If there is one takeaway for England from this Ashes tour it should be how cricket thrives in a nation where it is readily and freely available as the dominant summer pastime
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he drive to Bowral in New South Wales takes you through some of Australia’s most English countryside. Pastoral hills roll right up to the roadside and finish in grassy verges, flecked with yellow and white wildflowers. Alliums stand sentinel around vibrant lawns. Even the eucalypts are cosplaying as beech and oaks. You might be in Hampshire, if it weren’t for the dazzling sun.
Just a few roads from the high street – storefronts full of fancy cookware and country casuals – is the Bradman Oval. This small ground, with its pre-loved outfield, has become a pilgrimage stop for the Australian cricketing faithful. Head out to the middle and you’re walking across the sacred turf where Sir Don honed his skills. Stand at the crease, look past the white picket fence, and you can see the family homes where he grew from boy to man, on Shepherd Street and Glebe Street respectively.
The village feel gives the ground a surprising charm and familiarity – especially to the England fan. We grow up with the narrative that Australian cricket has always reflected its red-rock interior: a place where hard men toil on hard wickets, Bradman being the hardest of the lot. But an Ashes trip – if you can spare some time from the gladiatorial Test grounds and Barmy Army beer joints – is an excellent check and challenge to images conjured solely from the imagination, and a landscape seen purely through the lens of a remote rivalry.
