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Et in dystopia ego. In the midst of death, we are in life. On a throbbingly hot deep blue afternoon in Sydney, as this ghost ship of an England Ashes tour creaked towards its final dock, the fourth day of the fifth Test produced an unexpected late plot twist. Something good happened.
Jacob Bethell batted for six hours from mid-morning to close of play and scored a hundred of rare beauty at the SCG. It was an easy, crisp kind of beauty too, all classical lines and symmetry, an innings of layers and gears, of comforting rhythms, shot through with moments of balletic power.
It seems a bit absurd that Bethell’s first professional red-ball hundred should come on this stage. But then, this was just one of those moments in sport where a genuinely elite talent reveals itself. And Bethell is so clearly a premium product, despite the best efforts of the England regime to fudge his progress. He’s the Mercedes-Benz SL convertible. He’s an entire wheel of cave-aged yak milk super cheese. He’s a third-innings 142 not out at the SCG in bleached-out afternoon sunshine.
At times the SCG seemed to be purring to itself, allowing this spectacle to breathe in its own space. So many things have been declared dead on this tour. Test cricket. The Australian summer. The cult of Baz. Proper batting. Proper bowling. Proper spin bowling. The art of precision lawn mowing.
In the middle of which crowds have kept on packing out the grounds, the TV figures have boomed. And now we had this, evidence of the basic indivisibility of talent, the fact this sport can still produce these shapes and colours, this sense of clarity.
It is worth being clear on what a sublime maiden hundred for a hyper-talented 22 year old actually means. Nature is not healing. Nothing has been saved. The bruises of this tour are still real, the elite governance of England cricket still a self-regarding shambles.
But at the fag-end of a series that has basically involved shouting unhappily at the sky, there was a sense everyone here needed this, from the storied Aussie bowling legend at the urinal saying oh yeah he just looks really good, to the mid-90s run machine skipping between comms box and pie table muttering yeah he’s got it, to a packed out crowd gurgling in the sun
Mainly, it was the sense that English cricket might actually still be able to produce a functioning adversary in this sporting contest. Welcome to Episode 5: A New Hope. The postcolonial empire is very much still in charge of the galaxy. But a plucky little RD droid might just be carrying the plans to some other kind of ending.
Even the set up of Bethell’s innings felt epic. England went into bat again 173 runs behind, and lost Zack Crawley in Mitchell Starc’s opening over, lbw not playing a shot. Perhaps this was how it would play out. Maybe England’s batters would all refuse to engage, raise their bats in submission, a kind of situationist happening, a rejection of the spectacle.
At which point Bethell walked out, neat and urgent, sleeves rolled, the kind of cricketer whose kit just seems to fit him better, and began to do the right things. Early on he might have been making a point about whatever it was Ben Duckett was doing at the other end. As Duckett heaved and carved and played statement yahoos, Bethell clipped and nudged and found his timing, lines tight, staying inside his box like a ballroom dancer.
His timing through point is just sensational, as much for its clean lines, shapes and movements you will now get to know, to recognise, to digest, a hunger only Test cricket can really satisfy.
At 72 for one he was clanged on the helmet by a good straight bouncer from Cameron Green. He leaves those balls by arching his back, Robin Smith-style, an active, aggressive kind of leave. This takes courage, but also a supreme spatial awareness. Even this felt proper. The blow was glancing. Bethell grinned and glided on.
He went to 43 with a dreamy back-foot punch. His 50 came up with a vicious square cut that erased the fielder on the boundary. It took 87 balls. Even his wagon wheel was perfectly symmetrical, like a set of Palladian columns. There was nothing chancy here, no manufactured shots, just a perfectly controlled command of defence and aggression.
Bethell went to 96, his previous highest score with a vicious, liberating pull in front of square. For a while Scott Boland teased him with that half-length, not quite there, seaming away, saying: go on, throw all your hopes, your work, your energy at this thing out here.
Bethell stayed in his own space. It was one of those lovely moments, cricket talking to itself, in a voice you only get to hear if you’ve followed the whole conversation. He lingered for a while on 99. The hundred came up off Beau Webster’s off-breaks, a loft over midwicket, wonderfully bold in the moment.
This was a brilliant Test hundred, 103 off 162 balls against en elite attack on a wearing pitch, and an innings that will now be endlessly diced and divvied up, its entrails read, its meaning unspoolled.
Bethell at the SCG was evidence of life, and also of how this England Test team can survive and evolve. It will also be seen as a rejection of the Baz era, some kind of cultural waypoint. Behold: actual, non-stupid batting, at one end at least. But it wasn’t exactly a repudiation.
No baggage, no fear: this was Bazball in essence. And it is all Bethell really did here. Maybe this is the twist. Maybe in the end there was no Bazball. Bruce Willis is already dead. The crossword book is lying untouched on the table. And what Bethell’s brilliance tells us is that there are only two types of batting. Good batting and bad batting. Play freely. Judge risk and reward. Be good at cricket.
The transcendent game states, the waffle, the corners cut, the paring back. This is just a product to be sold, one that comes with its own very obvious limits. Bethel has survived this England regime, despite its best efforts to muddle his progress, to make him a cause celebre for bashing county cricket and all the rest of it. Which one of these things do you want to trust in now?
