Mark Butcher believes that it will not be wrong to say that England were the better side of the two in the recently concluded 2023 Ashes that finished with the hosts coming from 0-2 behind to level the series 2-2.
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Six weeks and five Test matches later, all the build-up and hype were justified as the Ashes has finished drawn at 2-2. Australia retained the urn, but a series win in England since 2001 remained elusive as England’s ‘Bazball’ enabled them to come back from a 0-2 deficit to share the honours.
The 2023 Ashes is being hailed as one of the best Test series ever played. All four games that produced outright results were decided by margins of three or fewer wickets, or fifty or fewer runs. The controversies, narratives, and drama only added to the spectacle.
Australia started the series on a high, winning the first Test match at Edgbaston thanks to a ninth-wicket heist by Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon late on day five. They followed it up with a more convincing effort at Lord’s, despite Ben Stokes threatening to pull one of his magic tricks.
Since then, it was England all the way through as Mark Wood and Chris Woakes boosted their bowling attack, and Australia found it tougher to hang on.
It was only fitting that Stuart Broad, who announced his retirement after day three of the fifth Test, finished the job for England on the final evening, taking the last Australian wicket and his 604th in Tests to level the series 2-2.
The result also led to a wide-ranging debate around who were the better side. Butcher believes it was England, who, despite starting on a wrong note, were the ones calling all the shots by the time the series got over. Had it not been for some errors in the first two Tests, they might as well have won the series.
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Speaking on the Wisden Cricket podcast, he said, “What happened was that Australia found that the only way they could hang in there was by sitting in, which is a great testament to England’s skill, really, and their intention. I think the thing that cost England the series outright was a little bit of a lack of just nailing things down when the going was good, I mean those first two Tests.
“Because, otherwise, I don’t think it’s out of order to say that England were the better team over the course of all five Test matches. And if you’d have told me that I’d be saying that at the end of the series from the very beginning, then I would have found that quite a hard take to take.”
Butcher also elaborated on how Bazball enabled the England players to push and bring the best out of themselves, which proved decisive in the end as Australia barely managed to hang on.
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“The man-management style that kind of says to you, ‘It’s okay. Absolutely everything is okay. Put your work. Make sure your game’s in decent order and go out and do what we picked you for with no recriminations.’ And that’s meant that everybody has been able to play up to, or above their previous level.
“At a much more boring Test series level, Australia were kind of ready at the beginning with the World Test Championship [final] and England certainly were not. [England] players were all a little undercooked and perhaps that baked into some of the errors that were made in those first two Tests.
“But it’s absolutely undeniable that England finished the stronger, despite the fact that two-thirds of them were broken by the end of the Test match. Australia looked world-weary, they looked like they were just hanging on by their fingernails by the end. And England just kept finding extra reserves of strength to keep surging forward.”
