From the Ashes of success

This is what happens when you reach a certain age. To anyone under 30 this story probably sounds as though it comes from the Middle Ages ("You mean Ian Botham and David Gower once PLAYED cricket?") To anyone who was there it does not even feel like last year. It is hard to believe it was not last week.

And one image still stands fresh-minted in the memory: the sight of the captain of England - yes, that David Gower, children - standing on the dressing-room balcony at The Oval with a bottle of champagne in one hand, the replica Ashes in the other and a beatific smile on his face.

Oh, all right, perhaps it was a while ago - 20 years in earth-time. But in most ways we are more right than the young. The game of cricket has not changed all that much in the past two decades. Certainly the cricket of 1985 - helmeted and heavily influenced by the one-day game - bears more resemblance to that of the cricket of 2005 than it did to that of 1965.

Two of the differences, though, seem very significant. Firstly, of course, international cricket has since become a profession rather than a paid hobby. Secondly, when England won the Ashes they did not see off the best team in the world. Nothing like.

Cricket, as Trevor Bailey used to say on Test Match Special in those days, is a game of context. And the 1985 Ashes can be understood only in relation to two other teams who were not even playing. One was West Indies, who had "blackwashed" England the previous summer and would do so again the following winter. The other was South Africa, banished from the world game because of its racism but then fully engaged in its policy - masterminded by the now sainted Ali Bacher - of suborning players to go on lucrative rebel tours.

Graham Gooch's team had blazed the trail in early 1982, which meant that by 1985 the rebel players - including Gooch and John Emburey - had served their three-year bans and were able to return. The effect was to give England a mouth-watering batting line-up (Graeme Fowler was dropped, never to return, only two Tests after scoring a double century; there was just no room) and a not indecent set of bowlers.

Australia would have been in transition anyway. Their great generation, led by Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Rodney Marsh, had retired in unison after the 1982-83 Ashes. Then, just before the tour started, Bacher had turned his eyes on Australia and had picked off a whole heap of the survivors, including their best fast bowler, Terry Alderman.

Thus Allan Border, an inexperienced and unregarded captain, came to England without the team he wanted and with the whole atmosphere in the camp poisoned by the double-dealing. The wonder is not that Australia lost the Ashes but that it took so long for England to subdue them. Australia began by winning the one-day internationals (2-1), which were then underdone rather than overdone: just three matches played at the end of May. And the opening day of the Test series, unusually, did not set the tone for the summer. The tea score read Australia 201 for 2 - at Headingley, their haunted house (this was before Lumley Castle 2005).

England, however, slowly wrested control of the game, far less dramatically than they had four years earlier. There was a fabulous 60 from Botham. But the crucial innings was played by England's new-found heroic bore Tim Robinson (175), who had made his reputation in India the previous winter and was to lose it in the West Indies the next. England won, but not overwhelmingly.

Then came Lord's, Australia's favourite ground. Craig McDermott, their new young spearhead, bowled England out and Border emerged as a man not to be underestimated as both a batsman and as a leader. He scored 196 and suddenly it was 1-1.

But this was a six-Test series and there was plenty of time. (Too much, I reckon. I believed then, and still do, that the perfect English summer comprises five Tests and five one-day internationals.) Taking the very long view, Border's growing air of command, which he was later to convert into three successive Ashes wins, was the most important thing to emerge from this game and the entire series. Taking the medium-term view, what mattered was that Gower, who had been out of nick and under pressure, found form again with 86.

But the ticking of the clock was soon to grow more insistent for England. This was one of the dampest summers of the century. Trevor Grant, the Melbourne Age reporter, told me: "It's very helpful that the Guardian has Manchester and Melbourne next to each other in the weather reports. I've been looking every day since I got here and they've never been more than a degree different. The only difference is that in Manchester it's the middle of summer and in Melbourne it's the middle of winter." He switched to golf soon afterwards.

The third Test at Trent Bridge was wet, and flat too. Gower, Graeme Wood and Greg Ritchie made big hundreds and it was a tedious draw. Old Trafford was No. 4 and dominated by England, who enforced the follow-on. Mike Gatting held firm against magnificent bowling by McDermott; Botham and Phil Edmonds bowled Australia out. But again it was too wet to make a result likely and Border averted disaster.

So it was still all square with only two to play. But cometh the hour, cometh the man. And in this case a boot. The man was the Kent swing bowler Richard Ellison, brought in for his first Test of the summer. It would be nice to believe that this was a masterstroke of selection. Given the general performance of the selection panel of the time (chaired by Peter May), it is more tempting to think that, if you chop and change often enough, sooner or later the right bloke must be there at the right time.

