How England vs Australia has been reduced to a Pat Cummins vs Ben Stokes battle

When Steve Smith turned around after completing the catch of Ben Stokes, he saw Pat Cummins, who had his arms spread and was ready to hug him. The captain and his deputy, joined soon their teammates, celebrated ecstatically at the departure of the prickliest thorn in their flesh this Ashes. But Cummins still had the dignity to applaud his counterpart, and Stokes reciprocated with a warm nod. At stumps on Day 2, the match was an even keel. England were 116/4 after Australia had got a 142 runs lead. This truly has been a series of the two captains, two giants of the game trying to outplay each other, like two masterful Grandmasters at the either end of board, pouring every ounce of their wit and will to wrestle advantage to define the series.On Friday, Stokes stroked an 80 of utter violence to limit Australia’s lead; Cummins snuffed out six wickets for 91 runs, in largely batting friendly, sun-baked conditions to leave the match on an engrossing balance, with Australia stretching their lead to 142 runs, but at the cost of their top-four batsmen.

Day 2: Stumps
Australia lead 1️⃣4️⃣2️⃣ runs with 6️⃣ wickets remaining.
This series 🤌 #EnglandCricket | #Ashes pic.twitter.com/ftwNfZKc1B
— England Cricket (@englandcricket) July 7, 2023
In the English plot, Cummins is cast as the foil in the narrative, the key who has been preventing Stokes from getting his Hollywood ending. He has been Australia’s most prolific bowler this series, picking 14 wickets at 23, a commendable body of work on largely flaccid decks; the most enduring memory, though, features his air-borne bat, which he flung after completing the Birmingham he.
Similarly, for Australians, Stokes has been the smirking anti-hero in the piece. He has been England’s highest run-getter, nearly bowling them to victory despite his aching knees and rebelling back in Birmingham, and their tour de force.
The pair is markedly similar yet different version of cricket’s present, two of the world’s finest cricketers, match-winners, exemplary leaders of men, leaping to cricketing immortality, steeled to bend the games according to their script.
Their presence sets the premise for a compelling contest—you can keep a notebook of head-to-head victories and expect to run out of pages the end of the series, for it seems as though there is a quiet personal battle for one upmanship in progress, in the shadows, just as there is a tactical combat on the pitch.
Cummins strike again
In this absorbing contest of equals, Cummins triumphed in the first round. Just the second ball of the day, he produced a classic Cummins ball—angling in, just back of length and bending away a trifle to draw a poked edge—to consume Joe Root, England’s batting talisman. Cummins has conceived such defining moments all throughout the series, though lost in the heap of melodrama the series continues to throw up.
Few bowlers, since Cummins’s second coming, has been as superlatively consent as he has been. Good days are piled upon good days that he at times goes under-appreciated. He is someone who could alter his length with the ease of changing a footwear. He could be the hard-length destroyer, a good-length tormentor or a short-ball hangman. He gobbled up three of his last six wickets with short-balls that fizzed; Ben Duckett and Root floundered to back of length ball that fizzed; Harry Brook was tempted to drive a full-length ball.

He buries all the rigour and burden of a captain and lead-bowler in the smiling visage. Only during one passage of play did he lose his cool, predictably, when Stokes was going calculatedly berserk. Cummins stumbled in his follow through, after the ball had slipped out of his palms so askance that it dribbled off a diving Alex Carey’s palms to the fence. Then Stokes alone could inject panic into the panic-proof Cummins.
Inconsent but effective
Unlike Cummins, Stokes is no epitome of consency. numerical yardsticks—both batting and bowling average in 30s—he is a middling than magnificent cricketer. But he produces moments, series-altering, championship-winning performances that live on eternally in the mind of watchers, more than perhaps those consent genius ones. He imparts a shred of his personality on the game.
The 80 of 108 balls was another exhibition of his feverish brilliance. It was quintessential Stokes—biding his time patiently for the crisis to set, for the ship to sink neck-deep before he decides to step in. He strode out to the crease in the first over of the morning and lingered on, calmly blocking or nudging singles. The only four that he scored in the first 57 balls was an edged one behind cordon. He survived a close leg-before-the-wicket shout, an umpire’s call on impact of a Scott Boland away-swinger that would have blasted his middle-stump; he then nearly ran out his partner Mooed Ali.
It was not until he began to run out of partners that he woke up. Perhaps, he was channeling all his energy for a furious endgame. He was 28 off 60 balls when Mitchell Starc steamed, in search of reverse swing. He clipped one down the leg-side for four before sledgehammering a brace of fours, one past midwicket and one through point.
There are not too many left-handers in the game that could inflict such leg-side destruction. Starc stood crestfallen, as did the usually unflappable Cummins the next over after Stokes brutalized him past point. This was the over Cummins’s intended yorker slipped out of his palms. This is what Stokes does, he injects nerves, panic and chaos. Australia froze, clarity deserted their thoughts and ended up bleeding 69 runs in 50 balls. Stokes, enjoying the fortune of the valiant. Riding on two dropped chances, he reduced the gulf between the two sides.

Cummins, strangely resorting to bouncer-barrage when fuller-length was reaping rewards, made an even stranger move when he introduced Todd Murphy, the Ashes-debutant on an unhelpful surface. Stokes duly collected five sixes, before he held out in the deep, to the joy and relief of Cummins. The series has so closely revolved around them that one has the making of a hero, and the other a tragic-hero. One of them will leave the field a champion, the other with his heart broken.