Lottery-ticket win will only increase Bazball frustration

History doesn't care about caveats. The record will show that England won an Ashes Test.

- CAMERON PONSONBY

It's taken 15 years, but they have finally triumphed down under. “We had a little hug,” Ben Stokes said of him and Joe Root, two England greats who were, until this point, remarkably, winless in Australia. “And said ‘finally, finally, we've won one.”

It was a contest littered with statistics. The fewest number of overs Australia had faced in a Test match ever, and the first time in the era of five-day Tests that a series had seen multiple two-day matches.

“When you go out there and face those conditions,” Stokes summarised, “you've just got to crack on and deal with it.”

Thirty-six wickets across two days. A crapshoot where England Bazzed and Australia bawled, it was magnificent - but was it war?

“Being brutally honest, that's not what you want for a Boxing Day Test,” Stokes said. “I'm pretty sure if that was somewhere else in the world, there'd be hell on.”

An important distinction needs to be made. This was not Test cricket at its best, far from it. But for the sunburnt fans in the stands, and the freezing cold ones at home, that's not the point. A lottery adds drama and, on a day where Australia were at one stage effectively 124-3 and threatening to take the game away from England, for the tides to be turned and the visitors to win later that very same day was magic.