“The dream is still the same,” says Joel Goodsen at the start of Risky Business. And it is, even if everyone’s version is different. He dreams of failing an exam that will ruin his future. Others can’t find their batter’s kit when they have to get in the middle or have to run away from an enemy who’s always right behind them. They wake up, they stumble through their day, then return to the corridors of sleep.
Headingley’s Australian class of 2019 are said to have had dreams after Ben Stokes pulled off his last-day miracle. After a night’s sleep, their head coach Justin Langer made them review the whole round, the way they fell apart. Tim Paine, then captain, explained much later how often it still came to mind. And then, at Lord’s in 2023, it’s still there.
Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, both of whom became slot machines four years earlier, cross it again. Under the clouds on the last day, suddenly they are bowling in wellies, wellies in the mud, flirting and trudging towards Ben Stokes in the middle. It burns with an unreal light. They can’t get any traction, any speed. The ball floats out of the hand like a handful of foam, a quick bowling with the venom of a sponge bath. They keep running down that road, keep running up that hill. Stokes continues to beat them.
It’s the fact that all of his attempted sixes hit clean. It’s the fact that when he presses the lever on the slot machine, his numbers keep going up. Anyone can hit a bomb, but no one can continue to do so. Just like Headingley, they have nine behind the fence. Just like Headingley, the ball continues to hover above them. Much like Headingley, when the error occurs, a defensive player drives a knee into the turf, digs a divot, turns around, and reverses the hold.
At one point, Stokes brings the equation down to 74 to win, the same number he put in for the last wicket in 2019. This time he has four tailenders for the company, a lead of one. But this time he has already scored 152 points, more than all of his innings last time out. Australia has enough leeway, adrenaline has time to curdle, fatigue has time to express itself. So it was, the eventual top edge, which failed once the tactic paid off, Hazlewood with the wicket to perhaps purge the dream.
Yet for the crowd at Lord’s on the final day, appreciation for Stokes and his 155, his nine sixes, was also fueled by resentment, sticking him to opponents seen as transgressors. It was Chapter II of the battle for the Ashen grievance, one controversial dismissal for another. On the fourth night, when Mitchell Starc’s hold was overturned to give Ben Duckett a reprieve, Australian fans were livid, from tall testers in the comment box to anonymous online accounts.
Obviously, their verdict on a claimed hold was at least vague enough that a very good referee had time to think about it to decide that it wasn’t. It was fueled by a lack of understanding of the Laws: catches require not just controlling the ball, but having full control of the player’s movement, which means concluding any dive, slide or roll. That’s what the definition means and is meant to mean, whether or not people think it should.
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The angst was surprising, given England were so far behind in the game and four down. Frankly, any team that can’t create two chances from someone playing like Duckett doesn’t deserve to win. But the Australian pain was overtaken by the English equivalent, after Jonny Bairstow’s stumps at Alex Carey’s tenpin.