Category: England Cricket

Presenter Ives was breezy, while Cook fronted everything like the last ceremonial horse of some dying cavalry unit

You know what they say. Never judge a pitch until both teams have batted really badly on it. You know what they say. Over here you bat long, bat hard, bat short, bat soft. You know what they say, the Ashes in Australia is all about a hybrid maverick production with a fan-first identity.

Given the brilliance of the basic entertainment on day one in Perth, it was easy to forget that England’s Baz-facing tourists aren’t the only setup with a brave new philosophy in play, out there disrupting the norms, and in need, above all, of a decent start.

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Can Ben Stokes really lead England to victory in Australia? Set your alarms and gird your loins, this one’s not just big, it’s positively Brobdingnagian

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Bazball has been infuriating at times but never forget how bad England were before the Brendon McCullum era

Nobody talks about the last ball of the Ashes. It’s the first that’s famous. That wide that flies to slip, that cover drive for four, that wicket, bowled him! Last balls? I had to look them up. Moeen Ali slicing a drive behind to finish an innings defeat in a dead rubber in 2015; Boyd Rankin being taken at slip off Ryan Harris, Rankin playing in his one and only Test at the fag-end of a 30-over collapse in a 5-0 whitewash that’s been full of them in 2014; a Steve Harmison bouncer ricocheting away off Justin Langer’s shoulder for four leg byes, the only four Australia score in a run chase they’ll never get to make in 2005.

It’s the difference between wondering how things will go, and knowing how they do. One thing’s certain, there’s no guarantee there will be a happy ending. For the last decade, England’s Australian tours have ended in ashes, instead of with them. Andy Flower lost his job as head coach after one humiliating defeat, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood lost his after another, in 2021-22. You can make a pair of XIs out of England players who played their last Test match at the back end of an Australian tour during the past 25 years, and still have a couple of men over to carry the drinks for either side.

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Sport’s famous rivalry began in 1877 and since then 853 men have featured in Australia v England Tests. But who are the best? Here are our top 10 …

• The 100 greatest men’s Ashes cricketers of all time

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• Captain labelled a ‘Cocky Complainer’ on arrival in Perth

• Article critical of Stokes and McCullum’s positive tactics

Australian media gave Ben Stokes a scathing welcome to the country in the buildup to the Ashes. A picture of the England captain pushing a trolley laden with luggage at the airport was accompanied by the headline “Baz Bawl” on the front page of the West Australian newspaper.

“England’s Cocky Captain Complainer, still smarting from ‘crease-gate’, lands in Perth early thinking dopey “BazBall’ can take the Ashes,” read the subhead in reference to an incident in the last series when Jonny Bairstow was controversially stumped. The article went on to criticise England’s tactics under Stokes and the head coach, Brendon McCullum, describing it as “carefree and careless thrash batting”.

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• Root also among 14 players committed to national team

• Bethell and Archer among the other notable inclusions

Ben Stokes has signalled his desire to play in the 2027 Ashes at home after signing a new two-year central contract with England.

Aged 34, and having sustained hamstring and shoulder injuries in the past 12 months, there was a school of thought that this winter’s Ashes – less than three weeks away – could be the Test captain’s swansong.

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Fast bowler says England have confidence and belief as he prepares for what could be his final series against the old foe

“My dad would be Australia and I’d be England,” Mark Wood says with a wry smile when remembering his first Ashes Tests as a boy in his back garden in Ashington, Northumberland. “I’d try to copy Darren Gough, Andrew Caddick, Matthew Hoggard and, later, Jimmy Anderson, who I’d go on and play with. My dad, who didn’t do the actions so well, had to be Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Shane Warne. He was most proud of his Gillespie but his Warne wasn’t great.”

Wood snorts at the idea that his dad, Derek, might have let him win most of those matches. “No, no, no. It was proper cricket. You had to give each other lbw and every time I hit my dad in the leg he’d be going: ‘No, that’s going over’ or ‘That’s down the leg side.’ I was like: ‘Dad, that was plumb.’ I had to get my DRS right.”

