A Hot Mess

GH heaves an exasperated sigh

So much for what Brendon McCullum called ‘the biggest series of all of our lives.’ The long-anticipated Ashes of 2025-26 has hardly begun before it is effectively over, all that Bazball capital that England so carefully husbanded revealed in eleven days as a crypto scam.

England, frankly, has always struggled to compete in Australia: remember that they have won only nine Tests down under since 1980. The most bizarre aspect of the team coached by McCullum and captained by Ben Stokes was their belief that this could simply be willed away with positive thinking - that a bit of ‘strong unity’ would ‘allow our talent to come out’ and ‘create our own history’. Before the series, Ben Stokes defined this set-and-forget ethos: ‘So in terms of telling them what to do cricket-wise - nothing. Just keep going out and doing what you’ve been doing, because it’s been pretty good.’ In these parts, ‘pretty good’ won’t cut it. You need to be uncompromisingly better overall, because Australia in their own conditions play as if with an extra man.

England coming into the Ashes

England now