Ashes 2017: Moeen Ali – 'Somebody asked me what time my kebab shop opened ...You take it on the chin'

There is a story from the first Test at Brisbane which tells us quite a bit about Moeen Ali, and his unique and genial ability to lower the temperature of even the most heated situation. It was the first evening, and Australia had just dismissed Joe Root to reduce England to 163-4. The Gabba crowd were baying for blood, the Aussies were pumped, and the next man in was Moeen.

As he strode to the wicket to begin his first Test innings in Australia, David Warner immediately piped up from gully. “You’re batting a place too high,” he chided England’s new No6 batsman.

Moeen didn’t miss a beat. “I’m batting two places too high, mate,” he retorted.

Alas, you fear the joke was rather lost on Warner – “it went straight over his head,” Moeen observes with a dry smirk – but still, it is a nice little vignette that demonstrates the delightfully laid-back attitude that Moeen brings to the game. In a series occasionally in danger of drowning in its own molten hyperbole, Moeen’s maximum chill is perhaps as necessary as it has ever been.

Of course, the Australians have tried to unsettle him. More the crowd than the players, and occasionally their joshing lapses into something more sinister. “Somebody asked me what time my kebab shop opened,” Moeen remembers with an entirely straight face, free of rancour or resentment. “That’s about it. Nothing major. You take it on the chin.”

You suspect that Moeen regards a lot of the froth and nonsense surrounding Ashes cricket with a certain wry detachment. Asked about the unique intensity of this fixture, he mischievously punctures the suggestion. “It is more intense, but not as much as I thought it would be,” he says. “I thought Brisbane would be a lot more of a buzz. I mean, there was a buzz. But it’s been pretty quiet, to be honest.”

In the red-hot cauldron of international sport, this is not necessarily a fashionable view. But while Moeen will strain every sinew to help England wrest the series back from 2-0 down, he has the perspective to see that ultimately, there are more important things to life than a game of cricket. Even the Ashes.

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“It is just a game of cricket,” he said. “There are so many people who are so into the Ashes – and I am too – but in a year’s time, we’ll have moved on. Obviously we want to do the best we can, but not get too down. I’ve always said it’s just a game of cricket. The only pressure I get is when I feel I’ve let the team down.”

As it happens, Moeen is currently in one of those moments. The first two Tests have not gone well for him. Four innings and a top score of 40; combined bowling figures of 2-196. A side strain suffered at the start of the tour dwindled away his practice time; a gash to his right index finger has impeded his ability to impart spin. Meanwhile his opposite number, Nathan Lyon, is tying England – and Moeen, who he has dismissed four times out for four – into knots.

But Moeen is not in the mood for excuses. “You feel like you’ve let the team down, and the captain especially,” he says. “Lyon is bowling so well. Everything – the revs, the areas he’s bowling. It’s only been two games. I do believe I can bowl better.”

Moeen shows us the injured finger. The gash – caused by the sharp, unfamiliar seam on the Kookaburra ball – has closed over, but the healing is still uneven, the swirling weals of skin clearly still raw. He will captain a second-string England side in a two-day warm-up game in Perth this weekend to get miles in his legs, but he will not bowl. But he adds: “I don't want to keep blaming the injury. I haven't bowled well.”

Has he tried any special remedies to speed the healing process? “I’ve been told to use olive oil and urine,” he discloses with a vaguely disturbed expression. “I think it’s a myth. It can’t be right.”

Still, you back him to take it all in his stride. In fact, Moeen has become such a serene, quietly indispensable presence in the England side that you occasionally forget he has been in the side for less than four years. He has missed just one Test since making his Test debut in 2014, and will probably pass 50 caps over the winter. Even though he is going through a rough patch, it is still hard to imagine England taking the field without him.

“I knew how tough it was going to be in Australia,” he says. “I never get too over-confident, or too down. I just go with the flow.” And as England try to get their Ashes campaign back on track, a little of Moeen’s immaculate equanimity might be just what they need.