Revisiting England’s overshadowed summer of perfection, 20 years on

Seven wins from seven Tests and a recasting of the XI set the team on its path to Ashes glory 12 months later

The summer of 2005 was, to state the obvious, special for England’s men’s Test side. The Ashes regained after the misery of the 90s, the wild entry of Kevin Pietersen, an open-top bus around Trafalgar Square – a barely believable sight in today’s paywall era.

But perfection? That came the summer before with seven wins from seven home Tests, a streak of victories that would end at eight in the winter against South Africa. Stephen Fleming’s New Zealand were swept aside in three, Brian Lara’s West Indies in four. Michael Vaughan’s England appeared ready for Ricky Ponting’s Australia.

The run began in May with a twisted knee. Vaughan, who had just led his team to a series victory in the Caribbean, went to sweep a net bowler before the first Test at Lord’s against New Zealand. Cue a stretcher for Vaughan and the call to Middlesex’s Andrew Strauss for a debut. “Everything about him just looked right from the first moment I saw him,” Marcus Trescothick later wrote of Strauss in his autobiography. “He netted right, practised right, prepared right, even walked out to the middle with me right.” A lovestruck opener had found the perfect partner.

Strauss hit 112 in his first innings and was on 83 in a chase of 282 when Nasser Hussain, playing his 96th Test, ran his partner out. The next man in, a battle-hardened Graham Thorpe, was quick to relieve Hussain from the guilt of his error. “Look, you miserable git, stop behaving like a pork chop,” said Thorpe, according to Hussain’s later retelling. “Let’s win this game.” With 139 still to get, Hussain agreed. He secured a hundred and victory with consecutive shots in what was to be his final Test, the decision to retire made in his mind earlier in the game. “When Strauss scored his hundred, I felt a calmness descend over me,” Hussain wrote in his autobiography. “I realised that it was somebody else’s turn now.”

Three days after the win Hussain announced his retirement from all forms of the game. It stopped England from having to make a tricky call for the second Test at Headingley when Vaughan returned. “[Hussain] would have had to play the next game and Strauss, despite his heroics, would have been dropped,” Vaughan wrote in Calling The Shots. Before Hussain’s public pronouncement, Shane Warne had written in the Times that Trescothick should be the man to make way, having “been found out at Test level over the past two years”. Hundreds followed for Trescothick and Geraint Jones in Leeds before Thorpe’s unbeaten fourth-innings 104 at Trent Bridge completed the whitewash.

Centuries flowed across England’s batting order but the series headliner was a 25-year-old quick in his frightening pomp. Steve Harmison, with bounce to follow you round corners, took 21 wickets against New Zealand, only a few months on from his epic seven for 12 at Sabina Park. Mike Selvey, writing in these pages midway through the season, was adamant: “His position as the most deadly pace bowling weapon in the game is unquestioned.”

The West Indies series began at the back end of July, as did the finest few weeks of Rob Key’s career. Replacing the injured Mark Butcher for the first Test at Lord’s, Key was waiting to bat when Vaughan delivered an offhand comment: “A day to get on the honours board, Keysy.” A maiden Test century followed, turning into 221. “Vaughan was clever,” wrote Key in his autobiography. “He knew how to plant a seed in someone’s head … He could make a player feel alive, at the heart of the team, without even trying.”

A resurgent Ashley Giles took nine wickets at Lord’s with his left-arm tweak and did the same in the second Test at Edgbaston. At Old Trafford Key trumped his double hundred with an unbeaten 93 in the chase, the series secured with his pal Andrew Flintoff at the other end. “The one thing I always wanted, after everything we’d been through, from age-group cricket to academies and onwards, was for me and Fred to walk off the pitch together after helping England to win a Test match.” Key later wrote. “That was the dream.”

Flintoff’s career was always about the moments but the numbers were spectacular that summer too, averaging more than 60 with the bat and under 25 with the ball in Tests. Nine one-day internationals brought three hundreds and 11 wickets at 16.81. “I saw no harm before the third Test at Old Trafford in talking him up as arguably the best cricketer in the world at the time,” Vaughan wrote in his autobiography.

Not everything was rosy. For all his on-field success, Harmison struggled with his mental health as the summer wore on. “I could feel the brightness being replaced with a cloak of darkness,” he wrote in his autobiography. “That’s the thing with depression. It doesn’t give a shit who you are, what you are, where you are … It doesn’t care if you’re the No 1 bowler in the world.”

Somehow, Harmison took nine wickets at the Oval for the seventh victory. “Before that Test match I wasn’t in a great place mentally,” Harmison tells the Spin. “But because I’d bowled so much, and my action was so repetitive all I had to make sure was get through five overs of a spell and recover from that. The bowling action looked after itself. I could’ve done it with my eyes closed.”

Despite his inner turmoil, Harmison looks back fondly on the collective efforts of that summer. “Everywhere we went, we all went,” he says. “That group was so tight, so together. To see other people’s success, that was always special – 2005 will always define that team, but 2004 made that team.”

Oh Jimmy, Jimmy

Know who else played against West Indies at the Oval in 2004? Jimmy Anderson’s four wickets took him to 33 after 11 Tests at an average of 34.09, these the early years when he was still figuring the whole thing out. The Spin, for obvious reasons, has been rummaging through Anderson’s Cricinfo profile in recent days, picking up on various bits and bobs that underline just how long he has been going. A personal favourite is that he remains – despite missing out on all the post-2015 fun – England’s leading one-day international wicket-taker, a feat he achieved 11 years ago.

Among the 10 players he lined up alongside on his Test bow in 2003, the last player to feature for England was … Harmison, who finished at the Oval at the end of the 2009 Ashes. On 700 Test wickets Anderson obviously faces a tough task to breach Warne’s 708 with only one game left to play, and it would be even more spectacular if he nabbed the 13 required to get to 1,000 international poles. Get there somehow and that would make it 100 Test wickets against West Indies, making them the fourth side he’s racked up a century against (Australia, India and South Africa are the others).

It’s nine years since he went past Ian Botham to become England’s leading Test wicket-taker with his 384th, and till a few days ago it didn’t feel entirely out of the reckoning that he might try to double that tally. More remarkable numbers will be poured through in the coming days and weeks. We’ll miss him.

Quote of the week

“I think the boys have just been outstanding. I just said to them in the dressing room that they’ve given me new love or a little bit of a rebirth into cricket and my love for cricket” – Jason Holder reflects on an emotional early-season stint at Worcestershire.

Memory lane

Five years ago this week England’s opening pair of Jonny Bairstow and Jason Roy made a mockery of what used to be regarded as a monumental target of 358, as they went two up in their ODI series against Pakistan. Bairstow, who finished with 128 from 93 balls, and Jason Roy (76 from 55 balls) added a blistering 159 before they were parted in the 18th over. England won the ODI series 4–0, after the first match was washed out, with the series aggregate of 1,424 runs then the most for any team in an ODI series where they played a maximum of four innings. The total surpassed India’s of 1,275 runs in their home series against Sri Lanka in December 2009.

Still want more?

Ali Martin broke the news that England were moving on from Jimmy Anderson this summer; Andy Bull led the appreciation of the “harbinger of summer” and warned there would never be another like the Lancashire bowler; Simon Burnton explained England’s reasoning; Mark Ramprakash said the “time was right” for the nation’s greatest bowler to retire; and the record breaking 41-year-old himself announced he was bowing out at Lord’s because the “next Ashes felt like a stretch”.

In non-Jimmy content, meanwhile … May is not yet out but Surrey are looking ominous in the County Championship.

And Amy Jones helped England open their T20 campaign against Pakistan with a win.

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