The Ashes Briefing: England win in Australia for the first time since 2011 as Melbourne Test lasts two days

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After 18 fruitless Test matches, almost 15 years, three captains and two days of utterly madcap action at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, England have finally won a Test match in Australia.

Ben Stokes and his team had hoped to regain the Ashes, of course, with that ambition dashed across only 11 days of cricket in Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide, so some level of perspective is required. Australia were much changed, too, with the urn already theirs.

But at least England have something to show for their tour Down Under, writes Dominic Fifield.

Another huge crowd, 92,045, witnessed the second two-day Test of this extraordinary series — the first time that has happened in the Ashes since 1888. Stokes’ side, having dismissed the hosts for only 132, initially treated their pursuit of 175 as if it was a T20 chase — complete with ramp shots for six, wild thrashes at any width, and scampered singles — which was probably a sensible approach given the pitch still felt treacherous.

The only regret was that neither Joe Root nor Stokes, who had never previously won in Australia, was there to see them home at the end. The four-wicket victory was achieved, perhaps fittingly given the surreal nature of the Test, courtesy of four leg-byes that flew down to the boundary via Harry Brook’s pad at 5.24pm local time.

Cricket Australia will be left licking the financial wounds having been denied healthy third or fourth-day crowds, but those who were there saw:

• A depleted England bowling attack rip through Australia to claim six wickets before lunch, finishing the job after the break with Brydon Carse taking 4-34.
• The hosts batted for only 79.5 overs combined in the match, the shortest they have lasted in a Test when bowled out twice since Sir Don Bradman’s debut in 1929.
• England went full ‘Bazball’ in pursuit of their target of 175, with Carse as a pinch-hitting No 3 hitter and Jacob Bethell reverse ramping the first ball after tea.
• Root and Ben Stokes have finally won a Test in Australia after 18 and 13 attempts respectively.

Here, Tim Spiers, Cameron Ponsonby and Paul Newman dissect the key talking points from the conclusion to a baffling Boxing Day Test.

Stokes finds some respite

Stokes has cut a frustrated, almost haunted figure over recent weeks. This was the biggest series of his captaincy, he’d said Adelaide was his biggest match and that the build-up to Melbourne was the “toughest time” of his reign.

It’s been emotional. And it would take a person with a heart of stone not to be happy seeing a beaming, smiling Stokes speak to the press after finally ending England’s Ashes drought in Australia.

For him and ex-captain Root in particular, this was long overdue. “We had a little hug there and were like: ‘Finally we won one,’” Stokes said of his old friend Root. “It’s an amazing feeling; 10 runs have never felt so far away when I get out.

“It’ll mean a hell of a lot to everyone. We’ve got people at different parts of their careers, some with their first experience in Australia, me and Joe who’ve been on the wrong end a few times. But we’ll all share that same sense of satisfaction of winning out here. Add to that it was the Boxing Day Test match.

“We’re obviously very proud and buzzing that we managed to get this.”

Australia’s Steve Smith congratulates Ben Stokes on England’s win (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)

With England having lost the Ashes last week, before a build-up to Melbourne dominated by questions over the futures of staff and players and then a video surfacing which appeared to show batter Ben Duckett intoxicated, it had been a hell of a week for Stokes. But it has ended with a win.

“It was obviously very difficult for us,” Stokes told his post-match press conference. “The way in which the leadership group — myself, Baz (coach Brendon McCullum), the other coaches and the senior players — kept as much focus on the cricket, that was very important. Once you cross that line, you put everything else to one side.

“Those moments you’re not on the field, things can start fluttering around your head. The way we were able to keep that focus as much as possible was why we ended up on the right side of the result.”

This is only the second time England have conceded a first-innings lead and then successfully chased down a target in a Test in Australia. The only previous time it happened was back in 1895 in Melbourne.

As well as openers Zak Crawley and Duckett, youngster Jacob Bethwell, in only his fifth Test match, showed maturity beyond his years on a difficult wicket to score 40 and earned praise from Stokes for his “calm and measured approach”.

Jacob Bethell was one of only three batters in the match to reach 40 (William West/AFP via Getty Images)

“I was very impressed watching him construct that innings,” Stokes added. “We’ve chased some big scores down before, but 175 on a wicket like that was never going to be easy. When you put everything into consideration with the build-up, the conditions we were faced with, you could almost say that felt like 340.

“It was tough but I love the way we went about it.”

