If there’s one word that has been applied to every great Anglo-Australian Test series, and to the gargantuan, centuries-long cricketing rivalry overall, it is “epic”. 2019, 2005, 1981. 1932–33 … They’ve all had the label plastered across countless newspaper headlines and ghostwritten memoirs, and rightly so. But when journalists, pundits and players describe the Ashes as “epic”, they only ever mean it in a general sense. They’re not claiming that this beloved biennial feast of cricket is literally reminiscent of the foundational texts of classical literature, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Which is a shame, because in a curious way it is.
Every time a new Ashes clash approaches, and especially in the immediate run-up to the series, speculation will mount about what will happen when the very first ball of the First Test is bowled. Moreover, from press box to pub, from Bristol to Brisbane, the question will inevitably be asked whether that first ball will dictate the tone of the entire series.
Will we see a Michael Slater moment, echoing the Aussie opener’s imperious clubbing of Phil DeFreitas to the boundary in 1994? Or a Zak Crawley special from 2023, when he crunched Pat Cummins to the fence? Or will a fast bowler do a Harmy from 2006, and spray a shiny new Kookaburra straight to second slip? Will a batter hear the dreaded death rattle of being bowled round their legs, as befell Rory Burns in 2021? Will someone find an entirely new way of being immortalised in Ashes history on Day One, Ball One, for good or ill?
What makes all of these moments epic in the formal sense of the word? It’s because the world’s most famous teller of epic stories, Homer, had a taste for the literary equivalent of a first-baller. The two great heroic poems attributed to him are gigantic undertakings: The Iliad consists of 15,693 lines of ancient Greek verse, while The Odyssey clocks in at 12,110 lines. And yet, as colossal and sweeping as they are, in both cases the overarching theme of the mammoth story is pithily and uncannily encapsulated by the opening word of the poem.
The Iliad begins with μῆνιν (“menin”), meaning wrath or rage, which sums up perfectly the ensuing tale of the greatest Greek warrior Achilles and his actions (and inactions) at a key point in the Trojan War. At the start of the story, after his honour is slighted by his commander Agamemnon, Achilles withdraws from the fighting and broods in his tent, allowing his own side to come to the brink of defeat. How annoyed is he? Imagine Ricky Ponting after he was run out by Gary Pratt and multiply it by 10,000. Then, after his comrade/friend/cousin/lover Patroclus decides to wear Achilles’ armour to scare the enemy and is duly slain, the great man finally returns to the fray in furious vengeance to kill the Trojan champion Hector. Twenty-four books and over 15,000 lines, all neatly boiled down to that single noun, wrath.
Is there an Ashes equivalent? Mitchell Starc’s destruction of Rory Burns’s stumps in 2021 is a contender, containing a flavour of vengeance after England’s heroics in 2019, and setting the tone for a series that firmly wrenched all bragging rights to Australia. But for the most epic example of cricketing wrath, surely we have to zoom out from first balls to consider the overall contribution of another Mitchell … this time Johnson.
The moustachioed Aussie quick must have felt dishonoured during the 2010–11 series, when his wayward accuracy on home grounds led to some infamous mockery by the Barmy Army in 2010–11 (“He bowls to the left, He bowls to the right, That Mitchell Johnson, his bowling is shite”). After three years of ruminating and agonising over that abasement, his return to the fray in 2013–14 was entirely worthy of Achilles, as he terrorised the England batting order and finished with series figures of 37 wickets at an average of 13.97, powering Australia to a 5-0 whitewash and himself to the 2014 ICC Test Player of the Year award. A truly Iliadic performance.
What about the other epic attributed to Homer, The Odyssey? This later poem (unsurprisingly) tells the story of the King of Ithaca, Odysseus – he of Trojan War fame – and the 10 years he spent battling monsters, the elements and the fury of the god Poseidon on his journey home to his wife Penelope. The opening word this time is ἄνδρα (andra), meaning man, and again it neatly condenses the themes at play: in contrast to the Iliad’s struggle between big personalities, the Odyssey is the tale of a single key protagonist; and more than that, it’s an exploration through a panoply of fantastical and awe-inspiring adventures of what it takes to be a man.
Can we map this on to the Ashes? In terms of first balls, you could argue that every single opening bowler and batter who steps up to open proceedings in the greatest of all cricketing battles, deserves hero status. The ancient Greeks might be less kind and only heap glory only on those who in that totemic moment manage to excel: so Starc, Crawley and Slater would qualify, Harmy and Burns not so much.
But there’s another word in the first line of the Odyssey which is highly instructive and which will immediately get you thinking of the most appropriate cricketing equivalent. Odysseus isn’t just a man, he’s a πολύτροπον (polutropon) man. Classicists love wrestling with the translation of this adjective: some render it as “cunning”, others plump for “complicated”. Simon Goldhill, professor of Greek Literature at Cambridge University, has gone so far as to suggest the best English equivalent is “tricky bastard”. In other words he’s a clever, devious swine who always finds a way.
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Who out of the pantheon of Ashes heroes most deserves this accolade? One strong candidate is Mike Brearley, not for being classically educated but for his abilities to wring the best out of his comrades and to serially outwit the enemy. If The Odyssey is a tale of brain over brawn, then Brearley’s achievement leading England to victory in 1981 is a decent fit. In contrast Ian Botham’s glorious exploits in that series with both bat and ball, having had the captaincy stripped from him, are positively Achillean (perhaps this helps explain why the heroics of that famous series still resonate so strongly – it was a victory of head and heart).
But there’s another warrior who stands out above Brearley and all others as cricket’s King of Ithaca. Cunning, complicated, tricky bastard – these epithets all fit him like a padded glove. To find his identity, we need only look again at that word πολύτροπον but this time to translate it literally. In its most basic sense it means “the man of many twists and turns”. Surely that can leave no room for debate. We can argue over who is cricket’s Achilles, but its Odysseus must be Shane Keith Warne. The only pity is he never got to bowl the first delivery of a series. That really would have been epic.
Incidentally, it’s ironic that this oft-used adjective “epic” should carry so much power, seeing as it derives from a tiny Greek word, ἔπος (“epos”), which simply means word. From the minuscule to the massive, film director Christopher Nolan is spending an estimated $250m bringing his version of The Odyssey to the big screen. But who needs to wait for that? When the first ball of the Ashes is unleashed in Perth on Friday, cricket fans the world over may well be in for something Homeric.
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