Never before has an Ashes series felt like an afterthought in an English cricket summer.
But when the Test format's two oldest rivals reunite on Thursday, supporters might be forgiven for thinking: “Haven’t we already had the main event?"
In Test cricket, these are middling teams. England are fourth in the ICC’s Test standings, Australia fifth.
And whatever happens in the course of five Test matches over the next month and a half, it has a lot to live up to given what went before.
World champions?
The chaotic two-and-a-half-day Test between England and Ireland last week might have been – as England captain Joe Root tried to suggest – largely down to an iffy wicket at Lord's.
Still, it was fair to assume England were still on a come down after the emotionally-frayed events of the World Cup final – so recent in the mind, and at the same ground, too.
Whether the win over the Irish has got that out of the system remains to be seen, but there is an extra reason for the mind to be focused.
This Ashes marks the start of the first World Test Championship. The home team are already world champions in one form. Now is the first step on the journey to being able to say the same in cricket longest format.
Saving Test cricket
In truth, the new championship feels like just a footnote to this Ashes, a series sustained by greater history and better supported than any other in the long format.
The World Test Championship is not likely to live or die by matches between England and Australia.
The new competition features nine Test sides – so all Full Members apart from Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan – each playing a series against six of the other eight teams.
Teams score a maximum of 120 points from each series – whether there be two, three, four or five matches in it – and the two teams with the most points at the end will contest the final in 2021 – possibly at Lord’s.
Sound fun? Well, at least it is worth a try.
The Edgbaston effect
Australia might hold the Ashes, but they have lost their past four series in England.
That dates back to the seminal 2005 series, which swung on the second Test at Edgbaston.
England have a formidable record at the ground in Birmingham, and memories of recent success there against Australia could not be any fresher.
When the sides arrived to train at Edgbaston ahead of this first Test, the scoreboards at the ground still carried the final details of the last international match played there.
It was a sorry reminder for the Australians of their eight-wicket capitulation to England in the World Cup semi-final last month.
Anderson the great
James Anderson still looks as svelte as anyone in the England side. But he might have started to feel his age while watching, in his role as a radio commentator, the side’s vibrant pace attack at the World Cup.
At one point on commentary, Anderson was reduced to giggles when he spotted that a delivery from Jofra Archer had gone for six after hitting the top of Bangladesh batsman Soumya Sarkar’s stumps.
Now he seems set to be bowling in tandem with him in whites at some point in the series – although not in the opener as England have decided not to risk Archer, with the Barbados-born pace bowler struggling with a side strain.
Anderson turned 37 this week. He requires 25 wickets to become the first Englishman – and the first fast bowler – to 600 in Test matches.
Nineties throwbacks
Reminders of the 1990s generally prompt shudders and cold sweats among England fans. They did not, after all, win one Ashes series in the whole of that decade.
And yet there are a few hints at it around this week. The teams will be wearing names and numbers on the back of their shirts for the first time in Test cricket history when they take the field at Edgbaston.
A novelty for cricket’s oldest format, sure, but something that has been standard elsewhere in English sport since its introduction in 1990s Premier League football.
And then there is the eerie presence of Steve Waugh around the Australia camp. One of England’s greatest nemeses is a consultant to the current Australia side.
