Ashes: Australia, England produce series opener for the ages at Edgbaston

Deep breath. Firstly, are you ok?

For five days these sides were locked in colossal struggle, steadfastly refusing to even reveal who held any real advantage, let alone who might actually win.

Finally at 7:25pm on the fifth day of this tantric clash a victor emerged. Fittingly in the final straight it was Australia who headbutted the line to take this one at the tape. The barest of margins a friend of England no more.

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This was a pair of bickering siblings stubbornly refusing to concede an inch in an argument lasting five days — about the same amount of time knocked off the life expectancy of anyone who witnessed its final hours.

In perhaps the most anticipated Ashes series since 2005, somehow its opener has exceeded all expectation — the rare Test as simultaneously exhilarating as sickening for supporters of both teams.

Since Friday strange things have been afoot in Birmingham, the understood order of the cricketing world distorted through a confusing prism of bravado and mind games. To anyone who lived through the 1990s and early 2000s, the twin 5-0 drubbings Down Under, the evisceration the last time these teams met — this was a confusing tableau — England somehow recast as the carefree aggressors, Australia the rattled rearguard merchants. Roundheads become Cavaliers and vice versa.

In the Bazball vibe shift it is this reframing of the accepted narrative that has perhaps been its biggest achievement, never mind, apparently, that Australia are the newly minted World Test champions — with the top three ICC ranked batsmen and a fearsome stable of fast bowlers at their disposal.

In this bizarro world it is England with the snarling send offs, Australia taking a turn at being showered in expletives. It has made for thrilling theatre.

Ultimately though in a contest both teams deserved to win it was Australia who did. Carried to victory on the back of Usman Khawaja, his heroic efforts across two innings proving the deciding factor.

He finished the match with 206 runs from 518 balls, batting on every single day of the Test for a mammoth total of 796 minutes. Over 13 hours spent patiently and at times painstakingly dragging Australia to their hardest-fought Ashes win perhaps in living memory.

Such was his grip on the match that when he chopped a Ben Stokes slower ball onto his stumps in the day’s final session it seemed as if that would be the turning point of the game. England’s talismanic captain defying the state of his knee joints to summon yet one more match-defining moment from his apparently inexhaustible supply.

And yet in the end it was Australia’s captain who played the final defining hand, the coolest head among the 25,000 or so present, nervelessly steering his side across the line as England desperately pressed for the last two wickets that never came.

Cummins finished unbeaten on 44, the winning runs off his bat, a 1-0 series lead his reward.

Will England rue their early declaration on Day One? A smattering of missed chances in the field? The backfiring of a war of words waged on and off the field? Maybe their fans will but as far as the team goes it seems unlikely. After all there’s no crying in Bazball.

Instead in a week the series moves on to Lord’s, an opener for the ages in the books, the tantalising prospect of four more of these herculean contests stretching out into the summer ahead.

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