New Zealand for three weeks to play a couple of test matches. This is a couple of months that they've been here. Some of them coming off the back of the IPL and coming off the India test series before that as well. It's been a long, long period that these players have been away from home and the spotlight gets very hot after a period of time. So I suppose that's, for me, that's the real question for Australia at the Oval is whether that sort of mental fatigue is going to sap them enough that they won't be competitive in this last test or whether they can rally one more time. I mean, they might arrive here thinking that they've been in a tumble dryer

for six weeks, just spun around with that spotlight on the, Henry, you and I were there the day before the first test at Edgebaston when Ben Stokes was speaking to Jonathan Agnew and he got asked about the style and if it would be enough for England to win the ashes. And he said, I hope so, but if not, oh well. And he sort of shrugged his shoulders because that was the way that England were playing.

For so long, you've always talked about putting results at the bottom of the list of priorities. And I don't always think that they've communicated that point as clearly as it could be because we hear lots of sports people and managers and coaches and players give that same message in a different way. I think what Stokes has always been trying to get at

is if we play well, the result takes care of itself. You hear that a lot in lots of different sports. I think that shrug of the shoulders from Stokes would have been a lot harder to do when they found themselves 2-0 down because that was the most extreme place England could have found themselves in

in this series. and after Lords when they did take a little bit of criticism and the criticism that they were taking at Lords the heat was turned down slightly by what happened by what happened between Alex Carey and Johnny Bearstone Stokes's amazing innings on the last day that saved England a little bit from taking the full force of criticism

I think Stokes and the England team found themselves staring at a situation that no matter how many times you say results don't matter or at the bottom of the list they were looking at becoming the England team that had lost the Ashes 3-0 in three matches first defeat here in 22 years but in spectacular fashion

and they have changed something and they have realised how difficult Ashes cricket is or how hard it is to win and the way that you need to play in order to win these games and since the Carey Stumping England have been the better side and yet could still lose 3-1

It almost feels Geoff that England over the past 14-9 months prior to this Ashes series, the car was so fast that in every race, it didn't matter of a few bits fell off it on its way through, it was always going to win, and now they're up against a far higher quality opponent, and they've had to really refine those elements. And we've almost seen that process happening as we've gone through the series. I think there's something to that, particularly in terms of the quality of fast bowling that they were facing across the first couple of test matches, and yet they were still able

England to bring out a lot of attacking batting. They were still able to rack up a couple of big scores. But, I mean, their second innings at Lords is really a Hail Mary kind of score. It all rests on Stokes doing one of the ridiculous things that Stokes has done across his career. And it's such a high-risk sort of style of play to say, I'm going to try to hook a six every over and hopefully we'll make 250 runs and knock off the deficit. I mean, he got a lot closer than anybody else probably would have done. they tried the same method.

So there has been something to do with the degree of quality, but then that's what we've seen starting to dip over the course of this series. I'd look at someone like Alex Kerry who made really important runs down the order in the World Test Championship final across the first couple of test matches in the Ashes series and then has started to decline. The returns from Usman Kowager have started to decline. Steve Smith hasn't had a great series aside from that one innings where he makes a hundred at Lords. Is that because he doesn't sleep?

I genuinely think this is a factor, yeah. I mean, I've written this before and said this before, that he's, you watch Steve Smith over the course of any lengthy series that he's played, and he does taper off towards the end of it much more dramatically than others might. He had such high standards that you notice when he starts to slip. And I think it is to do with the fact that the level of mental intensity that he operates at, but also that, like he speaks about, he finds it really hard to sleep during test matches. And also the fact that he's been here

for longer than all the other Australian players because he was playing for Sussex truncated nature of the series and the high intensity of it. I think there's something too, that. I doubt that he was struggling to sleep when he was playing for Sussex. Apart from the umpiring decisions

he was getting in the Kennedy Championship. But once he got into the Asher series, that's probably the way things go. That's the way that his mind works. So can you sustain that for weeks and weeks at a time without it affecting your concentration, your hand-eye coordination in a sport where split-second responses are what you float or sink on. But the England improvement as well that we're talking about,

this sort of distillation, the maturity of their style. It's also happened by accident in terms of if you think what's happened to their team and the thing we were most concerned about before the start of this series was the state of Ben Stokes' knee and if he'd be able to bowl and how the team would be balanced if he can't bowl. Well, he barely has bowled. And realistically, the injuries to Jack Leach and Ollie Pope weirdly balanced England's team out. Moeen Ali had to go up to number three.

