In another compelling finish England produced a 49 run win at The Oval to draw the Ashes series, 2-2.

Over the balance of the five Tests it was no less than they deserved. Although Australia hold on to the urn, it is the first time that England have come back from being two losses down to take something from an Ashes series.

They outplayed Australia in the fourth Test at Old Trafford and were on top in three of the other matches. Australia’s win at Lord’s was the exception where the visitors dominated for most of the game.

The Oval Test was a fine climax to an entirely enthralling Ashes series. At each break, in every match you were left wondering what the next session would bring as the advantage swung between one side and the other.

From the outset this series looked as though it could be rather different from any other Ashes and so it proved.

There were many key factors, of course, including the weather, the crowds, the injuries, the individual successes and failures and the varying tactics.

Despite being the first Test, Australia’s win at Edgbaston is still the one that appears to hold some of the answers as to why Australia were able to hold on to the urn.

Stokes’ decision to declare with half an hour to go on the opening day with Joe Root in full flow was still a question that was being pondered after the final ball of the series was bowled.

However, as Stokes himself said, “There are so many things that happen throughout the five days that we could look back and say, if that went our way could this game have been different.”
The same goes for many such moments throughout the series.

Bairstow’s keeping during that game was far more of a factor. Recalled for the first time following a broken leg he was clearly short of match practice. He ended up missing half a dozen chances in a game that Australia finally won with only two wickets to spare.

The England camp was keen to stick to some players despite their performances. James Anderson was another whose place had to be questioned. He turned 41 during The Oval Test and is a shadow of the bowler that he once was. He played in four Tests but took only five wickets at an average of more than 85. Meanwhile, twenty-five year old Josh Tongue finished with the same number of wickets in his two matches with an average of just over 30.

Before the summer began, there was much discussion about the expected workloads of the pace bowlers. In the end it was the spinners that had the injury problems.

Jack Leach was ruled out before a ball was bowled. Nathan Lyon, in his one hundredth consecutive Test, hobbled out of the series at Lord’s. Having been brought out of retirement, Moeen Ali limped to the dressing rooms at The Oval and had to be given reduced bowling loads.

They were enough for him earn three wickets in Australia’s second innings and earn Stokes’ praise, “Mo got picked because I knew what he could do on his best days and today was his best day in this Ashes series”.

Mitchell Starc’s 23 dismissals made him the top wicket-taker across the two sides with Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood also consistent with 34 more between them. The opening effort that Cummins produced at The Oval in England’s first innings was probably the spell of the series. He had a chance put down and beat the bat on six occasions in his first two overs before finally removing Zak Crawley.

However, all of them had problems controlling the run rate with Stuart Broad and Anderson each bowling about as many maidens during the series as the entire Australian side.

At the end of it all, Broad hung up his boots as England’s leading wicket taker in the series with 22. He finished his career having taken 604 Test wickets. His 153 against Australia being more than any other England player has achieved.

Ultimately, he was well backed up by Chris Woakes and Mark Wood. Their introduction for the third Test changed the balance of the series. The three quicks took 47 of the 55 wickets that fell in the final three games.

No batter made more than one century but England were consistently good across their top order.  Usman Khawaja was the leading run scorer with 496 runs but the other players to score more than 400 runs were all from England: Crawley, Root and Ben Stokes.

David Warner, Marnus Labuschagne and Alex Carey will likely be disappointed with their contributions.

There are several players who have surely played in their final Ashes, certainly in England: Warner, Khawaja, Hazlewood, Starc and Scott Boland for Australia and, for England, apart from Broad, Anderson, Ali and Stokes himself.

Generally, both sides played the games in a good natured way. The crowds were boisterous but probably no more than was expected. Australia agreed that it was probably no different from the crowds you can expect on a tour Down Under but with more chanting, of course.

However, there was a significant flashpoint at Lord’s when Jonny Bairstow left his crease after the last ball of an over had been delivered and Carey threw down the stumps. This even led to some ugly scenes in the Lord’s Long Room with the “home of cricket” issuing an apology to the visiting team.

Looking at the tactics, many a purist won’t have understood how England seemed to throw away many of their wickets but BazBall is all about risk and reward. Expect the unexpected. That could be Stokes and Bairstow crashing sixes even with nine players on the boundary. It could be Joe Root producing a reverse ramp shot to the first ball after lunch at Edgbaston.

When Australia won the first two Tests the BazBall method came into question. Stokes was adamant that nothing would change. Warner claimed that he hadn’t really seen BazBall in action but Cummins had a different opinion, “I don’t know what the definition is of it but it feels like this series has had a lot of really good cricket but also a lot of cricket that has been a bit different to traditional Test cricket.”

England are still new to their own BazBall approach.

With the bat, they are still learning when to put the foot on the accelerator and when to pull back. At times they seem to throw wickets away unnecessarily with over-aggressive shots.
In the field they overdid the short ball attack at times with Travis Head usually being pounded even when he was new to the crease. No batter is thought to be settled until they’ve faced around twenty deliveries. It was only at The Oval when England finally bowled conventionally at Head who edged his fifth delivery through to Bairstow. Todd Murphy had never hit a six in any form of cricket but was able to launch three into the crowd as England kept bowling short.

The methods that they use are always going to bring criticism. They’re not orthodox, not traditional, not expected. Their tactics haven’t been used in nearly 150 years of Test cricket. This, though, is an era of the short form of the game with heavier bats, smaller boundaries, third umpires, referrals and reviews, dieticians and specialist coaches. Times have changed and so have England.

Other teams are having another look at their own methods. Pakistan had only one victory in the ten Tests leading up to their two game tour of Sri Lanka last month. Before the tour started they announced that they were going to go about things differently, “The Pakistan Way”. The team director, Mickey Arthur, said that they wanted to go about “winning while having our own culture, our own brand of cricket and our own style. We will not be satisfied with wins without that culture in the team".

BazBall is supposed to be all about entertainment. This series produced this in spades. If you held a ticket for any of the days throughout the series you surely would have gone away having enjoyed your day out.

The sides will look different in four years’ time but those that witnessed this series will be hoping for more of the same entertainment that has kept them glued to the contest.

As Broad acknowledged in some of his final words as a Test cricketer, “It’s been the most enjoyable series, the most entertaining series, the most edge of the seat series that I can remember.”