England played the best cricket in this Ashes — and the worst too

Ben Stokes was one of the few English batsmen who didn't bother scorers much. Photo: AP/Kirsty Wigglesworth

The stage is invigorating, with oval stands packed to gunwales on a fragrant, brooding summer day. But the story of England, a temperamentally prone to extremes, soon becomes grimly familiar.

Act One: Their two newcomers, Zach Crowley and Ben Duckett, hit the road at such dizzying speed that their previous standard of 5.5 over is beginning to sound trite. Act Two: A miniature collapse materializes out of nowhere when Joe Root, Ben Stokes and Johnny Bairstow score fewer runs than the extras. Third act? There is almost no time, the hosts won a few minutes after tea. All that is left for Australia is to restore some semblance of normality with the help of the uncompromising Usman Khawaja and Marnus Labushagn.

There was a wisdom at Old Trafford that England had become wiser, that they had learned to adapt to the nuances of every test, rather than trying to catch every lost ball in the neighboring county. Yet the only predictable feature of their game is its unpredictability. Here they returned to a restless, skittish mode, pressing on the gas so hard that the engine failed. With the gift of batting cover, where 400 should have been par, they couldn't even play 55 overs.

Here England staked on a moral victory. What better way to get out of a blurry fourth Test they dominated than to score it in the fifth, depriving Australia of their first clean sheet win in the series on these shores in 22 years? Except they didn't come here with the discipline of a team obsessed with psychological victory or whatever. They just looked slutty, not least when Harry Brook, approaching Ash's virginal centenary, chased a wide delivery from Mitchell Stark and passed it to Steve Smith.

Minds on the beach? This accusation is often made against football players when the danger comes from their campaigns. At times it seemed appropriate to ask the English batsmen about it, whose defense of their wickets was sluggish. The air was sucked out of their innings in two different stages, the first before lunch when they lost three of 11, and the second after an injured Moin Ali missed a kick to the side, creating a tailspin as four dropped for 28. So. a dichotomy in their freewheeling approach that looks ingenious when it works, but painfully naive when it goes awry.

for a big hit and was clean. Photo: Getty Images/Stu Forster

The question is why it always has to be like this with England during the baseball revolution. Why is there always an instinct to go to hell for leather? Why can they never be convinced that restraint can be a better option than uncontrolled militancy? It was the day when the decisive contrast of styles emerged. While Australia showed the virtues of patience and Khawaja and Laboushagn calmly waited for the worst that Mark Wood and Chris Wookes could throw at them, England played with a nonchalance that suggested the one-eyed team was already on summer break.

The message after the climax in Manchester was that all was not lost. England, at least that's what Stokes insisted, could still achieve parity in the series, and that would be seen as a sort of triumph. But the harsh reality is that Ashes is a game of absolutes. Either you wrest control of the urn, or you miss it for another two years or more. England, partly because of her own mistakes and partly because of the vicissitudes of the weather in the Northwest, squandered an invaluable opportunity. The goal was not to share the trophies in these matches, but to achieve an overwhelming success that brooks no objection. Sadly, Stokes and his English players failed.

Here, in the Oval, one could catch a dying sensation. England, always aggressive under head coach Brandon McCallum, seemed to eschew any notion of prudence or waiting. The only way out, as Moin suggested more than once, was to throw the bat at something off the stump and pray for the best. Like a recipe for a great day of cricket, it was intoxicating. As a blueprint for trying to level the row, it left a lot to be desired.

It's not that this mob didn't want England to succeed. As the evening light faded, the water-soaked audience begged Wood to pick up the pace, begged Wookes to keep following his remorselessly precise line. But that's the side of borrowed time. You can tell this from James Anderson, who obediently continued to run, but deviated from his foot too often to allow Khawaja to calm down. You can feel it in the body language of Root, a surprisingly sophisticated batsman, but rushed and hesitant in dealing with fast Australian players. The ashes are gone. This is the annoying reality that England is facing. It looks like their only answer, paradoxical as it may be, is to keep hitting and hoping.