This was the modern art Ashes series. It was as intriguing as it was baffling

11 hours ago 3

How to portray this weirdest of Ashes series? Typically, Test cricket is appreciated like great traditional works of art. The 2005, 2013-14 and 2019 series could have been painted by Gainsborough or Constable or our own Tom Roberts. Collectors prize them.

This one was a Picasso, or a Dali, or even Edvard Munch’s The Scream, or some other tortured genius. It was surreal. We will do it the favour of calling it modern art in the sense that it was as intriguing as it was baffling. Bottom line, it was impossible for the layman to say what it was all about, except that Australia won.

Australia claimed a 4-1 victory in one of the more bizarre Ashes series.

It was recognisable as Test cricket, Ashes cricket, but with so many warps and distortions that you had to wonder if it was on one long Bazball-fuelled bender. Idiosyncratic doesn’t nearly begin to cover it. Abstract, certainly, if not downright obtuse.

Let’s take a tour of the gallery.

Through the middle, there’s a long squiggle: Steve Smith incarnate. It’s a recurring Ashes theme. Elsewhere, there are lots of slashes, because there were a lot of slashes.

Really, it’s hard to know where to look next, it’s such a mash-up, and yet you can’t turn away. One thing is certain, there’s no red ink. That’s out of vogue.

There are gouges half-way up the strip where England mostly bowled, and an X to mark Boland’s spot. There are scratches, weeping like sores, to represent England’s casualties. There’s a stylised red cross for Australia’s convalescence ward. Or is it an aged care facility? There are also some figures hastily sketched in place of the wounded and they look just as good.

There’s a lot of white space, an inordinate amount, for the several players on both sides who did little enough, more for the many lost days, and a skull and crossbones for spin bowling.

There’s some pleasing, but unfinished lines for Zak Crawley and Harry Brook. There’s Ben Stokes, perennially wincing, effort, soreness and mental burden all showing on his face. There’s Joe Root, but there always is. There are a lot of ghostly figures, too, shadows of their northern hemisphere selves.

Zak Crawley made numerous starts but did not make a century.

In one corner, there’s a blot for England’s spilled catches. There are gold stars for the many Australia took. Half of England’s wickets were catches to Carey, Smith and Marnus Labuschagne.

In another corner, there’s the stain of splashes of beer, a Noosa craft number, of course.

Next to it, there’s more blank canvas, to stand for England’s minimalist preparation. That one is not expected to be seen again.

For all the slaps and dashes and the slapdash, if you stand back a bit, the big picture looks pleasing for Australia. In matters of grit and discipline, they were masters. These are less praised arts, but arts nonetheless. Bazball appears to hold them in contempt. Spectacular as Bazball often can be, it does not lend itself well to clutch moments.

The motif for the picture of England that emerges is a harlequin. And that bloodied flying ear in the bottom of the frame could be van Gogh’s, but it could be Jamie Smith’s get-out shot to Labuschagne. It was the worst of the series, in a strong field of candidates.

An all-too familiar scene for Jamie Smith this series.

That said, for all the upside-down cricket on show, there was also an aesthetically pleasing thread running through the works because even avant-garde artists mostly are classically educated. There was even a small sense that some of the English would have liked to have been allowed to play the old way. Orthodoxy? How radical that would be.

Maybe it will come. The last in this collection of curios and exotica and trash and treasure was a twist, a finely drawn, perfectly proportioned mini-masterpiece of Test match batting replete with strokes worthy of any painter’s brush – produced by a neophyte. Jacob Bethell could not have made a better first impression if he was the Mona Lisa. He even had the inscrutable half-smile.

Jacob Bethell was one of the few bright lights in a sorry campaign for England.

Whatever this all was, it played to packed galleries, in aggregate the third biggest ever. Of course, they were captives of pre-sold ticketing, but you sensed they would have come anyway. This pop art might not please critics, but it won the people’s prize.

Australia can laugh now, but for England, it’s back to the drawing board. The easel was useless.

Was this a one-off flight of raving Bazball-flavoured fantasy, in which Australia was both swept up and commendably kept its head (and its Starc), or is this how it is to be from now on? Was it ripped from the walls of a kindergarten, or is this the new black? Was this a forerunner or a fad, a moment or a movement?

In less than 18 months, the show resumes. Meantime, we can always revisit revivals of 1948 or 1989 or 2006-07.

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