Suppose you told most normal cricketers that the one way they could achieve success was by emulating a specific feat only accomplished once by Don Bradman 86-and-a-half years ago. They’d understandably baulk at the equation.
Ben Stokes is absolutely not a normal cricketer. He’d probably say, “Oh, okay. Cool”, take a slug of Red Bull from the can and head to the nets to marmalise a few more balls in preparation.
Stokes has very recent form for matching The Don. His logic-bending 155 in a losing cause at Lord’s last Sunday made him only the third player in history to score three fourth-innings centuries in Ashes Tests, the other two being Bradman and Herbert Sutcliffe.
Of course, Stokes’ heroics were not enough to get his team over the line and mask the fact they had been largely outplayed for most of the five days. England are 2-0 down to Australia with three to play in the 2023 Ashes.
It feels peculiar to have reached the stage where a fiercely competitive series that has produced two incident-packed Tests could be all over by this weekend in Leeds.
MORE: The Ashes 2023: Australia's full record and history at Headingley
Stokes’ other great Ashes deed came at Headingley four years ago, when he single-handedly led England to an incredible Ashes win. His place in history as one of his country’s greatest-ever players is secure and merely being burnished at this stage.
But if he could mastermind a recovery from 2-0 down to win 3-2 it would elevate him to another plain entirely. The only precedent for such a turnaround was when Bradman led Australia from the ignominy of going 2-0 down on home soil to unlikely glory in the 1936/37 series.
What happened in the Bodyline series?
The context in which those Ashes took place is important. It was England’s first trip to Australia since the infamous "Bodyline Series" of 1932/33.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak having a little gripe over Alex Carey’s stumping of Jonny Bairstow not being in line with the ever-nebulous “Spirit of Cricket” qualifies as a diplomatic incident in the sport nowadays. All things are relative.
During the 1932/33 tour, England’s tactics — masterminded by captain Douglas Jardine and carried out by pacemen Harold Larwood and Bill Voce — of bowling short deliveries to a packed legside field resulted in Australian Prime Minister Joseph Lyons stepping in as a mediator. Relations between the Australian Board of Control and the MCC had deteriorated to such an extent that the series itself was in jeopardy.
Bodyline, as it became known, was a strategy primarily aimed at nullifying Bradman, who had plundered an astonishing 974 runs at an average of 139.14 during Australia’s triumphant tour of England in 1930.
Jardine sensed a relative weakness in The Don’s armoury against fast, short-pitched bowling and packed his squad with pace bowlers. The ferocious Larwood and his Nottinghamshire teammate Voce led the charge and matters came to a head during the third Test in Melbourne.
England took a 2-1 lead — they would eventually win the series 4-1 — but the game was remembered for Bert Oldfield edging a Voce bouncer onto his temple and suffering a fractured skill. Australian captain Bill Woodfull was also struck several times by Larwood and famously remarked afterwards: “There are two teams out there. One is trying to play cricket and the other is not”.
The upshot was a change in the laws of the game in 1935 to outlaw bodyline tactics. As we’ve seen in the Carey and Bairstow incident, rules and conventions can often be a little woolly in cricket. However, in the court of public opinion, short-pitched bowling was suddenly beyond the pale and rarely used, with players who indulged in bouncers often booed. Large chunks of last week's Test at Lord's would not have been at all well-received.
England needed a new method if they were to win again in Australia and they had to do so without Larwood, who never played international cricket again after refusing the MCC’s request that he sign an apology for his bowling during the series.
What happened in the 1936/37 Ashes?
Bradman assumed the Australia captaincy for the first time in 1936 and did so under a cloud. He was absent from the preceding tour of South Africa, where Australia romped to a 4-0 victory under the impressive leadership of Vic Richardson.
Grumblings of discontent over Bradman’s elevation and the selection of four debutants for the Ashes opener only grew louder as England skittled their hosts for 58 in the second innings in Brisbane to win by 322 runs.
