Ben Stokes puts on a brave face on day five.Credit:Getty Images
Jonny Bairstow was out on the field,clad in helmet and gloves,to limber up his keeping skills when,little more than a minute after a 1pm start had been confirmed,the rain returned. Bairstow,after initially trying to keep going,reluctantly sought shelter.
The umpires may have waited until 5.24pm,but that was more or less the moment when Australia retained the urn,having been battered over three days of the Old Trafford Test before mounting a respectable rearguard on the fourth. England played keepy uppy in mid-afternoon,and their warm up gear stayed on the field,but it was all a little too optimistic.
Ben Stokes’ men will have gone without an Ashes win for over a decade by the time of the next bout in 2025-26. Not so much because of the rain in Manchester but because Cummins’ team did what all but one Australian team did over six consecutive Ashes wins between 1989 and 2002-03:they went 2-0 up.
It will never be known how much time England would have required to win this game for 2-2 entering the Oval. What is known is that 1936-37 remains the only time in the history of the Ashes that an 0-2 deficit has been overcome.
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Back then,Australia did so largely because they had Don Bradman as captain and No.3,but also because those Tests were “timeless”,played to a finish regardless of weather or schedule. Some of England’s musings on the final morning were for similar playing conditions to allow the game to reach an outright conclusion.
But the reality of the circumstances was very similar to a role reversal 10 years ago,when Alastair Cook’s England side also won the first two Tests,one of them very narrowly,and then secured the urn through Manchester rain when 3-37 chasing 332 a few minutes after lunch on the final day.