I know that wasn't their first choice, but Moeen came into the side as a spin bowling all-rounder. Then that allowed England to get an extra bowling all-rounder in Chris Wokes into the team. Then all of a sudden, England have got all their bases covered, albeit by also picking Johnny Birstow, who's not their best wicketkeeper, which is a debate that's been had. long and hard but the fact is you can't get folks into a team and pick Moeen and pick four other seamers when Stokes can't bowl the point I'm making is this all happened a little

bit by accident for England the necessity of picking Moeen then when Pope got injured they had the opportunity to reconfigure their team to get five bowlers into it so they have had a little bit of I don't know I don't think looks the right word but they were they were able to turn a negative

into a positive what about team selection for this final test match because there's all sorts of talk about what England are going to do with their bowlers, Jimmy Anderson, where does sentimentality come into everything? Australia. Similarly, David Warner, because both ends of the scale, you've got players that unquestionably are beyond the peaks of their powers and are going to be looking towards the conclusion of their test careers. We know about David Warner saying the early part of next year, Jimmy Anderson, we don't know about. Well, yeah, Anderson hasn't given any indication and fair enough. Why, would he, if he thinks,

that he's still able to operate at this level. It's the tightrope that you walk when you are seen as a player who's close to the end, then a couple of bad performances are enough to have people write you off, whereas through the middle of your career, you could have a couple of bad test matches,

and that doesn't mean a lot. I think Anderson's still bowled well. He's still looked effective in terms of keeping runs down. He hasn't hoovered up wickets in the series, but maybe he's helped other players take wickets. It's the way Australia play him, isn't it? And they've done it in each of the last two Ashesie series in Australia, they make it very clear

that they're going to sit on Anderson, they're going to give him absolutely nothing. He goes for almost no runs. I think he's got the best economy rate of any bowler in the series, but he's got the worst strike rate and average. I think, I'd have to check that. But that is the way Australia,

they just don't play his game. They don't get sucked into playing shots against Jimmy Anderson. And that is why his record, I think he's only taken four wickets across the whole series. I think if Anderson is fit, I think he plays here at the Oval.

England have made a bit of a habit of naming them. their team two days out across the series. They're not doing it today, mainly because Ben Stokes isn't here. So they're not doing that just yet. The word we're hearing is that all the bowlers are going to be okay and up for selection. If that is the case, England has got a big decision to make over leaving out one of Anderson or Olly Robinson, who would have both been first choices at the start of this series.

The only way I can see that both of those get in, if England decide it's probably a match too far for Stuart Broad, but Broad will be itching to play because he's played every test match so far this summer. If Anderson is fit and then leave him out, that is massive because you are effectively leaving out, your attack leader, your leading wicket-taker of all time for a huge test match when you could be levelling the ashes. I don't see it. If they then subsequently pick Anderson and leave Robinson out, well, that's also a massive call because at the start of this summer, Robinson was the heir apparent to Anderson and Broad. I think that Robinson over the course of this series has shown that he's a liability with his health, whether he can actually

get through a test match or whether he's likely to have issues part of the way through that leave them a bowler down. And we're looking at the pitch right now outside our window. There is greener grass on it. It looks a little bit more tempting for a bowler than a couple of the other surfaces that we've seen at Old Traffat. It was pretty batting friendly, the one at Edgebaston as well. So I think if Anderson had a choice of pitch as to bowl on in this series, this looks like the one that he'd be most impressed with. The person, the bowler we thought was in most trouble coming into this match was Chris Wokes. He had a bit of a quad issue at Old Trafford, but he had a good long look at the pitch earlier on today.

He looked like a man who was going to play. We're hearing that Mark Wood is good to go, you know, playing three back-to-back-to-back test effectively, even though there was a break between Headingley and Old Trafford. I mean, don't forget, England have only bowled 30 overs since Friday. There's effective going to be a week off between matches. Supposed back-to-back test. So we're hearing that most of the bowlers are okay. I think England will probably be unchanged unless they decide it's a much too far for Stuart Broad. What about Australia and David Warner? That for me is the big question.

I think having got this deep into the series, they'll stay with him. We haven't had any indication that that would change. He got another couple of starts up in Manchester and didn't turn those into big scores. That's been the story of Warner's visits to England. which haven't been as diabolical as people remember. They remember 2019. He did have a couple of reasonable visits before that in 2013 and 2015. So given that generally the Oval, if you get yourself in, this tends to be a reasonable batting pitch,

although, as I said, just before, there's a bit more live grass on it than you might normally see. I think they'll be backing Warner in. If they made a change at this point, there'd be some signal that there was a little bit of panic in the ranks about, you know, shifting the order around and so on. We don't really know if Mitchell Marsh will come up. He's got some fitness issue that they're being very coy about actually letting on

what's going on there. So if that means that he couldn't bowl, for instance, can he be picked in an all-rounder's spot? What does that mean for Cameron Green? And I think when we're talking about this Australian team tapering off over the series, the absence of Nathan Lyon is still the big part that people seem to sometimes forget because he was such a reliable operator and one of the players who would be as good

at the end of a series as he was at the start. So they're still missing him massively as the metronome to set the beat for the rest of the attack. Looking at that pitch and the little bit of green grass that is on it, going back to the pitch of the World Test Championship final, it was a very good cricket wicket. It had a bit of everything for everyone in it.

