It’s been twenty years to the day, that England reached the peak of Ashes fever with the fifth day of the drawn Test at Old Trafford, sparking demand for tickets that the sport had never seen before and hasn’t since.
It was a perfect storm.
A winning England team, with larger-than-life characters such as Andrew Flintoff, Kevin Pietersen and Stephen Harmison going toe to toe with not only the greatest Australian team of all time, but possibly the greatest that Test cricket has ever seen.
Names that trip off the tongue, Warne, McGrath, Ponting, Hayden, Langer, Gilchrist et al, being made to look ordinary by a fabulous England team.
The two-run win at Edgbaston lit the touchpaper on the series, giving the whole country belief that after 18 years of Ashes defeats, the urn was on its way home.
Michael Vaughan‘s sparkling hundred in Manchester, followed by a devastating spell of reverse swing from Simon Jones gave England a huge advantage going into the second innings and Andrew Strauss kept up the momentum with a century of his own on the 4th day as England declared late needing 10 Australian wickets on the final day to go 2-1 up.
The Final Day
I couldn’t resist the temptation to get on the earliest train possible from my home in Hereford to Manchester to be there in person to watch that final day.
What I hadn’t realised, is that seemingly the whole of the country was thinking the same as me. A packed tram ride from Manchester Piccadilly later, I arrive at Old Trafford at 8am to queues snaking around the ground.
Panic rises from within. As the queue starts to move slowly but surely and I get closer, I can see the stands through the gaps starting to fill up with supporters and as 9 o’clock approaches, I am 200 yards from the gates, and it just grinds to a halt.
Whispers are already going around that the game is sold out and I see a lot of people behind me start to give up.
I see Sir Bobby Charlton coming up to the gates with a pre-arranged ticket (fair enough, I think, he did win the World Cup after all) and someone next to me yells “Bobby, can you get us in mate?”
At quarter to ten, I am finally at the front of the seemingly endless queue, and I pay my £10 and find my seat.
It couldn’t have been five minutes later when the tannoy comes on around the ground, saying that Old Trafford is full and no further tickets will be available.
It was scarcely believable. From my seat I could see thousands of people still outside, most of whom had been there for a good couple of hours, who would have to go home disappointed.
Start of Play
Realising how fortunate I had been to get in, I settled in for what promised to be a fantastic day. Australia opened on 24/0, needing an unlikely 423 for victory, and a fired up England needed a quick start.
They got just that as Hoggard induced a feather of an edge from Justin Langer in his first over to send 99% of the ground wild. A small section of green and gold about 50 yards to my left sat motionless as the enormity of their task started to sink in.
Hayden and Ponting dug in before man of the moment Flintoff uprooted the Queenslander’s leg stump to invigorate the crowd again.
When Damien Martyn and Simon Katich failed to capitalise on good starts, England were looking to go in for the kill.
Dangerman Gilchrist followed soon after, leaving Australia reeling at 182 for 5, and the die looked cast.
However, Ricky Ponting stood firm, and alongside young Michael Clarke, he steadied the Australian rearguard.
What followed was a moment that would go down in Ashes folklore for years to come. Simon Jones produced a fabulous reverse swinging delivery that Clarke tried to leave but the sheer amount of movement sent the ball cannoning into his off stump. To this day, that is the live sporting moment that I remember most fondly.
Old Trafford resembled its footballing counterpart across the road as the game reached its climax.
Dramatic Ending
Gillespie and Warne followed, leaving Ponting to try and navigate the Australians through to the close with only Brett Lee and Glenn McGrath for company.
With 24 deliveries remaining in the match, Ponting, on 156, attempted a pull shot but could only nick a catch to Geraint Jones behind the stumps.
Australia nine down with four overs left. This had been the best ten pounds anyone had spent on anything in human history.
Lee and McGrath somehow managed to negotiate the final four overs to see the teams head to Nottingham level, but the Ashes had now taken over the front and back pages and wasn’t moving until mid-September, football season or not.It had been a privilege to be at the ground that day, but will cricket ever reach those heights of popularity again?
Several comparable test matches have gone relatively unnoticed in the last twenty years, with the only day of Test cricket coming close to that fervour being the Stokes miracle at Headingley.
How Test matches have changed
You could argue that Test cricket is a better product to watch than ever, but the fact of the matter is that less people are able to watch it, both in the ground due to inflated ticket prices and on TV due to the lack of free to air coverage.
Modern greats such as James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Joe Root and even Ben Stokes are known, but they are not household names like their 2005 counterparts became.
Is cricket destined to be overshadowed, even in the summer, by the behemoth that is football?
Well, not necessarily.
I may never hit the peaks of that summer in 2005, but if this entertaining team under the watch of Brendon McCullum can turn it into cricket that takes down the Australians in their own backyard then you never know.
By Michael Eden
READ MORE: ‘Ashes Watch’ | Australia vs England, series preview – The top three
