The Ashes 2023: Felix White on how the series feels different before third Test
- Published
Felix White is a musician, author and co-host of the BBC's Tailenders podcast.
In his third column for BBC Sport this summer, he discusses how a captivating, controversial second Test has changed the feel of this Ashes before Thursday's third Test at Headingley.
So here we are.
Only two Tests into an Ashes series and we are all already torn to shreds, in a state of sudden collective malfunction.
It's hard to believe it was only two weeks ago in this very column I threw (completely non-ironically) to a series where altruism on behalf of our beloved Test cricket would take precedence over deep-seated rivalry this summer.
That prophecy has had all the lumpen staying power of a maniacal film noir villain; turning up in Birmingham with a glazed, fixed smile, promising they come in peace, only to be ready to watch the world burn by London.
If Edgbaston rumbled along with a freedom and frisson, there was something different going around Lord's.
The stiffened hubbub at the home of cricket proved not a particularly hospitable breeding ground for Bazball.
Where the Hollies had encouraged and fuelled every act of English brazen recklessness-meets-innovation-depending-on-your-age, here fatal shots were often met with outrage, confusion and knowing shaking of the heads.
Lord's, you see, is a different beast. It requires players to conform to its own sense of grandeur.
And Bazball, you will have noticed, is not that keen on conformity. It will not accept anything but a lead part, wherever they have turned up, and demands a mass response to almost everything it does.
When neither got what it wanted in the first couple of days, faced with (it turns out) a devilishly ruthless Australian side eyeing a first Ashes win in England since 2001, a strange texture, one of odd dissonance was set across north London; the kind that causes panic and stress and a tragic inevitability.
The stand-off between the worlds - Ben Stokes' England and the institution - was punctuated by a damning and distressing, but not particularly surprising, Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket report landing in the days leading up to it.
Asked to look at its team and its institutions, English cricket at Lord's was in effect blindsided by being not just confronted with a sharp and shrewd Australia, but in a fight with itself too.
It was, then, even more impressive that the unifying nature of Stokes' knock - containing discipline, brute power, responsibility, bravery, execution and resolve - harnessed and inverted this malaise to give the fifth day an alien chaos. Both factions, under the umbrella of a heroic innings in the making, united in remembering how much they all actually wanted to win this and turned to face Australia together.
The swell it created - one of nostalgia and relief and adrenaline-fuelled empowerment - was so volcanic that the timing of the Jonny Bairstow stumping almost finally made sense of all the feelings. This was something both facets of English cricket could agree on together.
The knock-on effects and endless discourse about Bairstow's dismissal since have been, at times, so unhinged, you wonder whether it is worth suggesting an enforced one-day content blackout while we remember we're trying to save Test cricket here.
Regardless, it is deeply exciting that, undeniably, the sporting culture's eyes, ears, hearts and minds are now turned to the cricket. Much in a similar way, as those that lived it will tell you, 2005 did.
And talking of 18 years ago, there is some longing nostalgia that creeps to the surface of all this as each turn reminds us of that series, as we also reflect on how the world has changed since.
Where there was once televised coverage before we were left with our own thoughts until it started again, now we are stuck on a conveyor belt of revolving opinion; every time you glance into your phone, baring witness to someone's anger or hurt or personal take. It can be quite a nauseous way to consume high sporting drama. This, however, is mine.
The day five energy inversion courtesy of Stokes, Bairstow, Alex Carey et al turned the questions at Lord's from slightly dead-ended cricket ones like, 'How do you take wickets with anything but bouncers on these wickets?' to big, moralistic ones.
You will have no doubt been barraged with them. Maybe the one we should be asking ourselves, that no-one has dared to yet, is, 'Why all the anger and what is that actually about?' Because it probably isn't just about a stumping, whether it be in the spirit of the game or not.
Headingley will be a venue of some consolation to England in a must-win game. Stokes, of course, made history there four years ago.
It also rolls along to a raucous beat closer to that of Edgbaston.
England's way of doing things will likely be welcomed unconditionally, especially marked with some new makeshift pantomime villains - aided by Pat Cummins' black eye re-framing him peacemaker to malcontent disruptor - to boo from boundary to boundary.
If your head, like mine, has been turned into a vacuum of twitching nothingness by the last few days, different partisan opinions spun about its vacant cave like a wrecking ball, fear not, as the cricket is back on Thursday to quieten it momentarily.
I hope you can brush all the talk aside for the trivial stuff that really matters - the bat and the ball and the balls being grounded or not grounded - while mother cricket twists on its axis towards whatever is waiting to unfold again, sending us all back into another discordant spasm this time next week.
Let's hope the series is still alive when we check back in.