The Sunday Stat: Melbourne was only the second Test in Australia since 1888 in which no-one reached 50, and the fifth such match in the last 2,377 Tests played over the last 90 years.
In a two-day batting panic-off at the MCG, this strange and multifariously disappointing Ashes continued to be both pyrotechnic and underwhelming. The meaningfulness of England’s consolation victory will be viewed through the prism of what happens in Sydney. It may prove to be a turning point in their recovery from a harrowing sequence of failures, or a blip in an elongated decline.
They deserved to win, for the excellence of Josh Tongue, the game’s most impactful bowler (whose omission from the first two Tests, despite 19 wickets in his three Tests against India last summer, is looking increasingly like a significant blunder), and for batting less badly than Australia. A generation of players now has some experience of winning a Test in Australia, which should help in future encounters, and the burden of the worst sequence of Tests England have ever had in any country (18 without a win, including 16 heavy defeats and zero agonising near-misses) has been lifted.
This was, essentially, a crap match on a crap pitch. Dramatic, but unsatisfying, perhaps even worrying. Ball dominated, bat surrendered, in a hectic, skittish, impatient game, played on the kind of surface that regularly upends modern batsmanship. The game lacked variety, balance and battle, wickets falling so frequently that the narrative evolutions and shifts of mood that make Test cricket textured and engrossing did not develop.
Any Ashes win in Australia is precious, especially after 15 barren years. This was England’s seventh in their last 49 attempts since 1990 (prior to which they had won 51 of 140). Mostly, England wins in Australia have been hefty achievements of endurance, struggle and resolution. In this game, England batted for 62.1 overs, the fewest ever by a winning team in a men’s Ashes match, and the 11th-fewest ever by any victorious side in a men’s Test. They bowled 79.5 overs, the second-fewest by a winning Ashes team since 1928, behind only the 67.3 that Australia bowled in Perth in the first Test.
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For context, in England’s 34 Ashes match victories in Australia in the last 100 years, they had bowled an average of 181.5 overs, and batted for 225.2. This victory was, therefore, just over one-third of the length of the average England away win against the Baggy Greens.
A look at the numbers
Here now follows a deluge of stats to illustrate the statistical absurdity of this abbreviated Test and series.
• In the first four Ashes Tests, wickets have fallen at a rate of one every 40 balls. Wickets fell once every 46 balls in the previous two seasons of Test cricket in Australia, 2023-24, when they played Pakistan and West Indies, and in the 2024-25 series against India. Previously, there had never been an Australian Test season containing three or more matches with a balls-per-wicket figure below 50. Previously, in post-war Tests in Australia, wickets fell once every 68 balls.
• There has not been a series with two two-day Tests since the 19th century.
• The four Tests this series have involved 928.3 overs of cricket, an average of 232.1 overs per Test, which is almost 100 overs shorter than the average length of Ashes Tests in Australia previously this millennium (331.5), and 164 overs fewer than the post-war 20th-century average (396.1).
• This series has taken the top two spots on the Shortest Completed Ashes Tests Since 1888 table – Perth sits top at 847 balls (141.1 overs), Melbourne was an epic five balls longer. Before those games, no Ashes Test had finished in fewer than 1,000 balls since 1895.
• Australia failed to post a half-century just once in their previous 203 home Tests, since 1989. It was England’s sixth Test without a fifty in Australia since 1904.
• England have been bowled out in fewer than 35 overs three times in this series, an indignity that they did not experience in 220 Tests against Australia, home or away, from 1909 to 2001, and one they suffered just five times in 60 Ashes Tests from 2002-03 to 2023. Australia’s second innings was their first sub-35-over skittling in a home Ashes Test since 1936.
• England have lost a wicket every 37 balls this series – their second-worst figure in a Test series (behind the ball-dominated 1888 Ashes).
Photograph by William West/AFP via Getty Images