Ashes 2009

Graeme Swann struggling to keep calm before the storm

With the raucous memories of England's Ashes triumph in 2005 still fresh in his mind, the England off-spinner is hoping to be a big noise this time round

• 
• • Kevin Mitchell
  • The Observer, Sunday 5 July 2009

England's Graeme Swann is eager to play a large part in this summer's Ashes series. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

Edgbaston is silent but for the hum of mowers rolling across the rich green grass, and the flit and flap of insects in the summer haze. The white seats are clean and empty, and the sun beats down on a pitch that will be the very centre of the cricket world in a few weeks time.

This will be Graeme Swann's office for five days when England arrive for the third Test against Australia on 30 July, and his tour-weathered face breaks into a smile at the prospect. He knows the Birmingham ground well, knows its fabulous history, and what is expected of him.

Swann, who'd blown an early career chance with England 10 years ago in South Africa – "because I didn't get enough runs and wickets" – was 12th man for the first two days of the unforgettable Test here in 2005, Flintoff's Match, the game, as the off-spinner rightly says, "where that Ashes series came alive".

It's serene as a nursery now, so different to the scene drowned in tumult that first week of August four years ago. "I took the drinks on as Freddie got [Ricky] Ponting out, and I just couldn't believe the noise from the stands. It was the most incredible noise I have ever heard at a cricket ground. I go to watch a lot of football and it was louder than any Premier League game I've ever been too. Phenomenal.

"Matthew Hayden was out first ball of the innings. I remember on the first day [Marcus] Trescothick just smashed it everywhere. The Lord's Test match was obviously an easy victory for the Aussies. But it was a phenomenal series after Edgbaston. I thought we'd win it once we won at Trent Bridge. In sport, you just get a gut feeling. But then I'm an eternal optimist. Every time England get to the World Cup finals I think they're going to win the whole thing. And they never do."

Will England win? He won't say. Swann, like most athletes, is gripped by superstition. He can only hope. And, whatever the result, he thinks it will be just as big and exciting an occasion, just as important. "I don't think it matters, to be honest. I think you could pick 11 guys off the street in England and 11 guys off the street in Australia, and it would still be the Ashes.

"It would have massive media speculation. It will be a brilliant series. It obviously helps if you've got 11 cricketers in the team rather than Joe Bloggs off the street! But it's going to be huge, and I don't think it matters who played in 2005, or who played in 2007. This Ashes series is this Ashes series."

But, if ever a sporting experience was both a burden and a blessing, it surely was the summer of '05. It was cricket's '66 World Cup moment. It will not go away, a dream with the power to kill all rational daylight thinking.

Dwell for a second on that first morning at Lord's, where acceptable belligerence took on the bloodied sheen of proto-war, as one Australian bone after another was crunched, but not to the point of surrender. It is only a memory, albeit a warm one to cherish over a pint, and it refuses to fade.

We are prisoners of our reminiscences, and none in recent times was sweeter for the success-starved friends of English cricket than that of beating Australia in the finest Ashes series there can have been, or ever will be. But nostalgia distorts judgment dangerously.

Ponting losing his rag with a gloating Duncan Fletcher after being run out by the super-sub Gary Pratt at Trent Bridge is a delicious slice of cricket history. The captain has grown up, though; the coach has moved on; Pratt, still only 27, is in his third season with minor county Cumberland. There is a vastly different cast now, new attitudes, some old bones creaking, some new ones raring to go.

The '05 phenomenon should have as much bearing on this summer's cricket as will Harold Larwood felling Bert Oldfield that heated Monday at Adelaide Oval 77 years ago, before Fred Perry had conquered Wimbledon even. But it's tough to shake off history.

Brett Lee on his knees at Edgbaston, consoled by Andrew Flintoff? A nice photo on the wall, surely. But how will they "front up" this time, both older, both slowed by time and injury?

Shane Warne dropping Kevin Pietersen at The Oval, with half the country, it seemed, watching from rooftops all around the ground, led on to a perfectly English conclusion to a series of five truly great matches that could only be contrived under drizzled September skies in the shadow of Kennington's long-stopped gasometers. If Flintoff can remember anything of the victory celebrations that night, it will be with the help of his pals, of whom he had more than 50 million at the time.

But surely we must put those images of Freddie happily slaughtered in the sunshine of Trafalgar Square where they belong. That was then; this is this.

Forgetting makes sense but is never that easy. You can be sure the Australians have wiped their memory disc clean but the numbers they remember are '06-'07. And 5-0.

"It's been tough since 2005," says Flintoff, back from his umpteenth operation, but mired still in his vagabond ways after managing again to cock things up on their war-grave trip to Flanders, this time sleeping in.

"What keeps you going is you want to play again in an Ashes series. And I'm not far away from that now. As you get older, you don't want to miss much cricket, because you don't know how much you've got left in you."

Swann, whose off-breaks are first-choice for new-look England, will go into the first Test of this series on Wednesday with a fresh, uncluttered mind against another changed team with a similarly sharp perspective. He has other recollections from the period, ones that might be more relevant. He remembers playing alongside Mike Hussey at Northamptonshire, both subsequently latecomers to a stage only recently vacated by legends with different baggage.

"He's a class player," Swann says of the batsman who could be caning him all over Cardiff in a few days' time. "We always used to joke that I'd bowl at him in a Test match one day. He's a good friend of mine and he's obviously a lynch-pin in their middle order.

"He scored millions of runs for us over two or three years. We all knew it was only a matter of time before he was playing for Australia. He's the best player I've played with, just pipping Matthew Hayden. I can't wait to play against him. Hopefully, I can wheedle him out."

Would Swann, then, be indulging in more civilised exchanges with these Australians than did, say Hayden and Simon Jones (or Hayden and anyone)? "I think we all know there is no such thing as friendly banter with the Aussies. Anyway, you can never, ever win as a spinner. No point trying. It's more for the after-dinner circuit, than anything else. I haven't heard any genuinely funny ones for a long, long time."

And he knows how to laugh – especially at himself. "I don't think I was ever construed as arrogant," he says in answer to a question about his youthful temperament, "an idiot, more likely. When you're touring at 18 or 19 you generally are an idiot, because you haven't got a clue what's going on around you.

"I was as wet behind the ears as anyone else. It takes a lot of cricket and a lot of living to find out who you actually are. I'm certainly a better cricketer now and probably a more rounded individual... but I've still got streaks of idiocy in me." Just like Freddie four years ago. Not to mention last week.

Swann, not long turned 30, is a big enough kid, still, to keep his place as a singer in a Nottingham band that glories in the name of Dr Comfort and his Lurid Revelations. (Swann believes, as he was told by one of the guys in the band, that there really was a Dr Comfort, a psychologist in the Fifties who wrote about his patients' sexual fantasies.)

"We had a gig two days after I got back from the West Indies and I haven't seen any of them since. I can't be seen to be going off and doing gigs while the cricket season is going on. I can compartmentalise my life pretty well. I've got to be very careful." He should have a word with Freddie.

Kevin Pietersen – without whom, says Warne, England can't win the series – has an heroic link, of course, with the deeds of '05, but has parked the memories over there somewhere. Would he not like to be captain? "No, there was never going to be a hassle with Andrew Strauss. Nice guy. He's very clever, very intelligent the way he goes about his business."

And so on. He is clipped, impatient, a little tetchy, and utterly predictable. He does not think this series can possibly match, "the best series that's ever been played. I'd be stupid to say we can match the intensity of 2005."

Let's hope he turns out be seriously stupid.

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