Tim Spiers

The redemption of Brydon Carse

Brydon Carse is England’s guilty pleasure — their Married at First Sight, their supermarket meal deal. You want to eschew him and aim higher for more refined taste but, like Con Air, the meerkat adverts or the Spice Girls, whether you like him or not, he’s repeatedly effective at what he was designed to do.

He is irresistible.

England’s bowling enigma, Carse is their leading wicket-taker by a distance in the 2025-26 Ashes — 19 wickets at an average of 25, seven more than Josh Tongue and Ben Stokes — but also, without doubt, their most annoying bowler.

When Stokes handed him the new ball yet again at the start of day two, you found yourself questioning his captaincy, given Carse’s infuriatingly wayward and inconsistent bowling in Adelaide and the first innings here.

Instead, Carse restricted Travis Head for room in his tightest set of overs for some time, conceding just one run in his opening three. But that was just the start.

Brydon Carse claimed four second-innings wickets to take his series tally to 19 (Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Later in the morning, with Head and Steve Smith at the crease and Stokes on to bowl, you expected this to be the captain’s moment; for him to grease himself up, smear war paint across his face and bowl himself into the ground (and probably the physio’s room) for England’s desperate cause.

Instead, after just five overs during which he bowled Jake Weatherald through the gate, Stokes surprisingly threw the ball to Carse at 12.04pm, with 26 minutes until lunch.

He responded almost immediately with the prize wicket of Head, a player who had taken the game away from England in similar circumstances in Perth, courtesy of a wobble seam delivery that pitched middle and hit off. Head laughed as he walked off the field. It was just too good. The Carse redemption arc.

The 30-year-old produced his best contribution with the ball for some time, seemingly having learned that if he bowled full with a pitch that offered movement, he could consistently trouble the batters. He came up with fast, jarring off-cutters that were almost unplayable, sending a couple down to Alex Carey which, if anything, did too much.

Carey didn’t last long, edging another piercing delivery to Root at second slip. Carse had taken the two biggest wickets in the Australia XI, with Head and Carey leading the run-scoring chart in the series with 728 runs between them. He was close to getting Smith, too, but had to settle for taking tail-end danger men Michael Neser and Mitchell Starc for ducks, the former via a brilliant caught-and-bowled with his outstretched left hand when his body weight was going the other way.

Brydon Carse grasps a return catch offered by Michael Neser (Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Carse seemed inspired by the added responsibility in the absence of the injured Gus Atkinson. He was even, in the most Bazball-esque decision of the entire tour, put in to bat at No 3 during England’s chase as they maintained their policy of finding any means possible not to give Jacob Bethell time out in the middle.

Sent in to keep up the run rate before tea, he danced down to his first delivery from Jhye Richardson and unleashed an almighty slog with all the power of Grayskull (and missed). People around the stadium were laughing. Carse at No 3 after Scott Boland opened the batting for Australia. Test cricket turned on its head.

Brydon Carse was asked to bat No 3 as a pinch hitter, but was dismissed for only six (Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)

Anyway, the experiment lasted eight balls, and England then continued their three-and-a-half-day task of scoring 175 runs with actual batters.

While Carse’s contribution with the ball played a big role in the day’s play, Australia’s batting left plenty to be desired. Carse may have consistently put the ball in good, fuller areas and earned his figures of 4-34 off 11 overs, but Australia were bowled out twice in 79.5 overs, the fewest number they have faced in a Test when bowled out twice since Bradman’s debut in 1929.

“It’s almost like they’ve got on their mind: ‘You’ve gotta get them before they get us,’” said the former Australia opener and coach Justin Langer on Channel Seven. “Batting isn’t about that. It’s about wearing the opposition down and then it gets easier.”

Which, in truth, has been said often enough about England in this series.

Tim Spiers

Ben Duckett leads the ‘Bazball’ throwback

Ben Duckett, allegedly, got drunk in Noosa. The Barmy Army, definitely, did not care.

“Na-na na-na na-na na-na na-na-naaaaa, Duckett’s on the p***, on the p***, Duuuu-ckett’s on the p***,” rang around the MCG. Another first for this historic ground. Sir Don Bradman would be proud.

A man desperately out of form, his first run of the innings was only his 100th of the series. To that point, he had averaged 14. In his last 21 innings, across all formats, he averaged 14. It’s not been easy being Ben Duckett of late.

But as often happens with this England team, when they’re given a number and vacated of the responsibility to think, the clarity they so often refer to appears. On this wicket, with this number of runs required, Bazball was the only — and correct — way to go.

