What does it mean? How should we feel? What are the roots that clutch? What branches grow out of this stony rubbish? For most of its combined 142 overs, watching England’s fourth Test victory in Melbourne felt like drifting in and out of a drunken sleep while trying and failing to follow the plot of a particularly gruelling action movie.
Why is this car chase happening? Why is The Rock defusing a torpedo inside a collapsing Maya temple? Why are they running to the top of the nearest generic tall building for this final, final, final showdown? Wait. Will Jacks is playing?
Australian cricket has at least taken decisive action. It seems a collective policy decision has been made to categorise this as a game to be voided. The talk is of unacceptable grass. The curator Matt Page, whose name, in a confusing note of nominative non-determinism, basically means “unresponsive surface”, has been subjected to the equivalent of a congressional hearing.
On social media Melbourne has been dismissed as a game no one actually won (England won by four wickets); an emblem of all that is spiritually wrong with the game; and a mutually culpable cash haemorrhage for Cricket Australia (England won by four wickets, too quickly). In the newspapers words such as unbefitting, ugly and meaningless have been tossed about. England’s victory has been deemed an occasion “never to be spoken of again”, not even for Josh Tongue, who probably wants to talk about it quite a lot.
In the process Australian cricket has arrived at its own version of England’s much-derided chat about moral victories in 2023. Here we have something new: the immoral victory. An immoral victory that, like the moral one, conveniently voids the actual scoreline. Maybe you can buy these in Noosa too.
They do have a point. Melbourne was junk-cricket for much of the game, played out on a furry green horror of a pitch. But this was also a genuinely notable overseas England victory. And a significant occasion in other ways too, evidence of a basic refusal to fall apart at this late stage, to be broken by the tour that breaks everyone.
For England the search for meaning has rested mainly on the fourth innings batting, the reignition of the Baz-flame, 20 overs of aggressive stroke-play that made perfect tactical sense chasing on a seaming pitch. Zoom out a little, however, and there is something else. Bowling has always felt like the neglected hand in the current regime’s game of energy and intent, but it was also the key note here.
Melbourne confirmed that Tongue, eight Tests in, is effectively the leader of the attack now. It also provided Brydon Carse with his best day in Test cricket, Carse who has been a whipping boy in defeat for some, dismissed as the captain’s best mate, an open pressure valve, a cautionary tale told by the god of stat-padding.
There was always a lurking weakness in this injury-shadowed tour squad. With the collapse of the Broad-Anderson-Woakes-verse England lost 1,500 Test wickets. Jofra Archer and Mark Wood may or may not be back. So here we are. Tongue and Carse. This is England’s attack now, the International Cricket Council’s 29th and 43rd ranked bowlers, veterans of 21 matches between them, and also the source of 12 of England’s 20 wickets at the MCG.
Tongue in particular was focused, hostile, accurate and unusually likable. There was something slightly jarring, in the moment, about his post-match press conference on day one. England had just been bowled out for 110. There was dark talk already of 4-0 down with one to play.
At which point Tongue breezed into the media dungeon beneath the MCG looking infectiously happy. He talked about dreams coming true and the fun of having his family there to witness his Boxing Day five-for. Twenty-four hours later he was man of the match in an England victory, the first England bowler to get one of those in Australia since Dean Headley (1998, Melbourne), Gladstone Small, (1986, Melbourne) and Norman Cowans (1983, also Melbourne).
Tongue is a late-bloomer, aged 28 with some major injuries behind him. His method is alluringly simple – straight run, strong shoulders, full length – but also nuanced enough to provide an element of mystery. The arm at one o’clock, the angled seam, the way the ball shapes in and holds its line: there is a degree of inbuilt unorthodoxy here, qualities he has somehow maintained through the sausage-processing factory of pathway pace coaching.
Tongue has 43 wickets now at 26 against mainly strong opposition. This is a genuine Test match bowler and a major tick, it should be noted, for the Key-Stokes-McCullum talent ID machine.
Carse is two years older and more of a puzzle at this stage. His tour has been an oddity. The numbers are good in every area except economy. Look closer and 11 of his 19 wickets have been top order players, and just half of those for scores of 20 or less. Where Tongue has been decisive, with eight of his 12 wickets top order batters for low scores, Carse has often mopped up with England struggling, a solution to problems he has helped to create.
Too often Carse has seemed to have no default option, no stock ball, dishing up a random all-sorts box of German supermarket chocolates, the odd ripper, too many soft and sickly disappointments. But in Melbourne you got a proper sense of his value.
A major plus at this stage: he isn’t broken, still works, has played all four Tests with no loss of intensity. There have been catches, run-outs, clutch moments. On the final afternoon in Melbourne Australia seemed to be edging ahead at effectively 161 for six.
Cameron Green was lurking doggedly, albeit with the vague sense, as ever, that someone has wheeled a flatpack wardrobe out into the middle and left it in front of the stumps. Steve Smith was running through his range of bravura leaves, spreading his voodoo about the place, driving nicely when England overpitched.
Carse made other stuff happen. He hit Green on the arm, took a fine caught and bowled, overstepped and got Mitchell Starc with his seventh ball. Even his horrible, cartwheeling cameo at No 3 when England batted seemed to generate the requisite sense of danger, the Don’t-You-Know-I’m-Loco energy of early Bazball.
Tongue and Carse might end up a marriage of convenience, a winter sun fling, Mr Right-Now and Mr Other Right-Now. But this is what England’s attack has pared itself back to now, last men standing at the end of the Test of shame. If Carse, in particular, can maintain the pressure of that second innings in Melbourne, they might just have a chance of turning the screw once again.
