cour soldier. Ben Stokes’ England team may already be 2-0 into the third Ashes Test, but not everyone in English cricket is shocked. There is one group tailor-made for this scenario, a crack unit that can claim to be the ultimate preparation for doomsday. Are your dreams shattered? Are you crushed under the weight of unmet expectations? Then it’s time to join the Barmy army, son.
Their vanguard is already entering Adelaide, the city where they were officially founded 30 years ago. England’s best-known – and per capita loudest – traveling fans will be hoping for an anniversary victory, as they witnessed on the 1994-95 tour. And whatever happens on the field, off it the celebrations will be long and loud.
Not even Bazball’s nuclear implosion can shake this squad of hardened veterans. They have seen England’s batting collapse since before Jamie Smith was born. They have seen more dropped catches than Jofra Archer has Test wickets. Their personal stats as an Ashes tour group read: 37 played, 27 lost, 6 won (I’m excluding the Covid series where fans couldn’t travel to). If anyone knows how to survive a whitewash, it’s someone like Dave Peacock, one of the founders. “The cricket has been very disappointing,” he admits, “but we are the lucky ones because we are on holiday. It is probably more difficult for people at home.”
Certainly, if you’re following along on TV, the Barmy army seems to be everywhere in this series. Australian cameras on the ground sometimes seem more interested in the Barmies than their own fans. TNT Sports regularly uses them as a run-up to a day of playing, after sponsoring their T-shirts and their trumpet player. Even the players on the field cheer them on. On the second day at the Gabba, as a man dressed as King Charles led a choir from Jerusalem, Joe Root waved him from the non-striker’s side.
It’s possible that the Barmy Army’s combination of longevity and ubiquity has now completely obscured just how stunning their takeover of traveling fandom has been. Thirty years ago, a handful of backpackers gathered in comic self-mockery at England’s abysmal away record. Today, their legacy is so synonymous with the men’s Test side that their colorful, ‘maverick’ crowd is anything but the establishment itself. They’ve certainly come a long way since Peacock first got them singing, as a 27-year-old who had recently been laid off.
He still remembers the excited anticipation of the opening day of the 1994-95 tour, before Michael Slater made Phil DeFreitas’ first ball for four at the Gabba. With Australia 224 for two, Peacock began a six-person conga in the stands, with the locals closing with a song about convicts. “The Aussie fans were throwing abuse at us and then throwing plastic cups – the stuff we still get today,” he recalls. “But when we came back, our little group of thirty English followers had all joined in.”
After the Brisbane defeat, England lost one-day and tour matches to Zimbabwe, Australia A and even an academy side. Anyone who followed Mike Atherton’s men around the country must have been merciful indeed. The Tests in Melbourne and Sydney had seen their ranks swell to hundreds, but not everyone appreciated the football terrace flavor they brought to the cricket field. Their first critic, Ian Wooldridge of the Daily Mail, called them “the waste of England’s national welfare system”.
However, the players genuinely enjoyed their presence on the ground and even their company in the bars. When England secured a consolation victory in the Fourth Test in Adelaide, Alec Stewart beckoned Peacock to the team’s balcony and let him lead the celebration, with Tetley in hand. You would have thought that Covid, social media and an ever-shrinking English bubble would have kept fans and players at bay since then. Instead, teams have treated them with increasing respect. Even Mark Wood’s injury announcement this week made a point of thanking them for being “class as always”.
But the sheer numbers that the Barmy army can conjure are as attractive to the English game as they are to foreign locations. In this Ashes alone, their tours will host 3,000 paying travelers, with a program packed with events requiring dozens of people. There are a host of 30th anniversary celebrations planned next week, including a Twenty20 match (called The Bashes) that will take place at the beautiful University Ground the day before the Test starts.
After all, this is an organization born from cricketing passion and commercial savvy. The reason the Barmy Army dates themselves to the Adelaide Test is because that’s when they started selling souvenir shirts. The short first print run was so immediately popular – and profitable – that they kept the Hindley Street printers working all week. Since then, Peacock co-founders Paul Burnham and Gareth Evans have helped turn a fan community that loved throwing parties in pubs into a leading tour operator.
That brings its own challenges, especially at a time when the sport is looking to shed some of its boy-boy image. Barmy Army general manager Chris Millard is keen to point out that 30% of their traveling fans are now female. As times changed, the chants also had to become cleaner. “Things you said 30 years ago you can’t say today, and that’s absolutely right,” Millard says. “We can’t tell someone how to behave within the confines of their chair, but we can does not support songs that are offensive or contain swear words.
Could the Barmy army soften naturally? The average age of supporters is now 47 years old – almost middle age, just like the founders themselves, who liked to distance themselves from daily activities. Peacock is enjoying this tour purely as a punter and has young professionals filling the Barmy Army social media and hosting the podcast. “You forget how difficult it used to be to communicate with each other,” laughs Peacock. “We used to do it all by word of mouth – ‘everyone goes to the pub!’”
As far as this Ashes series is concerned, the impossible dream of the 3-2 turnaround still lingers, and that is indeed the mid-1990s. And if England lose in Adelaide… well, South Africa will look good next Christmas.
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