Pace for the bowlers. Value for batters if they got in and played their shots. It was a little bit uneven as well and that's not necessarily a good thing but we did see a lot of batters get hit on the hands, particularly Australians, actually. They got pinned a lot by Mohamed Shammie. So if it's anything like that,

there'll be much, much more life in that surface than we saw at Edgebaston and Lords, much more like the pitcher headingly, which was so good for cricket, produced such thrilling cricket, and that's hopefully what we want to see in this game. If Marsh isn't fully fit to be the all-rounder, that's just an easy explanation, isn't it,

Marsh for Murphy? I think that's how it would have to go or effectively Green would reoccupy that all round the spot at 6 but Cameron Green hasn't been hugely impressive through the series so I would think that if Marsh is fit they'd play him instead of Green but they need Marsh

to be able to bowl if they're going to pick him What about Australia's aspiration of winning here outright for the first time since 2001 and doing so without Nathan Lyon for the vast majority of this series it would be a phenomenal achievement It would be a huge achievement, and I think if they don't achieve that, they will go home feeling pretty sorry for themselves.

You know, if they give up a 2-0 lead and it ends up being two-all and they know that they've been thrashed around the place in Manchester and got away with the draw there, that would be a – it would feel like a failure from that point. You know, it would feel like they'd blown what was an extremely good opportunity to wrap up a series win here. So I don't think there'll be any shortage of motivation from Australia to get that. It's just, as we said, whether that mental fatigue takes a toll or whether they're able to rally. There's also a few Australians, or quite a lot of players actually in that team, who won't play another test match in England, Warner, Kowager. Probably most of them. Yeah, Smith said he won't be back.

You won't see Mitchell Stark here again. You'd be unlikely to see Lion, I suppose it's possible, given spinners tend to go on longer. but yet Warner and Kuwajah Smith wouldn't return. It might be Kerry, Greene, Travis Head, possibly Pat Cummins. That's probably about it. And the same goes for England, actually. Old Trafford, I think eight of their players were aged 32 or over. This is a little bit, certainly in this country,

because I think maybe quite a few of the players might make the next Ashes series down under from both sides, but certainly not in England. Will we see most of these players? And if you think actually, in terms of Ashes' eras, you had everything that happened up to 2005 and we'll lumped 2006-7 in there, actually, because the England team that won in 2005 and then the Australian team that lost in 2005 and got to 06-07, that's when they started to break up. Then you had the England era of dominance when I think they won three series in a row, the Peterson side. That all broke up in sort of 2013-14. So since then, you've had a decade, really, of the players that we are going to see in this game. It's been 10 years of Ashes cricket, essentially, in these 2-11s,

and we won't see them play against each other after this game. It's a really good point. Looking through the two squads from the 2013 Ashes, so 10 years ago, you've got James Anderson, Johnny Berstow, Stuart Broad, Joe Root part of it, Chris Wokes for Australia. There's Usman Coajan, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Stark, David Warner. I mean, these guys, Steve Smith,

these guys that have been absolute mainstays of this rivalry, and it is the end of an era. It's been such an extensive period of time. I was surprised when I was reading up a couple of the 2013 scorecards that Johnny Besto was there. I barely remember him playing in that series, but he was there batting at number six through four of the test matches. Mitchell Stark was prominent in terms of how he was dropped

and brought back in throughout that series, you know, as the young gun at that point in time. I mean, he probably has a couple more years in him, but he's not going to be back here in four years' time, you wouldn't imagine. So, yeah, it does feel like an era ending, and I suppose the Oval Test often feels like that. There are often farewells here in the way that there often are at the Sydney cricket ground in the Australian summer players doing their final laps. And, you know, from Bradman through to Alistair Cook here, there's often. that poignancy to an oval test match.

Yeah, from an England point of view, that time, the 2013 Ashes that were here and then the subsequent tour, 1314, Bearstow had just made his debut. Chris Wokes, it's 10 years to this game, actually, that Wokes made his test debut. Simon Kerrigan's match, the final test of that series. Rout had just got into the side.

