England Must Aim For Dead-Rubber Demolition

This article originally appeared on VICE Sport UK.

Here's a thought. By the year 2019, the next time England hosts an Ashes series, there will be people approaching their 18th birthday – that is, people legally old enough to have kids, obtain a pilot's licence, smoke, or die in a pointless war for Queen and country – who won't know what it feels like to lose a home Test series against Australia

Picture them, childhood sweethearts Steve and Stacey, left school at 16 because their folks didn't have a spare 30 grand to put them through university, child on the way (Name: "I like Joe or Jos"), due to get a council house in maybe a dozen or so years, cricket lovers despite their parents not playing it, despite their comprehensive school not being much more comprehensive than football and netball when it came to sport, and despite not being able to afford to watch their England heroes live, be that pixellated or in the flesh.

The encircling bleakness of Steve and Stacey's life under Bullingdon Austerity has been assuaged only by the depth of their mutual adoration, and those quadrennial Mark Nicholas-presented hour-long slices of English home Ashes dominance on Channel 5. Oh yah!

It is for this reason – to snuff out any threat of this beacon of joy being snuffed out – that the England cricket team must be absolutely, flesh-rippingly ruthless heading into the Fifth Test at the Oval this week. The Oval cannot be a schmaltzy valediction for Michael Clarke. No fanfare for the likeable 'Buck' Rogers. Broady, we are counting on your world-class shit-housery.

There are other, gentler options available to England coach Trevor Bayliss, of course. He could experiment with the side with a view to the immediate challenges of the winter, giving Adil Rashid a run and bumping Moeen Ali up to open instead of the struggling Lyth.

Or he could troll his countrymen by playing county champions Yorkshire's side. It's not so far-fetched: eight of a first-choice XI of Lyth, Lees, Gale, Root, Ballance, Bairstow, Rashid, Bresnan, Plunkett, Sidebottom and Brooks already have international experience.

But both of these run a fatal risk. Losing a so-called "dead rubber" and giving the Aussies the respectability of a 3-2 loss, would allow them to perception-manage their series evaluation into a "had we won one more crucial session, we might have nicked it". Which would be drivel. Drivel that provides hope.

No, England must grind the Aussie snout into the Oval dust (or, preferably, into the lush green grass). They should remember the history of these dead rubbers and the slim crumbs of comfort they offered throughout the barren years, crumbs without which we would have starved to death. Equally, to prevent Steve and Stacey – or Chaz and Chelsea, gap-year gallivanting round Oz – from taking this home hegemony for granted, we must remind them of the grim history of our Ashes encounters (just as they will in turn tell "Joe or Jos" how dismal life was under Cameron in the last years, after Osborne flogged our atmosphere to Nestlé).

Before the historic magic of the 2005 Ashes swept us all into unrepeatable, body-spasming reverie, the previous time England had claimed the urn was on the 1986-87 tour. A team described as having only three problems – "they can't bat, can't bowl, and can't field" – swept all before them, and nearly capped it off with a World Cup. Australia responded. Allan Border was installed as what Gideon Haigh described as their "recession-era captain" and forged a side in his own leathery image. Things got ugly, quickly.

The Aussies arrived in 1989 in patchy form, yet by the time they reached the Oval were 4-0 up. England were shambolic, using 29 players in a six-match series – coincidentally, the difference in the number of wickets taken by the sides' leading wicket-takers: 41 to 12 – to the Aussies' dozen.

If you had whites and Chairman of Selectors Ted Dexter had your phone number, you had a decent chance of being picked. Debuts were thus given to Alan Igglesden (3 caps) and John Stephenson (1 cap) as England managed to avoid a fifth pummelling of the series, mainly courtesy of the rain. Small mercies, eh?

Australia wouldn't relinquish their choke-hold until 2005, but a pattern did emerge: they would win pretty much every match while the series was still up for grabs, while England often nipped in for a morale-boosting dead-rubber consolation that at least made the traditional end-of-series shared beer slip down a little less sheepishly.

Was this Australia taking pity on England? A sign of weakness? Subsequent 5-0 victories would suggest otherwise. You see, Steve and Stacey? You see…

The 1993 tour again saw England arrive at the Oval 4-0 down – we were consistent, at least. The Aussies had brought along a bottle-blonde leg-spinner whose first ball in Ashes cricket was a reasonable cherry, and proved the first blow in the systematic dismantling of Graham Gooch's hair-shirt regime. Gooch resigned after the fourth Test, and Mike Atherton – presciently nicknamed FEC (Future England Captain) at Cambridge University – stepped up.

