An Ashes Review and an Ashes Preview, Style, Lakmal, Australia, England

Let me tell you a little story about fashion in the small, Catholic grade school I attended from the ages of seven to fourteen. In short, there wasn’t much of it. We had a fairly strict if classic dress code: White polo style shirt, blue slacks, dress shoes or tennis shoes, and then if anyone wanted an outer layer, it was either a navy blue cardigan or the school’s own navy blue sweatshirt featuring the St. Michael’s crest on the customary left breast and, garishly, the names of all your classmates in two equal rows down the sides of the back. Not exactly a lot of options. You could wear tennis shoes if you chose to, and you could wear a cardigan. Other than that, all the boys dressed exactly the same. Again, fairly common when it comes to Catholic school garb—any movie or television show divulges as much. What’s different here is that my seven-year-old-self didn’t really like the tennis shoes with blue slacks look and wore penny loafers instead, and I found the school sweatshirt a little over the top, and so sprung for the forever-smart appeal of the blue four-button cardigan every single day of my first grade school year. I was the only boy in school to choose either, let alone both, and I thought then and still think now that I looked pretty darned sharp even though I often endured my homogenous friends’ good-natured barbs on the playground. Turns out people don’t like when other people like something different. Who knew?

Not a big deal though. The ribbing had no real effect on me, anyway, I look upon grade school fondly, and am still friends in one way or another with most of the twenty-one other classmates with whom I graduated at the end of eighth grade. This post isn’t about bullying in any way, shape, or form because, you know, I liked my loafers and my cardigan and still wear something similar to work most days in the winter. What I did learn fashion-wise back then—and this is a feature of my attire I did change after my friends’ none-so-subtle promulgation—I did learn, reader, about something called high-waters, or, as my wife calls them, flood pants. You see, we didn’t have a whole lot of money back in that time, which meant that I would generally wear the same pairs of pants from semester to semester despite the fact that I, a very Glenn Maxwell looking guy indeed, was growing like Maxwell’s own chances of making the Ashes squad were until yesterday when he found out that he had been left out—a harsh sentence, I feel, for a genuinely exciting batsman with a lot to offer on the flat, hard Aussie decks, but more on that later. The pants from one semester to the next: that’s what I’ve come to call “The Follow On,” and The Follow On means high-waters in the spring of each term, dress socks showing to anyone who would have a glance, a style faux pas that I wouldn’t hear the end of until the following autumn when my mom had purchased new pants, which made it all the way to the top of my heel for the first couple months before my beanstalk-like frame would once again outgrow my clothes, ankles and wrists telescoping farther and farther from the hems of my pant legs and shirts sleeves.

And so, as a bit of a high-waters connoisseur, I can safely call what Lakmal is doing with his trousers “Enforcing the Follow On.” I mean: look at that guy. Unbelievable, with the pant legs almost up to the bottom of his calves, dress socks showing to anyone who will have a glance. But something tells me he doesn’t think his choice is a faux pas, at all. In fact, I’d say he finds it pretty fashionable when you consider his dyed hair and bracelets and necklaces and sharks teeth, or whatever. No: this is a guy who calculates his outfits, who prides himself on his style. The pants are part of Lakmal’s equation—Lakmal=awesome. When he bowls like he did against India in the last test, I think that’s our equation, as well. Well done, Lakmal, with your high waters and your beach bum look. You truly are a bizarre, awesome dude.

Anyway, the Ashes starts in about four hours, so I’d better finally write that Ashes preview so I can have my say before the matches actually start, non-committal as I may end up being. A preview is not much of a preview when the thing you’re previewing is happening on the television while you write it. Before that, though, I want to do an Ashes review. The review of the new Ashes Cricket for PlayStation 4, Xbox, et al. I cut to the chase: all things considered, I rate it a 10/10, best game of all time. Will it be everyone’s cup of tea? No, it won’t. People who don’t like cricket still won’t like this digital iteration. Cricket fanatics like myself, though? Get ready. It’s not perfect, of course. It lacks that finishing polish of the big-budget EA and Konami titles, but this game is from the comparatively destitute Big Ant—a company you would never have heard of if you didn’t already play its previous Don Bradman titles and so a company that deserves a bonus point or two for putting out such a winner on such a small budget. I like their style. Don Bradman 14 was a finished product, and it was really good; Don Bradman 17, a little undercooked, but still good; and then Ashes Cricket, which used Don Bradman 17 as a kind of beta—well it’s incredible. The bowling and batting hearken back to the old Brian Lara style button timing system and opposed to the convoluted dual stick controls, and the game, I’d say, is much smoother and much more logical. When I’m out, I know why I’m out. I know exactly what happened. There’s no guessing about footwork or timing or the batsman’s statistics or a combination of the lot. I can see what happened. A bad swing, a thunderbolt, an overzealous thrash at that ball outside off stump that nicks back to the slips—each of these happens on screen just as it does in real life. This title is fairly easy to pick up and play, and if you keep it on a lower difficulty, you can get to knocking tons and shattering wickets in a couple of minutes. Notch up the difficulty, however, and you’ll feel the anxiety as Mitchell Starc barrels toward you in the first over at the Gabbatoir. Should happen just like that in a couple of hours, now that I think about it.

That said: let’s move to the actual impending Ashes series—the one with real people and no reset button. All signs point to Australia taking it, I’d say, but only because the series takes place on home soil. Their lineup doesn’t inspire me whatsoever, at least not any more than does England’s workaday offering, so I don’t see this as an insurmountable obstacle for the English, but the Aussie attack does have that something special for the home wickets—that bounce, that pace, that movement when necessary—and they should provide real problems for the England batsman, especially the much-maligned debutants—you know, the ones England wasn’t going to bring. If England is going to make it a series, they are going to have to come out of the box firing, like, immediately. Like, today. To show their counterparts that they’re in for a fight. If England play tentatively from the start, I like the home Australian side and the home Australian crowd to get on top of the visitors and run away with the series. 3-1 would be my bet, in that case.

But don’t forget Ashes past, and don’t underestimate my favorite player, the dreamy Dawid Malan. How many times has this series thrust a relatively unknown cricketer into the spotlight? One needs look no further than last time out when Mitchell Johnson bowled a better series than anyone ever has, probably. If the English can get something approaching that from any one player—a serious contribution from an unexpected source—they might just have enough to earn the draw they need to retain the urn. It’s not likely, I understand. But who really knows when it comes to the Ashes? We’ve seen surprises in the past and it’s not like this Australian team has no flaws on their own. If there was ever a team to upset on home soil, it’d be this Aussie iteration. And maybe the British fire will be stoked by a return of that particularly fiery, fist-fighty redhead who flattened a couple of college boys some months back. Could he possibly rejoin his team for the last three or four tests? Wouldn’t that be something? I know everyone says he’d be a distraction, but come on: he’s a distraction anyway. You don’t think the Australian media will pepper Root with Stokes related questions one way or another? Mark my words, after day 1, Joe Root will answer some question about what day 1 would have looked like had Stokes been on the field. Either way, Ben Stokes is there even if he isn’t there. He’ll play a factor no matter what.