The SCG is a graveyard for English Test careers — but there is still joy to be found in the debris
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Cameron Ponsonby
Scott Borthwick and Mason Crane both played their only Test matches in Sydney, where too many England careers have fizzled out prematurely
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The Sydney Cricket Ground. Where English cricket careers go to die.
In each of the last seven times England have visited the SCG, someone has walked out with three lions on his chest, never to do so again.
More often than not the final stop of a doomed Ashes trip, Sydney has become the location where hail marys are thrown on the young and time is called on the old. Across this century alone, 14 England cricketers have played their final Test here.
“I remember someone saying, ‘You never want to play the last Test of a series’,” says Scott Borthwick, whose sole Test cap arrived in Sydney in 2014 where he made his debut in England’s final defeat of their Mitchell Johnson-induced whitewash.
Things happen quickly on Ashes trips. For Borthwick, he had been playing club cricket in Sydney for Northern Districts CC for the first half of the winter when, while attending the club’s Christmas party with a flight booked home the following day, his phone rang.
“I hear this voice,” Borthwick recalls, at this point a Noosa level of drinks down in the evening. “And he’s like: ‘Scotty?’ And I say: ‘Yeah?’ ‘It’s Andy Flower.’
“’S***. Bear with me.’”
Flower, England’s famously stern head coach, told him that spinner Graeme Swann was going to retire, and he wanted Borthwick to join the group immediately.
“It was crazy,” Borthwick says. “I actually went to Brisbane to watch the first Test with the lads from the cricket club, so for the first two days of the series I was with the Barmy Army. And then in the last Test, I played.
“One of the lads created this picture, a side-by-side, of me with a beer in my hand in Brisbane. And then with my Test cap in my hand at Sydney.”
England’s three debutants, Gary Ballance, Scott Borthwick and Boyd Rankin, take to the field at the SCG in January 2014 (Anthony Devlin/PA Images via Getty Images)
The 2013-14 series has gone down in infamy as one of the great capitulations. Kevin Pietersen, who arrived as vice-captain, was one of 10 members of the squad who never played again. A leaked document from the ECB alleged that, in the days leading up to Sydney, Pietersen had called his captain Alastair Cook “weak”, the team “s***”, and his teammate Swann a “c***.”
So, a happy environment into which to arrive.
“I mean, for me, I was on my first Ashes tour and when I arrived we had a week off,” Borthwick says. “And Ben Stokes was there, who’s my mate, and his now wife was there as well. So it was like: this is perfect!
“There was trouble in the camp that I didn’t know about. And it wasn’t until afterwards where you go, ‘Actually, that probably wasn’t a very happy place’. But when I got the nod for Sydney, it was just: ‘Well, this is amazing’.”
He removed Johnson in the first innings, where his seven overs went for 49. Second time round he dismissed centurion Chris Rogers, Brad Haddin and Ryan Harris on the way to taking 3-33, for all that Australia eventually prevailed by a massive 281 runs.
Scott Borthwick bowling on Test debut at the SCG (Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Borthwick isn’t alone in finding joy in the debris.
Four years later it was Mason Crane who was the debutant. He too, to this point, has never played again either. “It was all the emotions,” Crane, now 28, says of the week. “Exciting, obviously a bit nervous, but you’re just itching to get out there.”
Crane and Borthwick’s debuts have as many similarities as they do differences.
Both were picked as leg-spinners, itself cricket’s ultimate doomed art, and both had played club cricket in Sydney in the year before their selection. Crane’s performances had even been strong enough to earn him a game for New South Wales as an overseas player, something no one had done for over 30 years before him since the celebrated Pakistan all-rounder Imran Khan was picked.
But unlike Borthwick, who had been scooped up mid-series, Crane had been part of the squad from the beginning and was on high alert for most games in the series with first-choice spinner Moeen Ali experiencing a number of low-level injury issues.
One thing was the same, however. By the time his chance came, the Ashes were gone.
“You know,” Crane reflects, “speaking to the people who had been on the trip before where it really did go wrong, they all said that we held it together pretty well in the circumstances.”
