Farewell man Stuart Broad hysterically wheeled away, his arms outstretched, the bandana nearly dropping off his head and teammates chasing him wildly. It was the stuff of dreams for an all-time great, as he grabbed the last two wickets to complete the final rites of a 49-run win that squared the Ashes and kept England’s proud home record in the Ashes during his time intact.
WATCH: Stuart Broad nabs the final wicket as England beat Australia to draw the Ashes 2-2
By the time he returned for his last spell in Test cricket, the match and series was drained of its drama and theatre. But England could not begin to rejoice, for such has been the fickle ebbs and flows of the game. Another wicked twist could be bubbling up in the ominous clouds lurching over The Oval. And Australia somehow had reduced the requirement to 55, improbable but not impossible.
Broad, grossly unfortunate to have not picked a wicket with his probing spells throughout the day, steamed in for one last time for his country and guided them home, as he had often done throughout his stellar career.
He deflected glory from two of the defining bowlers of the match, Chris Woakes and Moeen Ali. Woakes wreaked havoc like peak James Anderson would have, exploiting every scrap of assistance from the surface and overhead conditions. He willed the wine-red shining Dukes ball, replaced after Mark Wood hit Usman Khawaja’s helmet on the fourth day, to his whims and fancies. The ball danced to the tune of his dexterous fingers. He swung the ball away from the right-handers – late, devilish swing – he wobble-seamed it into them, he bowled the fastest he had in recent times, and delivered the blows whenever the team required.
Khawaja and David Warner in the first spell, when he was near unplayable; Steve Smith in the afternoon, in the middle of an epic meltdown. Broad could not have anointed a better successor.
In Moeen, he had a perfect accomplice. He could hardly bowl in the first innings, and on the fourth day, his action had little zip. The ball, on a deteriorating surface, did nothing. Even on Monday, his movements were not fluent. He often staggered and hobbled, but bowled with cunning and consistency, perhaps like Broad. for one last time in the whites of his country. He demonstrated again why Ben Stokes had cajoled him out of retirement and kept trusting him. He purchased sharp turn and bounce, wonderfully modulated his pace, harnessed the breeze for drift, and had even the spin-proficient Smith in a spin at times.
He triggered the collapse when Australia were strolling to a record chase on this ground. Just 120 runs were required, and with every solid block or boundary, England felt uneasy. The ball seemed to lose its sting, the voice in the stadium dropped and Stokes seemed worried. Smith had just begun to assert himself; he fleeced Woakes through the covers. Travis Head had survived the initial scares and now frequently found the rope, whittling down the target. But this series has never let a storyline traverse a single straight line.
Aussie collapse
From nothing, the match turned, for one last time. In the space of eleven runs, Australis lost four wickets, an implosion that would hurt them for a long time, a collapse that winked in from nowhere. It began with Moeen ejecting Head, before the immaculate Woakes sucked Smith into nibbling at another precise, late-swinging out-swinger on fourth stump to slip. It was a rare lapse in concentration, and Smith was his own biggest critic as he kept cursing himself into the dressing room. His rage captured the team’s disappointment. They had not been closer to winning a series in England in two decades; they had squandered a two-zero lead. England would remain an unconquered shore for much of this generation of Australian cricketers.
Stokes, though, heaved a sigh of relief, after the catch faux pas at the stroke of lunch. Moeen had Smith inside-edging onto his pads with extra bounce, the ball ballooning to Stokes at leg-slip. The skipper leapt and pouched the ball with his outstretched left hand. But the ball slipped out of his hand onto his thigh and then to the ground, as he began to celebrate prematurely.
Five balls later, Jonny Bairstow smartly clung onto Mitchell Marsh’s inside edge. Thus in 15 balls, Australia lost three wickets. Shortly, Woakes snuffed out Mitchell Starc to have Australia clutching at straws. From there, an England victory was certain though Alex Carey and Todd Murphy fought valiantly.
The seeds of the topsy-turvy day were sown in an electric first hour. Australia’s openers Warner and Khawaja had batted resolutely on the fourth day before rain led to the abandonment of the day’s play. But the morning could not have been more different. Under glowering skies, armed with a newish ball, survival was an ordeal. This ball, unlike its predecessor, hooped around, swinging in the air and seaming off the surface, often incredibly late. All Broad and Woakes required was that modicum of help from the surface, and they hounded out the openers.
Unplayable
Woakes snared Warner with a perfectly-constructed away-swinger that bent into him in the air and away after pitching to kiss the outside edge. The ball before had landed on the same spot, but nipped back in. Therein is the unsung proficiency of Woakes. a master of subtlety, the catalyst of England’s comeback from 0-2 to 2-2. He picked 19 wickets in six innings.
Two overs later, he blasted Khawaja on the pads, the tenacious opener misjudging the inward seam movement. For the addition of six runs to the overnight total, the platform-laying openers were in the pavilion. Woakes was imperious, swinging and seaming the ball this way and that, finding the perfect line, length and rhythm. At the other end, Broad bowled with heart and zip, but without any luck.
He repeatedly snapped past both the edges of Khawaja and Warner. He made way for Mark Wood, who made Marnus Labuschagne flinch at a rapid out-swinger into the hands of Zak Crawley at second slip. At 169 for three, the ball moving around viciously, a meltdown snarled in the corner, only for Smith and Head to resurrect them with sensible batting.
Neither were outwardly frazzled by the crisis. Rather, the pair seemed to relish the challenge and took Australia closer to the shores of safety, And then Head, in a surge of over-confidence, drove expansively at a wide full ball that spat off the rough, only to edge it to slip. And then the match flipped on its head , for one last time in the series, engineered chiefly by Woakes and Moeen. And then came along Broad to fulfill his destiny, to round off a glorious career by picking the last two wickets of the most dramatic Ashes since the 2005 edition, to fasten the curtains on the dampest yet brightest English summer in recent times.