Ben Stokes made his debut on the 1314 tour. Then afterwards, when England were rebuilding a team, the likes of Moeen, Mark Wood, they all came into the side. And that group of players who knew each other actually from junior cricket. They played against each other a lot in representative cricket, things like the Bunbury Festival. They've seen English cricket through some massive highs and lows. So that 5-0 whitewash in 13, 14, the POMney Shambles, they were there for the 2015 World Cup debacle.

A lot of them played when they got beaten in the 2016 T20 World Cup final. A lot of them are two-time World Cup winners, multiple Ashes winners. as a group, if you just stuck Josh Butler in this squad now, they are the players that have carried English cricket through the last decade, and this will be the last time that they play together

in a home ashes test. You would suspect that Anderson, Broad, Wood, Wokes, we know that Moeen is finishing. Those guys almost certainly won't make the next Ashes tour down under. And then if Stokes, Bearstow, Root make it there,

you're probably only talking about Joe Root maybe playing in the next home Ash's series, we are going to have to see a regeneration of an England team and probably an Australian 11 over the next four years between Ash's series in this country. You'll make me feel rather emotional. And very old. Well, certainly that.

That goes without saying. It is part of the cycle of it, but this just does feel like the end of quite an extensive battle between some of the grades in the game. Well, I suppose that's how cricket works, isn't it? It has its eras and they're easier to see when you're looking back over the history, the sort of rings of the tree as you go through the different periods and who overlaps and who overlaps with who and how quickly you can get back to the 1770s

in terms of players who have taken the field and we get to participate in a small part of it, watch a couple of those eras come and go. I suppose what's unusual is you don't often see two teams, the eras of two teams align quite in the same way, that England and Australia have here. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. And maybe that speaks of the way that the game as a whole is evolving with more emphasis on white ball cricket,

with those Red Bull cricketers not coming through. Perhaps there isn't that generation of Red Bull cricket as coming through in both countries. I think England's top six is okay for a little while. Duckett and Crawley have gelder as a partnership. I think their numbers as an opening partnership stack up against a lot of great England opening partnership at least in the early days of their partnership, if you will.

We'll see how they go over the next few years. Ollie Pope's the next captain, if that's what he's the vice captain now. He looks set to take over from Ben Stokes. Harry Brooke looks pretty nailed on at number five. Joe Root, we expect to be around for a little while. It's what comes after that. Who is the next all-rounder?

There seems to be plenty of candidates as the next wicketkeeper, James Rue, Jamie Smith, Ollie Robinson, and then it's the fast bowlers. Where are they coming from? Saki Mahmood, will he get fit again? Matthew Potts has been around the squad, Josh Tongue. It's how England probably put together their number six downwards in the next few years. To wrap up, Steph, let's go back to your analogy.

You've not got your bike on Christmas Day. You've got your sewing kit, if you like. How does this test, how does it play out to give you the big finish, if you like, that he's going to make everything feel a little better? I guess I want the gift voucher to go and spend in the January sales. I think 2-2 would be a fitting result I think that's why this is such a big match actually because a lot of people have said

over these first four test matches England have probably been the better side they should have won at Edgebaston they did win at Headingley and they could have won at Old Trafford they were outplayed at Lords partly through reasons of their own making but it is very difficult to make the argument

that well you can't make the argument that England have been the better side if they lose this series 3-1. There's a huge difference between 2-2 and 3-1, evidently. Sitting here right now, looking at the last four test matches, 3-1 would feel like an injustice, but Australia could quite easily come out here, outplay England over the next week, and 3-1 would feel like a fair result. It is almost as if, even though the scoreline is 2-1, this match decides the ashes. Or we could just get rained off again. The scoreline could be 2-1,

just like 2005, and we could all write. our nice comparative pieces at stumps and talk about why this series was or was not as good. Indeed. Right. Well, Test Match Special underway 1025 on Thursday morning. Loads of extra material you can enjoy

from the Test Match Special team on BBC Sounds including our series How to Win the Ashes available on the BBC IPlayer as well which will give you a little guide into the insight and mentality required in this grueling series that we've seen over the last few weeks. Thank you for joining me, Stefan Schemelt and Jeff Lemon,

and we'll look forward to two of the fifth and final test match from the Oval on Thursday morning. Jill Scott's Coffee Club. We are back. I'm so excited for the second series, Ben. It's going to be so exciting, bigger and better this year. We've got the line as is England manager, Serena. Wow.

As if we've got Serena. I'm happy that I've seen her a couple of times after the Euros. More on TV than in life. You can see her now here. Let's not forget as well, Jill. got to hear about all your antics in the jungle too. Every now and then, there'd just be a tannoy going, Jill, you were not allowed to leave coffee that way.

So I was constantly getting in trouble. Jill Scott's Coffee Club, listen on BBC Sounds.