They lost the Perth Test by eight wickets.
The Ashes 2025 began with a lot of anticipation and hype as it usually does but the two-day affair in Perth has perhaps given a trailer of what’s in store. For Australia, that’s not a bad thing but England would be utterly disappointed after what transpired in the opening game.
For English cricket, there is no bigger challenge than facing Australia away from home. The Ben Stokes-led side came on this tour with high hopes for multiple reasons. First, they believe they have the best chance of winning the Ashes Down Under with their ‘Bazball’ style. Secondly, the Australian side isn’t at its best with declining players and injury concerns in the pace department.
At one point, it looked like they could draw the first blood. Having taken a first innings lead of 40 runs, England were one down for 65 and had a chance to set a substantial target for the hosts. But in a typical English collapse, they lost four wickets for just 11 runs and could not recover from it.
Some lower order fight from Gus Atkinson and Brydon Carse gave them a fighting chance with 204 runs to defend. However, in Stokes’ own words, they got shellshocked by Travis Head, who hammered 123 off just 83 deliveries. Australia chased down the target inside 29 overs as it ended up being the first Ashes Test to finish inside two days in 104 years.
Kicking off the series, England won the toss and chose to bat. That didn’t go well as they lost Zak Crawley playing a typical flashy drive in the very first over off Mitchell Starc. Apart from Ollie Pope and Harry Brook, no other batter managed to occupy the crease, ending up with only 172 on the board.
The England bowling attack, their fastest in the history, lived up to the hype and was devastating. A rare collective bowling performance, led by Stokes’ five-for, brought them back in the game. Jofra Archer and Carse, in particular, were magnificent on a bouncy pitch with pace.
All of that advantage their bowlers earned them was thrown away by an abysmal batting performance in the third innings. Across two innings, England lasted only 67.3 overs, which is quite embarrassing to put it bluntly. And that was with Australia missing two stalwarts Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood.
England’s ‘Bazball’ approach of going hard at bowlers on almost every delivery turned out to be their downfall. Who could have guessed it, right?
Lasting for barely two sessions and a half cost England in more than one way. For starters, the pitch in Perth generally eases out on the second day afternoon. By the time Australia came out to bat in the fourth innings, they had the best batting conditions of the match on offer. The ball didn’t rush the batters like earlier and the movement had significantly died down.
The second factor that went against England was the rest period for their bowlers between the innings. They sent down 45.2 overs of proper steaming pace in the first innings. They had only a couple of hours of rest between the innings with their batters getting skittled out in 34.2 overs.
When you’re constantly putting your bowlers on the field without any rest period, you can not expect them to bowl at their best level. The same thing happened in the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy, where England spent nearly double the time on the field than India.
ALSO READ:
England have had their moments under the head coach Brendon McCullum, and the philosophy of batting aggressively had some reasoning. But the batting unit has not managed to bring a balance to their method. They have frequently gone too aggressive, and have lost from positions they should have dominated those games.
It has been a recurring theme in the ‘Bazball’ era. And yet the coach and team management hasn’t tried to fix this. Instead they’ve constantly encouraged their batters to go even harder. There is an air of arrogance about them, where they simply refuse to reflect on any kind of criticism.
Until they get out of this bubble and try to work on their shortcomings, England will continue to face such humiliating losses. As for the rest of the Ashes 2025, they might win a Test somewhere as Australia have their own issues to deal with. But if England are to win this series, they must learn to adapt.
For more updates, follow CricXtasy on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
