“It’s hard to quantify it,but I think everything around what’s been done with the team,with Pat and Andrew McDonald in terms of just cutting out the fluff,” Khawaja said. “Cutting out the box-ticking stuff. Just really stripping down the game to its bare nakedness and saying what’s important. What do we think is important? How are we going to do it?
“People joke about it all the time and I joked about it when we played the Ahmedabad game,but even warm-ups every morning,they’re optional now,do whatever you need to do to warm up.[I] think that kind of stuff empowers players. It’s empowered us. We take onus on ourselves. Who wants to train today? OK,you don’t want to train,fine.
“I think it’s the first time for a long time that we’re actually really getting treated like adults and think that’s made a big difference.”
Usman Khawaja
“At the end of the day you are responsible for your own performance because that in itself impacts the team. If you are letting the team down in any way,that’s on you. But we’re all professionals and adults here and I think it’s the first time for a long time that we’re actually really getting treated like adults and think that’s made a big difference.”
For Khawaja,that meant the freedom to play the Edgbaston conditions and scenario as he saw fit. “I just wanted to take it deep,” he said. “‘Little Uzzie’ inside of me was saying ‘you can expand now,you can get into second or third gear now’ but I was like ‘no,no,take it deep,take it as far deep as you can.’
“Because I knew if we could get into that last hour and had less than 100 runs we could get it,but if we lost too many wickets early that was game over for us. So I actually wanted to go a lot harder than I did in the last hour-and-a-half I was in,I wanted to start playing more shots. But I kept fighting with myself,it was just about building partnerships.”
The player-driven elements of the team include strategy meetings where senior players have as much say as coaches,and selection discussions that blur the old distinctions between selectors and players.
This was all part of the vision that Cummins brought to the captaincy in late 2021,following a fractious period in which the more prescriptive methods of Langer and also the former team manager Gavin Dovey rankled many.
As he said shortly before taking on the job,Cummins believes that players will perform at their best if trusted to use the methods they have already honed,rather than being made to feel as though Test and international cricket requires a complete rethink.
“I love the guys who I play alongside;it isn’t just a hobby or even a job,”Cummins said in 2021. “We spend more time with this group than we do with our partners at home. So I don’t like problems festering. I don’t want to spend 70 per cent of my life on tour in an environment I’m not totally comfortable with.
“If we’ve got a young guy who’s come into the side,I don’t think senior players or coaches changing his technique and telling him exactly how to bowl or bat are going to have as much of a positive impact as if he feels welcome,and he’s encouraged to do all the things that got him there.
“If we can relieve a little bit of that pressure everyone feels playing professional sport in front of millions of people,that’s where the biggest value is to be had.”
Another manifestation of the environment Cummins and McDonald have fostered is the calmer,less caustic air to the way Australia play their cricket. While this was partly forced by the ramifications of the Newlands scandal in 2018,Cummins genuinely believes it is the best way for this group of players to succeed.
The sight of Khawaja being goaded by Ollie Robinson was certainly a role reversal from many past Ashes series.
“It’s not just about winning,” Khawaja said. “It’s about how we win,which has changed a lot from past years I played cricket.”
Loading
That change in tone was discernible even in the way the team sang their victory song,Under The Southern Cross,on the Edgbaston balcony about four hours after Cummins had struck the winning runs. For some years,it had been a hyper-aggressive,yelled exhortation;now it still sounded raucous,but more joyous,and a little less desperate.
Calm,composed and the winners of a close Ashes classic;this is indeed a different team,and a happier one,too.
News,results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday.Sign up for our Sport newsletter.