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In his candid new book, the former England fast bowler talks about the lasting mental turmoil that ended his 2013-14 Ashes tour

“I couldn’t get the words out because I was crying,” Steven Finn says as he remembers how, hunched over a microphone, he stared at the last lines he was meant to read aloud for the audio version of his raw and revealing new book. Emotion clogged his throat after he had belonged to three Ashes-winning England squads, while never feeling he fulfilled his immense wicket-taking talent, and having ended up lost and broken on the 2013-14 tour of Australia.

Finn tried again but stifled crying choked his reading. He looked up and nodded at the encouraging producer. His mouth almost crumpled but, this time, he got through it.

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• Bowler resumes running but will not make series opener in Perth

• 32-year-old says he ‘expects to return to bowling shortly’

Pat Cummins is officially out of the first Ashes Test as he continues his recovery from a stress injury in his back, with Steve Smith to reassume the captaincy of Australia in the series opener against England next month.

Cummins has not bowled since Australia’s 3-0 series defeat of West Indies in July and had been in serious doubt for the match in Perth on 21 November. After months of speculation over whether he would recover in time, Cricket Australia on Monday finally confirmed that the quick would have to sit out the game at Optus Stadium.

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England’s T20 series against New Zealand finishes on a rather damp note but the tourists claim 1-0 win

Here we go! That’s tough on the two Tims, who had made a rollicking start.

After three balls: NZ 8-0 (Seifert 8, Robinson 0) Wood’s first ball is an inswinger that swings all the way to the square-leg boundary, with an easy nudge from Tim Seifert. The second ball is a dot, and the third is another four – a full toss, thumped through the covers. But then …

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Four decades ago Mike Gatting lamented 30-game schedule and while improvements were made, players will be weary of gruelling season ahead

A meteorologist would say that England’s winter will start this year at midnight on 1 December; an astronomer would point a few weeks later to the 21st, perhaps even the moment at precisely 3.03pm when the northern hemisphere is tilted furthest away from the sun, the least sun-kissed moment of its least sunny day. But a cricket fan might go a little earlier, perhaps as soon as next Saturday at about 7.15am. Leaves might still be clinging to trees as yet unbothered by frost, but that is when the national side is scheduled to play its first fixture of a hectic touring schedule, and by the time it all ends the Ashes will have been decided, a World Cup will have been won, and it will be spring.

For the players involved in all formats, these moments will bring a combination of excitement and perhaps also a bit of dread. The T20 squad departed for New Zealand on Friday, with the four men among them who have also been selected for the Ashes – Harry Brook, Jacob Bethell, Brydon Carse and Zak Crawley – knowing that only injury will bring them home within the next three months (and even then for no more than 10 days, before they depart again this time for Sri Lanka and from there a T20 World Cup in India).

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• Injured Australian captain set to miss at least Perth test

• Brook expects Stokes to play all five Tests in Australia

Harry Brook believes Pat Cummins potentially missing the start of the Ashes would play into English hands but warned that Australia’s depth in pace bowlers means any replacement should not be underestimated.

With just six weeks to go until the first Test in Perth, the fitness of Cummins remains a major talking point following the detection of a lower back stress injury earlier this year. According to some reports, his entire series could even be in jeopardy.

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The England white-ball veteran on his post-captaincy career, his Ashes struggles and the recent death of his father

Another summer is over and, for Jos Buttler, life and cricket feel more precious than ever. The fleeting nature of both has been accentuated by the loss of Buttler’s father, John, after his unexpected death in August. The 35-year-old will soon talk movingly about grief and acceptance but, first, he reflects on his venerable place in white-ball cricket after England’s international summer ended in a low-key series in Ireland.

Buttler opened the batting and Jacob Bethell and Rehan Ahmed, who followed him at three and four in the opening match, are both 21. But he had proved his sustained brilliance a few weeks earlier when, against South Africa, he hit 83 off 30 balls in a blistering knock that helped England to become the first team to pass 300 in a T20 international.

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