England went to the Oval with a pace attack of Gus Fraser, Steve Watkin and Devon Malcolm, each playing their first Test of the series (England using a relatively modest 24 players this time, to Australia's 13). They shared 20 wickets as England, having not won any of the previous 17 Tests against the Old Enemy, triumphed by 156 runs.

Regardless of the context, it felt perversely joyous (Big Dev putting the fear of God in 'em), and it is just possible that this victory gave Atherton, Alec Stewart and Nasser Hussain – the next three England skippers, all of whom played in Michael Vaughan's debut, and who can thus be seen as a secret link to the England 2005 turnaround victory – the will to go on, the faith that the Darkside could eventually be bested.

Whether England won a 'live' Test on the next tour Down Under depends on your point of view. When England upset the odds in Adelaide the series could still be drawn (a moral victory, then), yet the Ashes couldn't be regained – so the shock nine-wicket win in the 1997 series opener was an alien sensation for more than a decade: meaningful victory over the Baggy Greens! In front of a raucous Edgbaston crowd, England reduced the Aussies to 54 for 8 before lunch (they scraped 118), then Nasser stroked 207 as England built a 360-run lead. It was surely a question of when, not if – even for this motley band of the oft-whipped crème de la crème. Vials of cyanide were prepared as Australia reached 354 for 1 in the second innings, but thankfully they imploded. One-nil, to the In-ger-land.

However, just as the long-suffering England supporters were foolishly dusting off their you-never-knows, the Australian beast – now under Mark Taylor's leadership and including Glenn McGrath – awakened. Three of the next four games were won by vast margins (twice by 260-odd, once by an innings), and by the time Warnie waggled his chubby hips on the Trent Bridge balcony the hopes and dreams of a nation – the lunatic hopes that an attack spearheaded by Devon Malcolm and supported by Mark Ealham and Robert Croft might prove good enough to win an Ashes – were scuppered.

Nevertheless, the Oval again provided the solace of a dead-rubber victory – a narrow, 19-run win on a Bunsen, Tuffers bagging 11 in the match as Australia choked in pursuit of 124 – giving the scoreline a respectable 3-2 gloss and persuading ever more players that the margins were breachable. I imagine Coach Bumble's de-brief was something like: "You're not total turd, lads. You've all had your individual success against this team. You just lost the key moments. Their Empire is crumbling. We'll 'ave 'em next time".

The 1998-99 Ashes was lost 3-1. England lost all five tosses, yet snatched a famous Test in Melbourne by 12 runs (again, technically a dead rubber, with Australia 2-0 with two to play). But for an outrageously poor run-out decision that reprieved Michael Slater in the fifth Test in Sydney (having made 35 of an eventual 123 out of 184 all out), the series may well have been drawn 2-2 – a result, Michael Vaughan would later assert, that would have been even more impressive than 2005.

By 2001, England got their dead-rubber win in early, losing the first three games (and the Ashes with them), winning the fourth in Leeds, when Mark Butcher played the innings of his life, before reverting to miserable type at the Oval.

The abjection of this particular England display is pretty much how, with boots on other feet, you'd want this week's game to go. The barrel-scraping nadir was reached when – in a game England would lose by an innings after the Aussies had notched up 640 for 4 – Nottinghamshire batsman Usman Afzaal celebrated his half-century like a Euromillions jackpot winner. Embarrassing, especially compared to Aussie skipper Steve Waugh making 150 not out having ripped a hamstring two weeks earlier. It encapsulated the difference between us; never has the gap seemed wider. Waugh was remorselessness personified. Utterly ruthless. Afzaal was jumping in the crowd after scoring a last-minute tap-in during a 7-1 shellacking.

The following Ashes tour was a familiar LLLLW, with that dead-rubber success in Sydney combining with Vaughan's other-wordly batting to embolden the new players that Australia could be downed – and this despite the fact that, between that famous, arse-twitching Edgbaston win in July 2005 and the series-sealing victory in their previous successful Ashes campaign, in December 1986 (note: Australia won the dead rubber), England prevailed in but a single Test match while the urn could still be pocketed. That's a final ledger of six dead-rubber wins and one 'live' success from 46 Tests, 30 of which were lost. That amounts to a lot of having your head held down the bogs. A lot of stolen dinner money.

So, this is why we absolutely must crush them this week. And this is why, Steve and Stacey, and all you kids who'll turn 18 in 2019 yet to feel the sting of home defeat to this lot, you must NEVER, EVER FORGET.

@reverse_sweeper