This is a different-looking season of Ashes cricket and audiences have already decided, judging by their interest in the series, that is a good thing. Familiarity can easily breed indifference and a sense of cricket on autopilot. Last time England were here, they and the Australians were heartily sick of the sight of each other, halfway through a 10-match epic. This time, the freshening of Australia and England with untested personnel has sparked a healthy curiosity and, the best stimulant for sport, a sense of utter mystery about the outcome of the series that begins on Thursday (2pm NZT) in Brisbane.
A world championship of cricket it ain't. The shifting sands of selection reflect teams' current struggles. India, the world's best team, have a rock-solid XII. Australia and England, battling along in mid-table, have recently lost to Bangladesh and the West Indies respectively, and defeat has forced experiment. Better new ideas than recycling the same old next big things, Shaun Marsh notwithstanding.
Moeen Ali will need to lead the lower middle order in the absence of Ben Stokes.
As in financial markets, volatility is a virtue. Dominance by both of these teams is equally imaginable, but only in flashes. Australia's fast-bowling "perfect storm" is bristling with reputation before a ball is bowled, but what happens if Mitchell Starc drops into habits of inconsistency and feeds Cook's cut and pull shots? Australia's top order is vaunted on home soil, but what if James Anderson gets the new ball moving? This is not a great England side, but they are no worse than the Ashes winners of 2010-11 and 1986-87, unheralded teams that made their names from November through January.
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The key visitor remains Moeen Ali. England are a hard team to bowl out cheaply in part because Joe Root is a champion, but in the main because of their batting strength at numbers six, seven and eight. Ali has taken over Ben Stokes' leadership of that middle order, and he is equally pivotal with the ball. Visiting teams in Australia usually flounder when their spin bowlers fail, and Ali needs to maintain his record of supporting the seamers with economy and wickets. I can't predict the outcome of this series, but if Ali becomes one of its stars, England surely win.
Ali's importance only underscores that of the missing man. With Stokes, England would have been clear favourites. The subject of more rumours and sightings than Elvis, Stokes remains at home, coming off his long run on social media. The ECB has not commenced its inquiry into the Stokes incident in Bristol, which it deferred so as not to cloud the police investigation. Procedurally, this was a fair course of action, but it has left a vacuum into which speculation has poured. Were Stokes to be told he is not going to court, could the ECB be so cynical and so blinded by the desire to win as to clear him immediately and fly him to Australia in time to take part in this series? It's possible, but until it happens, it deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Post-mortems of the opening test match in Brisbane may question whether the chatter around Stokes has got inside the heads of either team and affected their performances. One would expect the 22 players are professional enough to remain uninfluenced, but don't be surprised if, when this series is examined retrospectively, someone admits the constant will-he-or-won't-he messed with their mind. It has surely messed with the public's.
Though the violence involved is of a completely different order, the Stokes incident reflects obliquely on another matter that still casts a shadow over cricket. Day three will be the third anniversary of Phillip Hughes being hit in Sydney, and day five will be the anniversary of his passing. When you hear bellicose statements about short bowling and nostalgia about Mitchell Johnson and England's "scared eyes", it can seem that cricket has a memory blank: clear visions of November 2013, amnesia about November 2014. But let's hope that the bloodlust that surrounded Johnson's bowling in those naive days of 2013-14 cannot be convincingly drummed into existence post-2014. Certain antagonists on and off the field can try to whip up the theatre of hatred and the spectre of broken bones, but this generation of players has learnt in the hardest way that they play a game of actual, if not always intentional, violence.
Bowlers trying to hurt batsmen was part of the Ashes four years ago, but let's hope it is not now. All of the fast bowlers in this match knew Hughes, and their understanding of the violence in their sport has been indelibly altered. Even Johnson was not the same after 2014. I don't believe the threats of on-field aggression in this series are anything but make-believe. Along with the many other fresh aspects of this new kind of Ashes cricket, this is something to be cherished.
- SMH