Again there was bad weather but Ellison shifted the ball around in the drizzle to bowl out Australia for 335. Luck, as the English know now all too well from the past eight Ashes series, always attends the stronger army. On the Saturday the sun came out and Gower and Robinson dug their teeth into a profoundly weary Australian attack like lions getting stuck into a stricken gazelle. They put on 331, four short of the Australian total, for the second wicket alone and engineered a lead of 260.

It rained again on Monday but in the gloaming Australia went in again, Ellison came on from the City End and the batsmen waved the white flag. By the close of the fourth day they were 37 for 5, Ellison taking four in 15 balls.

And then it rained yet again - for the first three hours of the final day. This was followed by a stand of 77 between Wayne Phillips and Ritchie before Phillips tried to crash the ball through the offside. The ball ricocheted off Allan Lamb's instep as he tried to get out of the way, then lolloped into Gower's hands. Umpires David Shepherd and David Constant conferred and gave Phillips out, whereupon Australia collapsed. We were already in the era of endless television replays and, after watching it a squillion times, every English observer agreed it was out and every Australian agreed it was not.

Now at last England were ahead mathematically and, above all, psychologically. Amazingly 1985 is the second of only two occasions since the War when the Ashes have still been in play during a final Test of a series in England: 1953 was the other.

But mentally Australia were now shot and victory looked a non-starter even before Harry Brind prepared an Oval belter, the sun came out and England won the toss. By the time - just before the close of the first day - that Gooch and Gower had completed a stand of 351 for the second wicket, it was effectively all over.

Gower, so out of form at the start, completed the series with 732 runs: "The greatest comeback since Charles II," said the Guardian. Gower said it was the greatest moment of his career. He also said that West Indies would be quaking in their boots.

Now, we need to examine this statement. It involved the use of that very English form of expression known as irony. An England cricket captain, of all people, ought to be allowed a little irony in his discourse and Gower is the most ironic of men (irony involves covering up deeper feelings, which is why the English like it so much).

He knew beating this threadbare Australian team would mean nothing when they had to face the ferocious West Indian pace attack a few months later, just as all England's wins over the current West Indies team will mean nothing on July 21. But he rather hoped it might just show England could play a teensy bit. Naturally it was thrown back at him later. And barely nine months (and six successive Test defeats) after his greatest moment Gower was sacked.

Twenty years on England captains do not do irony any more; it is too dangerous. They offer bored earnestness and weary bromides as they work their way through the dozens of media interviews now required of them.

Other things have changed: in 1985 the BBC still covered the cricket in a manner that had been remarkably unchanged by the passing years. It was charmingly calm - Jim Laker, bless him, would have commentated on the sinking of the Titanic without getting worked up - but increasingly dated.

Crowds still ran on to the field, sometimes in a frightening manner, but at least they were allowed to watch the post-match ceremonies on days when England won major series. Under the current system TV viewers see everything except the stewards baring their fangs at the paying spectators to keep them away.

There were still rest days. And even the most regular Test cricketers were first and foremost county players, a fact they either relished (Gooch and Gatting) or resented (Gower and Bob Willis).

Test cricketers were coached hardly at all. The attitude was (and Gower certainly believed this) that, if you were good enough to be chosen for England, then by definition you knew what you had to do. Selection policies were almost entirely haphazard though we should be grateful to 1985 for bringing us the first half of a wonderful quiz question: the father and son, both Test cricketers, who played two Test matches between them (Arnie and Ryan Sidebottom).

On the Saturday night of the Oval Test Botham and Border went out for the evening together. It was Border who put a stop to all that. In 1989 he suddenly announced to an astonished Gower, by then reappointed England captain, that socialising was out.

Is the world better or worse than in 1985? In most respects one might wish for a happy medium between that era and this. Above all, an Englishman might wish to return to the days when England can beat Australia - but because England are strong, not because Australia are weak. England did have a gifted team in the mid-1980s but they were so outclassed by the very best (West Indies) that they were often profligate and incompetent against teams they could and should have beaten, like New Zealand and Pakistan. As some saw more quickly than others, the heroics of 1981 made England believe for too long that they could win Tests on talent and sang-froid alone.

As they sang in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: "From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success." Indeed, the Ashes of success. That came true for Australia. It will for England - at some point.