Denis Compton and Bill Edrich make their way through the celebrating hordes after England beat Australia to win the Ashes in 1953. Photograph: Central Press/Getty ImagesA Grand Combined Melbourne and Sydney XI take on England's Yorkshireman-Sussex miscellany. Deprived of their first-choice wicketkeeper, who has been arrested en route in New Zealand, the first Test ends in a 45-run defeat for England. "This must never be allowed to happen again," promise the selectors.
WG Grace, the first great Victorian colossus of the first great spectator sport, scores England's first Test century on his debut. England win by five wickets. The Body of English Cricket, still very much alive and well, watches the action from a seat in the pavilion and enjoys an excellent lunch.
England lose their first proper Test on home soil, the "Demon" FR Spofforth taking 14 for 91. A record crowd of 39,194 people watch, one of whom famously gnaws through his umbrella handle in the tense final moments. The Body of English Cricket, now deceased, is incinerated and placed inside an urn.
Hot on the heels of New Zealand, India play their first Test and lose by 158 runs despite reducing England to 19 for three in the first innings. Fourteen years later India finally play someone other than England. Almost 20 years later they win a match. They are, though, quite good now.
With the series 1–1 and Don Bradman insurmountable, Douglas Jardine instructs his fast bowlers for short-pitched balls aimed at the body. Aussie batsmen take the blows. Diplomatic cables are exchanged. The tour almost collapses. One team are playing cricket out there. And many years from now a disappointing TV adaptation featuring actors in baggy trousers saying things like "ya pommy bah-stard" will capture it all very vaguely.
A match that stands as an open rebuff to the perennial gripe about a game that can go on for five days and still be a draw: here's one that was still a draw after 10 days, and was abandoned only because England really did have to catch the boat home. At that stage, with a match aggregate of 1,981 runs scored, they needed just 42 to win, albeit it would still have taken them a day to get there. Somewhere, in a thicket on the Highveld, it is tempting to believe at least one superannuated South African cricketer is still playing it.
A last muted hurrah for Test cricket's second golden age of Bradman and the great English batsman Wally Hammond. Needing four runs for an average of 100, Bradman is marooned forever on the statistical absurdity of 99.94, bowled for a duck by Eric Hollies. Denis Compton and Jim Laker would go on to oversee a shift in fortunes for England, for whom a decade of Brylcreem-drenched global dominance enacted with tiny little wizened dark brown bats awaited.
A cricket nation of a thousand brilliant fast bowlers is born, succumbing rather meekly to the New Enemy by an innings in Delhi. Pakistan's first ever XI contains a Waqar, a Khan and 17?year?old Hanif Mohammad. Best not to write them off just yet.
"Yes ... And is it ... Yes ... England have won the Ashes!" Brian Johnston's words as the winning runs ensured England regained the Ashes after almost 19 years is cricket's first great TV commentary moment. Eliding with the coronation and the Matthews Cup final, Test cricket is suddenly a part of the New Elizabethan televisual age, an age that dawned – take note – without the need for erotically writhing podium girls or recurrent 10-second blasts of foot-stomping Euro house.
Bowling solely from the Stretford End Jim Laker takes nine for 37 and 10 for 53 as England win by an innings, the greatest match analysis in Test history and all 19 wickets celebrated with a vague shrug and the odd stiff handshake. England's other bowlers sent down 118 overs combined while taking only a single wicket. England's other bowlers might want to have a look at that.
Intimidated by Lillee and Thomson the previous winter, Clive Lloyd's West Indians are recalibrated as a relentless fast-bowling force. Michael Holding and Wayne Daniel bowl short and put three batsman out of the match in the first innings of a crushing victory. The beginning of an era of generational fast-bowling dominance. Also the beginning of the end for Mike Gatting's nose.
The first post-World Series Test, which saw the return of the elite pirate players of Kerry Packer's league. The breakaway had failed and all was back to normal again. Floodlights, highly paid superstar players, coloured clothing, piped music – cricket certainly wouldn't be seeing any of this again. This was also the first real post-helmet Test match and the beginning of the end for the quaint old rest day. The future started here.
Another great spurring moment of popular Test romance – not to mention the drawing of one of the great sustained spells of corporate after-dinner anecdote-recounting. And BBC video-selling. Mike Brearley's England win despite following on, Ian Botham's hundred and Bob Willis's eight wickets overturning victory odds of 500-1. As England edge home the stock exchange halts briefly, Headingley fills up (apparently) with every single cricket-watching male in the western hemisphere and even the royal wedding later in the week starts to look like a decent excuse for a party.
Post-apartheid South Africa's first Test in over 20 years. A great match too, in which Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh simply refuse to be beaten, bowling out the Proteas for 148 chasing 201. South Africa have emerged into a bright new Test future based solely around fair play and Corinthian ideals. Future captain Hansie Cronje is one of 10 bright-eyed Test debutants. Just saying.
Some cliches are true: Shane Warne really did make Test cricket seem unusually vibrant and the ancient craft of leg-spin appear extreme and edgy. And the ball that announced Warne as a generational force is truly a thing of beauty: Warne's first delivery in Tests in England drifts in late to square Mike Gatting up, then leaps away off the pitch to peg back his exposed off stump. England lose the Test – and would win only seven of 36 with Warne in the opposition. Bowling Shane, indeed.
The end of an era: no longer would England be repeatedly thrashed by a multi-pronged fast-bowling entity infused with post-colonial vengeance; instead they would be repeatedly thrashed by a multi-pronged fast-medium and leg-spin entity infused with post-colonial vengeance. Steve Waugh's supreme double-hundred seals a 2-1 series victory. The McGrath-Warne axis prepares to flower over the next decade, the centrepiece of the greatest team ever seen. And the Windies begin their steady, purposeful transformation into the tear-jerkingly hilarious shambles they are today.
A new force announces itself at last in Test cricket. Yes, for John Crawley, who scored 156 in the first innings, this really could have been quite a match. Except his efforts are ultimately cast in shade by 16 wickets for future leading Test wicket-taker Muttiah Muralitharan as Sri Lanka win by 10 wickets on a dry and dusty Oval pitch.
Brian Lara's Test record of 400 not out is additionally astonishing for two reasons: firstly for the sheer bloody-mindedness of snatching back a record that had been taken from him by Matthew Hayden's 380 against Zimbabwe the previous year; and secondly as it was in a live game (England later followed on) and against the acclaimed Fab Four pace attack that would reclaim the Ashes the following year. The match was drawn but this was perhaps the crowning act of what is an ongoing global Test run glut.
An umbrella-gnawing finish to conjure memories of the original Ashes Test, and a high point of one of the great series. A Test that saw 1176 runs at more than four an over, 40 wickets taken and England sneaking home in some distress by just two runs thanks to a catch taken off Michael Kapsrowicz's forearm. Test cricket isn't simply a great game, or a wonderful exposition of character. It is also torture. We now have definitive proof of this.
A cinematic moment of departure for Test cricket's leading wicket-taker and still a divisive figure for some, the biscuit magnate's son who brought a brand of brilliantly unorthodox street cricket to the global game. Some careful shepherding of the Indian tail in a 10-wicket win brought Muttiah Muralitharan his 800th wicket in his final Test. In many ways, we will never see his like again.
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