Ahead of a summer marking 20 years since the series that changed everything, WCM sat down with Marcus Trescothick to relive the sights, sounds and iconography of the greatest Ashes of them all.
Even now, just a single mention of the year is enough. 2005. It remains the touchpoint of the Test match century. Some of us will be coming to its stories for the first time, wide-eyed and disbelieving. Many others will be basking in the flood of returning memories, and wondering out loud where all that time went.
England’s opener Marcus Trescothick, scorer of 431 series runs, can still feel its presence. “To think that the way that it came across over the country, with it being the last series to be put across on terrestrial TV, and so many people getting hooked on it. Even now, the kids at Taunton school, where I work, want to ask me about it – but it’s more the parents! It’s played such a big part in the history of English cricket, the way it ebbed and flowed, and so many things happened against a strong Australian team that people remember.”
That Australia team was not just remembered, it was cherished. Ricky Ponting, the captain, was the secretly beloved panto villain. The popularity of Shane Warne – whose 40 wickets made him Australia’s man of the series – transcended allegiances, while Glenn McGrath, though not so easy to love, was no less formidable.
As opener, it was Tres’ job to execute the team’s strategy of disruptive aggression. “With McGrath and Warne, we knew that if you put those guys under pressure it would be harder for the other guys who weren’t at the same level. It was about being brave, confident and happy with where we were as a team.”
Still, following defeat at Lord’s in the first Test, the approach was turbo-charged at Edgbaston as England, benefitting from McGrath’s absence, posted 400 in 78 overs on a wild first day. Trescothick led the way with a rattling 90, taking Warne downtown for six in the morning session as England sped to 132-1 at lunch. The game’s heart-stopping conclusion on a raucous Sunday morning would go down in legend, the tightest winning margin in Ashes history, leaving the series aflame.
If Trescothick’s counter-assault at Edgbaston was the opening snare drum, Kevin Pietersen’s final-day symphony at The Oval was the full orchestral crescendo. England had gone into the game just needing a draw to clinch the series 2-1 and had lunched nervously on the final day on 127-5, just 133 ahead, before Pietersen’s audacious post-lunch attack on Brett Lee took the game hurtling away from the Aussies. Was Tres surprised by KP’s approach?
“No, that was us,” he says. “That’s what we wanted him to be, no way he was ever going to bat for 60/70 overs and score a hundred, that wouldn’t have worked, he was going to bat for 40 overs and score 150 and change the game. That was his best way of playing the game. It fitted into our process.”
As the afternoon fell to KP, and the loosening crowd prepared to bring home a first Ashes win on English soil in 20 years, Tres was rooted to the same spot at the back of the dressing room. “As much as I would have liked to sit on the balcony, you know what cricketers are like! They’ll sit in the same seat when things are going pretty well, so I watched most of it on the TV at the back of the dressing room rather than watching it live. But what a moment, and what an incredible innings. Nowadays people are brought up watching and living the 2005 Ashes. It goes down in history.” What happened next was almost as epic as what preceded it...
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