Ottis Gibson reflects on an Ashes series that left England with mixed emotions

Dropped catches and sloppy batting cost England in the first two matches as they went 2-0 down at Edgbaston and Lord’s,

They hit back to win at Headingley before drawing at Old Trafford and winning the final game at the Oval.

“I think England will take 2-2, but I also think they’ll be disappointed because I think they had enough opportunities to win the Ashes, rather than draw the Ashes, and for Australia to retain the Ashes,” said Gibson. “They had enough opportunities all through the series from the first game.

“Of course, they don’t need Ottis Gibson sitting somewhere to tell them that. They will know that they missed some important opportunities to win back the Ashes.”

The series, one of the best in recent times, exploded the myth that entertainment is more important than winning as Bazball failed its stiffest test.

England did well to square the series in the end, and they were undoubtedly unlucky with the weather in Manchester, but ultimately they came away empty-handed.

“I haven’t seen a more entertaining England team with the way that they’ve played,” said Gibson, who was previously England’s bowling coach. “But I guess for them it will be frustrating because, as much as they entertained, winning the Ashes is the most important thing.

“I worked in two Ashes - in 2009 and in 2015. In 2009, when (Andrew) Strauss was captain, it was just about winning; it didn’t matter how you won.”

That year, England memorably drew the first Test in Cardiff when James Anderson and Monty Panesar clung on with the team nine wickets down.

England won the second Test at Lord’s by 115 runs, drew the third game at Edgbaston, lost by an innings and 80 runs at Headingley and then won the final match at the Oval by 197 runs to take the series 2-1 to regain the urn.

“If you look back at the numbers from that series, the stats, Australia would have dominated all the key stats in terms of wickets taken and runs scored and all the rest of it,” said Gibson.

“But we won the series and that was the most important thing.

“I’m happy that England drew this series, but they will also know that they missed an opportunity to win the series.

"I don’t know whether there was a better team in the end - there were periods where the Aussies were really good, and then there were periods where England were really good. They were two pretty much evenly-matched teams, I would say.”

Gibson felt that England played a smarter brand of Bazball towards the end, combining entertainment with winning cricket. For that reason, he believes that the best of Bazball is still to come as England’s playing style develops.

“I think that’s the case,” said Gibson. “You want to entertain, but you don’t want to entertain and lose series - you want to entertain and win series.

“When you go and play World Cups and Ashes, it’s still about winning. You don’t want to entertain everybody, hit lots of sixes and score at five runs an over and at the end of the game you lose like at Edgbaston.”

Ironically, the man half-responsible for Bazball, captain Ben Stokes, is perhaps the perfect template for how England should bat, regardless of what some might see as his swashbuckling tendencies. As Stokes has showed many times, you still have to build an innings, by and large, before you can really put your foot down on the accelerator.

“The interesting thing for me is ‘Stokesy’ and the way that he plays,” said Gibson.

“I think his innings, generally, would be the blueprint because he doesn’t go in and just try to whack it from the first ball.

“He goes in and he builds and once he’s got to a certain place, then he will try and take the opposition down. In the key moments of games, England will know that they have to be smarter, so they will look at that - the second innings at Edgbaston, the dropped catches in the first two games, what happened at Lord’s, and so on.”

The other architect of Bazball, the man whose name coins the term, is coach Brendon ‘Baz’ McCullum. Gibson particularly likes the way that McCullum and his coaches back the England players, giving them not only licence to take the game on but also supporting them with words and actions.

“The most important thing for me with Bazball, the best thing for me, is the backing from the coaches to the players,” he added. “You look at Zak Crawley (England’s leading run-scorer in the Ashes with 480 at 53.33). I enjoyed the way that he played, and I’d be one of the first to say that I wasn’t sure that he could play like that.

“A lot of coaches, if a guy was averaging 25 or 28 or whatever, and getting out the same way, would want to go in a different direction, but the guys are being backed and the language is the same from every single person in terms of ‘this is how we’re going to play’.”