YYou always remember the first one. Feelings are agitated, palms clammy, not quite knowing where to look or what to focus on. It’s okay to be nervous… but is it normal to be? this nervous? Castanet heart and goosebumps as the moment approaches. Just get it out of the way and don’t put too much pressure on it. Calm down. This should be fun.
Your thoughts wander to Zak Crawley stringing Pat Cummins across the Edgbaston turf like a pebble skimming a glacier. You really can’t help who comes in at these times. But who is this now? Oh, it’s Rory Burns falling over, the Brisbane rug pulled from under him, the leg stump thrown back and the braces sent up like a pair of lost eyebrows. What are we to do now, just sit back and think about the English unrest?
The first ball of an Ashes series is an end and a beginning. That first delivery completely puts an end to the increasingly crazy build-up, suspicions and speculation. The action could replace all the “what if” and “what if” questions, at least for a little while. Increasingly, the first ball is seen as both portal and omen, a seven-second snapshot of things to come, a tone-setting prophecy and harbinger in one, a series of five tests in microcosm. The autopsy at the end of the series will almost certainly mention the very first breath.
“The Gabba, Brisbane – Thursday, November 23, 2006. I’ve stood at the top of my mark… and I’m feeling the heat. Not so much the heat of the sun, but rather the heat of anticipation. The hype leading up to this moment has been a never-ending storm of madness, and I’m right in the eye. The ball is in my hand. It’s up to me to bowl the first installment of an Ashes series that has been talked about and pontificated and bitched about since I finished the last ball from the last bowled.
Steve Harmison devoted an entire chapter of his book to: Speed demonsto the derailed train of a first ball of the 2006-2007 Ashes that he sprayed into the hands of Andrew Flintoff second slip. He later added: “I can’t think of a worse ball to bowl than this. In fact, I can’t remember ever bowling such a bad ball. I think it set the tone.”
Of course, there’s a lot of historical revisionism in Ash’s first balls. Harmison’s nervous and career-long wide symbolized the wheels coming out of England in the aftermath of their historic victory in 2005, the 5-0 whitewash that followed befitting the very first delivery hand in glove.
With a little crowbar you can make a few more Ashes first balls fit. Crawley’s carpet-scorching at Cummins in 2023 summed up England’s Bazball swagger, even though England lost that match and found themselves trailing 2-0 before Chris Woakes and Mark Wood led a cavalry charge back to parity. But despite that rain in Manchester, Crawley’s covering move would be exponentially more indelible.
Burn’s Gabba stump with the first ball splashing through Starc’s hands fits into the story of a confused and overwhelmed England side struggling in the Covid-affected (but certainly still counting, Stuart) series from 2021-22. The only other man to fall on the very first ball of an Ashes series was England opener Thomas Worthington, who was run out by Ernest McCormick. Burns’ fate made front and back page news around the world. I was curious to see how much hoo-ha was made from Worthington’s first-baller 89 years ago.
You have to scroll past quite a few densely written pages of the Manchester Guardian of December 5, 1936 – past an article about a dog kicked to death in Barnsley and a woman in Blackburn suffocated by a bone stuck in her throat while ‘drinking soup’ – before you reach Neville Cardus’ evocative account of Worthington’s death in the fold on page 13.
“In the atmosphere of an inferno” and “among a sweating crowd” Cardus writes about that first morning in Woolloongabba. “The sound is wonderful… we are a long way from the green fields of Hampshire. The beginning was catastrophic and pandemonium broke out; McCormick’s first ball, which he bowled like a hurricane, pitched short and rose high on Worthington’s left shoulder; Worthington cluelessly hooked, took his stroke and skied it.”
And yet, despite this clean start, England won the game by 322 points. But wait, it was a prophetic first ball after all – although Gubby Allen’s side later took a 2-0 lead after the Sydney Test, they ultimately lost the series 3-2, with Don Bradman averaging 90 and piling up 810 runs.
Deep down we know it doesn’t really work that way. One swallow does not make a summer, just as one ball does not make an ashes. There have been plenty of Ashes first balls that failed to set a precedent, a fair share of innocuous deliveries, shoulder arms and dare I say damp squib opening volleys. The first ball of the 2025-26 series in Perth is now less than 10 days away, with the second due to take place shortly afterwards.
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