Australia’s triumph in the 1936-37 Ashes series on home soil remains a singular feat in Test cricket history: the only instance of a team overturning a 2-0 deficit to secure victory in a five-match series.
England’s current 2-0 predicament in the Ashes series offers scant consolation, save for two potential scenarios: a) the possibility of a captivating stage musical should a remarkable comeback culminate in a historic 3-2 win; and b) a sense of unfortunate familiarity.
This marks the eighth occasion in the last 10 Ashes tours to Australia that England have succumbed to defeat in the first two Tests, and the 12th time in the past 20 Ashes encounters across both hemispheres – a trend that began in 1989, when England responded to adversity with frequent team changes, making four alterations after each of the first four Tests, followed by six changes for the sixth and final match.
Since World War II, England has dominated the unenviable category of “Losing the First Two Tests of an Ashes Series,” leading by a significant margin of 17 to 2. Australia’s sole experiences of this scenario, which has become almost synonymous with England’s Ashes campaigns, occurred in 2013 and 1978-79 (when the majority of Australia’s first and second-choice players were participating in World Series Cricket instead of the Ashes).
While the echoes of the first day in Perth, the instances of Ben Stokes’ career-defining fortune-flipping, Joe Root’s belated addition to an Australian honours board, and the theoretical prowess of England’s batting lineup offer glimmers of optimism, historical Ashes data provides little substantive comfort.
In 16 of those 18 prior post-war Ashes series where a team trailed 2-0 after two Tests, that team subsequently lost the series by at least a three-Test margin. In 1994-95, England narrowly deviated from this trend, losing only 3-1.
The notable exception to this pattern of heavy defeats was England’s performance in the 2023 series, giving the current top six recent experience of nearly achieving the feat of a comeback from two matches down to win an Ashes series without the presence of Don Bradman.
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However, this series has unfolded distinctly differently from 2023. Two years prior, England pushed Australia closely in both defeats – after the dramatic Edgbaston and Lord’s Tests, England had scored 34.6 runs per wicket to Australia’s 35.8.
This time, they have averaged 22.7 per wicket to 38.2, figures that are eerily similar to those at the same stage in both 2021-22 (21.8 to 39.5) and 2017-18 (23.9 to 38.6).
Most significantly, this is Australia, where England have now endured a 17-Test winless streak. They have only experienced a longer sequence of defeats in a specific country on one occasion.
They went 19 Tests without victory in Pakistan, but that was spread over almost four decades, in between victories in Lahore in October 1961 (England’s first Test in Pakistan) and in the Karachi dusk in December 2000. Also, 17 of the 19 Tests were drawn, including three consecutive stalemated series. And one of the two defeats was a narrow one, by three wickets.
In contrast, of the 15 losses in England’s current sequence of defeats in Australia, three have been by an innings. The five in which Australia have successfully chased a fourth-innings target, England have lost by eight, nine or 10 wickets.
The seven Tests England have lost when batting last have all had defeat margins of at least 120 runs. In one of the two draws, England were nine wickets down at the end, with James Anderson and Stuart Broad blocking out the final overs. In the other, Australia comfortably batted out for a draw at the MCG.
While this doesn’t necessarily condemn Stokes’ England to the same fate as their predecessors, it does underscore the magnitude of the task they face.
They have batted for just 219.1 overs in the two Tests thus far, the fewest overs faced by any team in falling to a 2-0 deficit in an Ashes series, and almost 85 overs fewer than at the equivalent stage of their dismantling by Mitchell Johnson in 2013-14.
In Brisbane, for the first time in a Bazball-era Ashes match, Australia were the faster-scoring team. England went at 3.79 runs per over, brisk by most standards but the sixth slowest match scoring rate since the Stokes-McCullum period began in 2022.
However, they conceded runs at more than 4.5 per over for the second consecutive game (4.57 in Perth, 4.54 in Brisbane, the fifth and sixth least economical Tests by an England bowling team).
Brisbane was only the fourth time in their 43 Tests that the Bazballian England have scored slower than their opponents. In the other three (all defeats, in the final Tests against Sri Lanka at The Oval and Pakistan in Rawalpindi in 2024, and in the Edgbaston loss to India in the summer), they scored fewer than 0.25 runs per over slower.
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England soundly beaten by Australia in second Test drubbing
One of the many disappointments was that, where Australia’s lower order contributed vital runs and equally vital hours, England’s again evaporated rapidly.
The Mitchell Starc-Scott Boland ninth-wicket partnership, which shifted the tone of the series and consolidated Australia’s first-innings advantage into domination, lasted 27.2 overs
England’s eighth, ninth and 10th-wicket partnerships, in four innings across the two Tests combined, have lasted 27.5 overs, equating to a wicket lost every 14 balls.
To illustrate the gulf between on-paper potential and on-pitch actuality, Gus Atkinson (with a century and four other scores over 35 in his 15-Test career) and Brydon Carse (three 35-plus scores in the recent India series, County Championship average over 30, two first-class hundreds) have scored 78-8 off 91 balls in Perth and Brisbane.
Brendan Doggett (Test novice, with a domestic first-class average of 8.5) and Boland (domestic average 12.1, previous Test high score of 20) have scored 41-2 off 125 balls. Australia have scored at a Bazballistic rate, but also played with a flexibility and awareness England have failed to apply for more than fleeting passages.
On the plus side, England’s spin attack is leading Australia’s in wickets taken after the first two Tests.
In the last 50 years of Ashes cricket in Australia, every time England’s spinners have taken more wickets than Australia’s in the first two Tests, they have gone on to win the series – in 2010-11, 1986-87 and 1978-79.
In Brisbane, when Will Jacks took the first wicket by a spinner in an Ashes Test in the southern hemisphere since Steve Smith dismissed Jack Leach in the fourth Test four years ago, England roared into a 1-0 lead in the spinners’ wickets tally for the series.
Admittedly, England were 2-0 up after two Tests in 1978-79, and 1-0 ahead in the other two series, but where there is a statistical straw, let us clutch it, and clutch it hard, before it floats off into the wind.
For those wishing to build an entire house of statistical straws, you could also point to the fact that the last time England were bowled out in under 80 overs in the first four innings of an Ashes was in 2005, another triumphant series.
And, after Stokes and Jacks’ 96-run stand, you could note that every time England have had a seventh-wicket stand of more than 90 in Australia since the Second World War, they have won the Ashes (Ian Bell and Matt Prior putting on 107 in 2010-11, Geoff Miller and Bob Taylor combining for 135 in 1978-79).
Blow that one down, Mr Wolf.
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