Voce (4/16) and England captain Gubby Allen (5/36) did the damage as Australia were astonishingly dismissed in 12.3 overs. Allen, whose status as the fast bowler that refused to adhere to bodyline tactics in 1932/33 made him a heavily symbolic captain, dismissed Bradman for a duck.
Allen and Voce again ripped Australia to shreds in Sydney, rolling Bradman’s men for 80 after England posted 426/6 declared. The captain was once again out for nought amid a top-order collapse of 3/1 where Australia’s only run at the time was an extra.
A torrential downpour at the end of day one of the New Year’s Day Test in Melbourne changed the course of the series.
These were the day of uncovered pitches and after England tidied up Australia's first innings for 209 they grappled unsuccessfully with impossible conditions for batting, posting 76 as Wally Hammond was the only player to pass 20.
Sensing a similar bloodbath for his team, Bradman reversed his batting order, with his usual numbers 10 and 11, Bill O’Reilly and Chuck Fleetwood-Smith sent out to face the new ball. Bradman apparently sought to ease Fleetwood-Smith’s understandable nerves by telling him: “You can't hit the ball on a good wicket, so you've got no chance of hitting it out there."
Fleetwood-Smith and O’Reilly each made ducks but the gambit ultimately worked once conditions settled. Regular opener Jack Fingleton scored 136 at No.6, with Bradman scoring a sensational 270 as he came in at seven. England showed commendable resolve when set a nominal victory target of 689 but Australia won by 365 runs.
Although a close series in outcome, it was not one for close games. Bradman made it back-to-back double centuries in Adelaide as Australia romped home by 148 runs. The skipper then led the way as one of three centurions in the Ashes decider back in Melbourne, which Bradman’s side won by an innings and 200 runs.
Bazball vs Bradball
Given the extent to which this England team have changed ideas of what might be possible in the longest format since Brendon McCullum was appointed as head coach, trying to take inspiration and pointers from a series that took place almost a century ago is probably foolish.
But there is a commonality between Bradman and Stokes-McCullum regime when it comes to an aggressive and uninhibited play, along with a tragic undertone that in-part motivated these approaches.
Bradman’s remarkable decision to reverse his order and send in a couple of ‘nighthawks’ turned a potential thrashing on its head. Making unconventional moves to push the game forward in pursuit of victory has become a Stokes and McCullum calling card.
Bradman’s first son died a day after he was born with the 1936/37 Ashes five weeks away. At the time, he spoke to the esteemed cricket writer Neville Cardus and pledged to attack the England bowling to an extent he never had before. At a time of unimaginable personal grief, Bradman's mantra was to “enjoy himself” on the cricket field, perhaps the only place he could.
New Zealand were midway through a Test against Sri Lanka in November 2014 when news broke of Phillip Hughes’ untimely death after being hit on the head during a Sheffield Shield match.
“It’s a moment that I'll remember for the rest of my life,” McCullum sold SEN in 2019.
“The fact that a player playing cricket could pass away in those circumstances just made us all realise that the game can be life or death.
“I think that transferred into a happy-go-lucky kind of approach with our cricket.”
During the Test that went on in the wake of Hughes’ death, McCullum hammered 202 from 188 balls and his New Zealand team continued to play in an ultra-aggressive manner with the captain setting the tone until his retirement.
Stokes is cut from the same cloth as a cricketer and the sport he loves has also served as a refuge from times of personal torment. In 2020, his father and former rugby league player Ged Stokes died after a short battle with brain cancer. The following year, having suffered a serious finger injury, Stokes took an extended break from cricket to prioritise his mental health.
He and McCullum share an outlook with the Bradman of 1936/37 that life can be a bleak enough experience as it is. Cricket should be a balm to soothe and means to liberate the soul as opposed to something else that makes the load a little heavier and a little duller.
Maybe they won’t be able to recreate The Don’s miracle. History says the odds are stacked against them. But they will relish trying to make the miracle happen.