Testing Times

I began this Ashes series under the reasonable assumption that England were engaged in an endless single match that nobody was allowed to finish. This turned out to be wrong, but only in the way that discovering a building has more floors than you thought is technically reassuring while making the fire escape problem worse.

What is actually happening is this. The Ashes is a series of Test matches. Each Test is a single game, except it lasts five days, contains multiple internal battles, can end without a winner, and is narrated as if it were a moral struggle. Fine. I can live with that. What finally tipped me into confusion was realising that England have already lost the Ashes, definitively, mathematically, and beyond appeal, yet the whole thing stubbornly carries on regardless.

Australia went three nil up. That settles it. The urn is retained. England cannot win the series. End of story. Except it is not the end of anything. The 4th Test turns up. Then the 5th Test. Same players, same whites, same commentary voices, same slow grind of time, as if the central objective had not quietly expired days earlier.

In most sports, this would be the point where everyone shakes hands, plays the reserves, and pretends the last fixtures are about “development”. Cricket, however, simply clears its throat and carries on as though nothing awkward has happened. You are informed that the remaining Tests now matter for pride, momentum, individual averages, the World Test Championship, contractual obligations, and a sort of collective stiff upper lip.

Which is all true, but also faintly mad. England are playing matches they cannot win in order to avoid losing badly. Victory is off the table, but dignity is still in play. This is very English, come to think of it.

It also explains why the thing feels non-ending. The original prize has already gone, yet the rituals continue. The resets are invisible to the casual observer. New Test, new pitch, fresh start, except emotionally and narratively it feels like the same argument being resumed after everyone already knows who is right.

And then, just to underline cricket’s perverse sense of humour, England go and win the fourth Test anyway. Not enough to matter in the obvious sense, but enough to prove that the later games are not pointless, merely philosophically awkward. They matter sideways rather than forwards.

So the Tests go on because cricket refuses to collapse time into a neat conclusion. Each match insists on its own meaning, even when the overarching story has already finished. It is tradition, finance, pride, global rankings, and stubborn continuity rolled into one.

In other words, it is not that cricket cannot end. It is that it does not see why it should, simply because the answer is already known.