Ben Duckett in full flow (Martin Keep/AFP via Getty Images)

A clip off the toes first ball got Duckett off the mark with a boundary, but he so nearly fell in the same way as the first innings when he chased a ball going down leg-side off Starc and returned a fiendishly difficult caught and bowled chance off a leading edge.

Cue more chaos.

With the ball moving everywhere, Duckett swung wildly at width and clipped off his legs when Australia strayed too straight. When his partnership with Crawley reached eight (eight!), it was their third-highest of the tour.

Mitchell Starc drops a return catch offered by Ben Duckett (Martin Keep/AFP via Getty Images)

A three-ball sequence laid it out best. A charge down the wicket and an edge over the slip cordon for four was cheered. A ramp for six, with wicketkeeper Alex Carey now up to stumps, was celebrated. Before a forward defence, played with half a blade as the bat twisted towards square leg in his hand, was met with a roar of approval.

The fun was over for Duckett, who still carries a beer sponsorship on the back of his bat — a fact that has attracted so little attention this week that Prime Time Lager may be questioning the use of it all — when he was clean bowled by a rocket from Starc. He and Crawley had put on 51 in seven overs, their best partnership of the tour which knocked off almost a third of the total in one fell swoop.

Crawley, with a sensible 37, and Bethell did the bulk of the scoring thereafter. The youngster’s 40 was well constructed; frantic at first, then increasingly assured. It was a reminder of promise and, once he had departed, more experienced heads edged the tourists home. But it had been Duckett who set them on their way.

He may have had a horrid tour, but the opener finally made his mark on England’s wild-west win in Melbourne.

Cameron Ponsonby

What victory means for England

It is almost 15 years since Chris Tremlett bowled Michael Beer on the fifth day of the fifth Test at Sydney in early January 2011 to give England a 3-1 victory over Australia and the Ashes, with all three wins — at Adelaide, Melbourne and the SCG — achieved by an innings.

“All the emotions came out because we’d finally done it,” Tremlett told The Athletic ahead of this series of that winning moment. “We were all jumping on each other and running around not really knowing what to do. I was just elated.”

Little did we know then that another three tours and three Tests of a fourth visit to Australia would pass before England would experience that winning feeling again in any Test on the home soil of the old enemy.

England celebrate victory after Chris Tremlett dismisses Michael Beer at the SCG in January 2011 (Gareth Copley/PA Images via Getty Images)

Eighteen Tests have been played for the oldest prize in cricket in Australia since then and the home side have won 16 of them, with England managing draws on a very different MCG pitch in 2017 and a rain-affected draw in Sydney at the start of 2022.

The cost of those defeats has been high for English cricket, particularly after a 2013-14 series full of recriminations and bitterness for an England side that had won the Ashes convincingly just a few months earlier in England. It was a series that was to end in a 5-0 thrashing with England ripped apart by divisions within the side that were to eventually see the controversial exiling of one of their greatest batters, Kevin Pietersen.

It was to be the end, also, for Ashes-winning coach Andy Flower, who stepped down and took up a new job within the ECB overseeing the Lions. That tour was blighted from the beginning, with Jonathan Trott returning home with mental health issues and Graeme Swann announcing his retirement mid-series.

The 2017-18 tour, won 4-0 by Australia, was not quite so rancorous but it began under the cloud of Ben Stokes missing the series following a late-night altercation in Bristol and featured other drink-related incidents that were to plague England throughout the trip.

Jonny Bairstow became embroiled in a bizarre incident in a Perth bar when he was accused of head-butting Australia’s Cameron Bancroft while Duckett was left out of a mid-series tour match and then sent home from the concurrent Lions tour after pouring a drink — in retaliation — over Jimmy Anderson’s head in the same bar.

Joe Root takes a moment after feeling unwell while batting at Sydney in January 2018 (Mark Evans/Getty Images)

Then came the Covid-affected Ashes in 2021-22 — the one Stuart Broad said should be voided — when Australia again won 4-0 and coach Chris Silverwood lost his job amid accusations that the coaching staff were drinking more than the players in lockdown. Captain Root was soon to follow after defeat in the West Indies took England’s dismal run to one win in 17 Tests.

Which is where captain Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum came in. Despite yet another losing Ashes series, they have a victory in a bizarre two-day Test on an unsatisfactory MCG pitch with Stokes and Root, two of England’s greatest ever players, finally experiencing a win in Australia.

