The sports sections of Australia’s major mastheads were on Monday largely dedicated to ridiculing pre-series predictions of an England Ashes victory, and announcing the end of the tourists’ now-compromised attacking philosophy.
“Bazball is dead”, asserted the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, quoting former Australian opener Simon Katich. The West Australian newspaper fully committed to the theme, mocking up a pronouncement of Bazball’s passing on ye olde parchment, “deeply lamented by Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes, but basically no one else”.
However, the triumphal moment in the country’s greatest sporting rivalry was diluted in Monday’s newspapers, as a belated and ultimately hard-earned Ashes victory was pushed from the front pages by the fallout from the Bondi terror attack.
In The Sydney Morning Herald, the match didn’t warrant a mention on either the front page or the news section, even though the series arrives at the SCG in less than two weeks.
Others carried page one photos with pointers to the sport sections, although the victory was the splash across the front of the hometown Advertiser in Adelaide, after the city broke its Test match attendance record.
Much ink on the back pages was dedicated to mockery of comments by English observers in the lead-up – including from Stuart Broad – that this Australian team was the worst since 2011.
“Rampant Aussies prove point,” splashed the Advertiser across two of its seven pages of coverage, a spread duplicated in New Corp’s other tabloids. “How the ‘worst Australian team in 15 years’ retained urn after just 11 days” was the subject of analysis in the The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, as News Corp replicated the theme: “Cummins’ men beat odds to make mockery of Broad’s prediction”.
Yet a sense of celebration pervaded the column inches, recognising the achievements of an Australian team that overcame the loss of key players to secure the urn in just 11 days, tying the record for the shortest number of days required with Steve Waugh’s greats of the noughties. “Long live Ashes kings,” declared The Australian.
Mitch Starc’s desire to play all five Tests and push for an Ashes whitewash threw forward towards the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne, where captain Pat Cummins and spinner Nathan Lyon are in danger of missing out. Melbourne’s Herald Sun warned: “Next stop, 5-0”.
