The Ashes need a spark and some fire

In the next few weeks, it’s the turn of The Ashes to produce a spectacle worthy of cricket’s oldest international contest. For too long it has been one-way traffic, usually at high speed and unconcerned about anyone in the way. Watching Australia annihilate England match after match, series after predictable series has been boring at best, pathetic at worst.

Now the grand old trophy has a real chance of redemption. And that would be good news not just for England, Australia or The Ashes but for cricket at large. Because for the the past decade and a half, cricket, like The Ashes, has essentially been about one team.

Only since 2001 have Australia had a worthy rival, and the past three versions of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy have seen the keenest competition and highest quality of cricket since…well, probably since Brearley’s phoenix-like team played in 1981.

More recently India and Pakistan have staged a couple of series to rival even India-Australia.

It’s not only the cricket, of course; in sheer financial terms, both these contests are in a league of their own. The Ashes, by contrast, appear to be an over-romanticised county match.

All that could change in the next few weeks. It will be hard work but when England troop out tomorrow, and at each subsequent Test, they must know they are fighting as much to protect the past as they are to shape the future.

— Jayaditya Gupta