It may only be a consolation, and England have never remotely looked likely to win the series, but it is important to them and may just avert another round of recriminations and sackings in the weeks ahead.

Paul Newman

England supporters celebrate a first win in Australia since 2011 (Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)

Pitch far from perfect

Much was made of the MCG pitch over the two days, with both sets of batters struggling on a surface that was helpful to the seamers. The game lasted 852 balls — five more than the Perth Test — with this the second Ashes Test since 1896 not to feature a batter scoring 50.

CricViz gave an overall PitchViz difficulty rating of 8.9 (out of 10), the highest for any Test match in Australia in the ball-tracking era (since 2006). MCG curator Matt Page had left up to 10 millimetres of grass on the pitch — up from 7 millimetres or 8 millimetres for last year’s five-day Boxing Day Test against India — perhaps fearing it would crack up with hot weather expected from day three onwards.

However, with the match not making it that far, Australia captain Steve Smith suggested Page had made a mistake.

“It probably offered a little bit too much,” he said. “Maybe if he took it from 10 to eight, it could have been a challenging wicket and more even, I suppose. Groundsmen are always learning. We let them judge it and see what they see fit.

“A couple of their (England’s) heavy blows softened the seam a bit. Zak (Crawley) hit one onto the LED boards which definitely softened it, no doubt about it. If we got 50 or 60 more runs across both innings, it could have been a different result.”

Steve Smith made clear his dissatisfaction with the playing surface at the MCG (Morgan Hancock – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)

Australia played no spinner in Melbourne, ditching the injured Nathan Lyon’s replacement Todd Murphy after assessing conditions. Lyon had been left out in Brisbane for the same reason and only bowled two overs in Perth, while England have not picked a front-line spinner all tour and bowled no spin in Melbourne.

“A lot of the wickets we’re playing on now, spin has been… it’s the easiest thing to face on a lot of these wickets that are offering seam,” Smith added.
“Perth we barely bowled spin, we didn’t bowl a spinner in Brisbane, Adelaide was different and a nice wicket. I dunno whether it’s something that can be spoken about. I love seeing spinners play a part in the game, but right now why would you?”

Smith also bemoaned what will be millions of Australian dollars in lost revenue for Cricket Australia owing to another two-day Test. The MCG was due to be a sell-out again on day three.

“Finances aren’t great — I think it was a sell-out tomorrow, disappointing for those who wanted to come along,” he added. “A lot of the Tests, regardless of the wicket, are being played in fast forward. This one, over in two days, not ideal, it’d be good if it was a little bit longer, but wasn’t to be on this occasion.

“I thought England came out today and played some really good cricket.”

Tim Spiers

England’s walking wounded

They made it here in one piece, but they didn’t leave it intact.

For years, England harboured plans of taking a ‘battery’ of fast bowlers to Australia. And, through a combination of micro-managed schedules and a dollop of good fortune, it worked.

If they could have hand-picked their attack for the first innings in Perth, it was the quintet with whom they ended up: Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson, Brydon Carse, Ben Stokes and Mark Wood. It was only the second time in history that Archer and Wood had shared a pitch together in a Test match. It was the fastest bowling attack England had put out, arguably ever.

A pained Gus Atkinson breaks down after suffering discomfort in his left hamstring (Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)

Five weeks later and, with a match to go, only two of the five remain.

Wood was forced home after Brisbane after he re-aggravated his long-standing knee injury in Perth, a match which had been his first competitive match in seven months. Wood had been a sorry sight for the week before he left, hobbling around in a knee brace.

Archer, meanwhile, was ruled out ahead of the fourth Test in Melbourne after reporting soreness in his side. There is a train of thought that, with the Ashes gone, it was best not to risk Archer with a T20 World Cup taking place in February. Those in charge have their jobs on the line, and even if they survive an Ashes defeat, they may not if a World Cup failure follows six weeks later.

Jofra Archer, who has been ruled out with a side strain, warms up with a football on Christmas Day (Morgan Hancock/Getty Images)

Then, Atkinson appeared to pull his left hamstring mid-delivery stride early on day two before leaving the field immediately. It would be a shock to see him feature in Sydney.

The injuries open the way for a potential first match of the tour for Matthew Potts and Matt Fisher at the SCG. Fisher himself only joined the squad as a replacement for Wood and would be making his first appearance for England since making his debut in the Caribbean in 2022.

Cameron Ponsonby