Then, Pat Cummins

England lose a thriller that also shows why there is nothing quite like Test cricket.

England were so close...

Was it really only Friday that Zak Crawley smacked Pat Cummins to the cover boundary? Yes, it was; Crawley’s statement boundary was not only the same series as today, but the same match, connected by five pulsating days of cricket to the Cummins boundary that ended the Edgbaston Test. Amidst the drama, it was often hard to remember that.

Test cricket is strange. You spend five days sinking all your energy into it. If your team win, brilliant. You ride the wave of that release of energy, do silly things like scream at a television screen, hug the sweaty bloke called Geoff from Swindon who you’ve sat next to at Headingly all day and never met before, spend the whole of your next net session pretending to be a bespectacled man from Taunton whose most famous shot is a clip off his legs for a single.

If your team lose, though, if all that energy you’ve invested, all those hours whittled away with radio on, with livestream hidden away on second desktop, with furtive score checks – well, where does it go? It comes back to hit you like a punch in the gut. You are sickened, drained; all that energy spent and nowhere for it to go but back at yourself.

That’s what the Edgbaston Test did today. It was a classic example of why Test cricket is simultaneously both very silly and such an enormous source of joy to people, and why nothing else in the game can compare.

For nearly five days England and Australia have been neck and neck, one ahead, now the other, nothing but a coat of linseed oil to separate them. The match a pan of water on the hob which finally hisses and steams and begins to bubble and boil. For a while, there is the threat of Alex Carey and Usman Khawaja, who has batted all game like a stonemason painstakingly constructing an homage to hard-fought runs but then Ben Stokes comes on to bowl. And, inevitably, he makes the breakthrough. Khawaja chops on.

Still 70 runs to win, three wickets to get. Cummins and Carey at the crease. Australia in with a chance, you feel. You almost want them to get fairly close, just for the thrill of it. Ultimately, though you know that what you are watching is like one of those TV shows where the characters seem in peril but the hero swoops in to save the day. The baddy is led away, everybody enjoys a celebratory drink and the credits roll for next week’s episode. It will be close, but England will get there. Especially when Carey, too close to the ball, fails to get enough elevation to evade the grateful hands and swift reactions of Joe Root. Not a single smile on the Aussie balcony.

Then, Pat Cummins. Not once does he look rattled. He knocks the ball about for singles, evades bouncers, defends when needed, coaxes Nathan Lyon through a partnership that steers Australia closer and closer. All while looking very dashing and unruffled. The nerves start to grow. Still, get Lyon out and then just Josh Hazlewood – a jittery outline in the dressing room – to come. England will get there. They have to.

Then Cummins takes fourteen from a Joe Root over in a passage of play you could use as an exemplar if ever asked to “define targeted aggression”. Suddenly the target is down near 30. Your stomach tightens, mouth dries, head pounds. Some of the Aussies are smiling.

Closer, and closer still. No sign of Lyon getting out bar an almost wonder-catch from Stokes. 20, 10, 5 needed, each run ticked off another twist of the vice in your gut. Part of you knows this is Australia’s to lose. But still you believe: in Ben Stokes, in Stuart Broad, his useless headband and far less useless bowling, in Ollie Robinson, in this England team. If this is still a TV show and Stokes’ team are the scriptwriters, then they are just playing with your emotions right down to the wire. The hero will come and save the day any minute now.

Only it’s a plot twist, and that plot twist is called Pat Cummins. He half-guides half-thick edges one from Robinson down to third man. There would be a nice kind of circularity if it was Zak Crawley who in a despairing attempt can only push the ball over the boundary, but it’s not, it’s Harry Brook. Not that it matters, because it’s still four and the game is Australia’s and their balcony is all grins and cheers now.

And all that expended energy and investment and time spent caring about this made up thing comes crashing back at you, and you feel weak and you don’t know what to do and you can hardly watch. Part of you knows that this is a brilliant advert for Test cricket, that this shows why the format must endure, why it cannot be reduced to a Wimbledon style showpiece as some have suggested, but it’s hard to focus on that now.

In time, you’ll be able to understand that the result cannot take away from a match that all those involved, in any form, will long remember as a classic. You’ll realise that there are four games to go, that this game has shown how difficult it is to separate these two sides. You’ll know this was the same game in which Crawley drove the first ball for four. For now, though, you wonder why you invested all that energy, whilst also knowing you wouldn’t have it any other way.