Mason Crane appeals for the wicket of Usman Khawaja at the SCG (Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Crane’s debut came in the scorching heat and also came in a heavy defeat. Borthwick lost in three days and, while Crane made it to five, he bowled close to 50 overs as Australia racked up 649-7 in the one innings they batted.
Temperatures across the match reached 47.3 degrees Celsius, the hottest Sydney had experienced in 79 years.
“They could have easily declared,” Crane says with a laugh. “But they just didn’t want to. The soles of my feet were burning on the floor. I was having to change my shoes every three or four overs just because of how hot it was. It was horrible.”
Joe Root, then the captain, finished the match in hospital after suffering from severe dehydration, diarrhoea and vomiting. England said it had nothing to do with the heat and was just a stomach bug, but, yeah.
Both Borthwick and Crane experienced the Ashes spotlight in its fullest. Borthwick remembers the smile that crossed his face when fielding on the boundary and receiving an earful from the partisan Aussie crowd, while Crane, as the 20-year-old bright young leggie with the Ashes already decided, was the story of the week.
“It felt like I was the talking point,” Crane says. “I don’t know if I was, but definitely in the morning, where suddenly I’m doing a couple of different interviews, you go: ‘Well, it’s not just another game, is it?’”
Crane’s figures of 1-193 were the most an English bowler had conceded in history on debut, but he received wraps from the great Shane Warne in a display that was very much meant to be a beginning rather than an end. He would have had more wickets as well had he been able to keep his foot behind the line. His would-be first Test wicket was ruled out for a no-ball.
Mason Crane unfurls a leg break on debut at the SCG (Matt King/Getty Images)
“I still can’t see how you can give that as a no-ball,” Crane protests. “It came up on the screen and everyone was like, ‘Ah, that’ll be alright’, and then old mate’s got his arm stuck out! I’ve barely bowled one since.”
Nor was it the only mishap of a chaotic week. In his first innings with the bat, he was run out after a mix-up with James Anderson. A run out that, on ESPNcricinfo’s scorecard, is described as “Crane slow to react”.
“Well, I want to complain because I did react,” Crane laughs. “I reacted by saying: ‘No’.
“I look back and think I was literally a child. It’s interesting because it was so long ago that for most people, if their last Test was that long ago, they’d be retired.
“My only thing now is it’s just such a shame because I feel I’ve been so much better since then. I wish I could teleport back there right now as I am today and see how that would go, as that would give me a better idea of how I really am at that level.”
Mason Crane attempts to take a return catch (William West/AFP via Getty Images)
Both had played white-ball cricket for England before their Test debuts, but neither would do so after.
Crane was part of the following Test tour, but suffered a stress fracture that ruled him out for a year and saw him slip away from the selectors’ consciousness. While for Borthwick, there wasn’t another Test match scheduled until the English summer, by which point a large chunk of the County Championship had been played and Moeen had emerged to take the spinner’s role.
Nor was Borthwick alone in his experience of that week in 2013-14, either. His debut came alongside those of Boyd Rankin and Gary Ballance. Rankin would never play for England again and suffered from cramps during the match, while Ballance managed a 23-match career.
To have three debutants itself is a statistical quirk and a sign of the strife England were in, even more so that both Rankin and Ballance would go on to represent different countries. To look at the scorecard is to see that England had three debutants that day: one Englishman, one Irishman and one Zimbabwean.
“Alastair Cook gave us the caps,” Borthwick says with a laugh. “And it was so fast. It was almost like, ‘Right, there you go.’ It was a bit of a sign of, ‘Right, let’s get this game done’.”
Alastair Cook hands Scott Borthwick his England cap ahead of the fifth Test in 2014 (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
To be part of England’s cemetery parade through Sydney is a point of pride and regret for both. Borthwick, now 35, had a long and successful career for Durham and Surrey and is now turning his hand to coaching. While Crane is plying his trade for Glamorgan and has had a couple of strong years.
“As more time passes, I realise, ‘Did that really happen?’,” Crane says. “I just thought I want to do this again and again. My goal ever since has been to play another one.”
On Sunday, 11 men will walk out for England to take on the Sydney curse. The Ashes may be gone, but their careers have not. We shall see in four years’ time how many are still there to tell the tale.
