Adversity’s Gift: Why Losing in Two Days Was The Best Thing That Could Happen For Team England

Musings on the first Ashes Test, from an anonymous knighted former England Test cricket captain

The first Test is lost in rather spectacular fashion. Two days. A comprehensive defeat. The critics, predictably, are apoplectic. And yet, as I sat in the members’ area - well, my London flat, but spiritually in the members’ area - watching the Australians’ boorish celebrations, I found myself thinking: this is perfect.

Not perfect in outcome, obviously. But perfect in narrative. Perfect in opportunity. Perfect in what it sets up for this tremendous England side and, in particular, their Promethean leader, Ben Stokes.

For if England come back to win this series from 0-1 down after a two-day defeat, Stokes will have achieved something no England captain has managed: the greatest Ashes comeback in history.

Every worthy narrative requires its crucible. We have found ours. Thank you, Mitchell Starc. Thank you, Travis Head.

As we discussed at Cambridge - and I apologise for returning to this well, but one’s education does inform one’s perspective - great narratives require crisis. The hero’s journey, as Campbell articulated it, demands the ordeal. Odysseus needs his decade of trials. Frodo needs Mordor. Stokes, perhaps, needs the frenetic misadventure of Perth.

England winning 5-0 from strength? That’s not a story. That’s administration. England winning 3-1 after losing the first Test in two days? That’s mythology. That’s the Odyssey. That’s the sort of thing one writes epics about.