-tries-to-cool-himself-down-with-a-towel-while-batting-in-hot-temperatures-on-day.jpeg?trim=295,0,130,638&width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800 "England’s sad batting collapse leaves Ben Stokes ‘broken’ and Ashes dreams in tatters – UK Times")
Blind rank these 2025 England Ashes collapses.
Is Perth day one your poison of choice? 160 for five to 172 all out. Or maybe Perth day two, where England went from 65 for one to 104 for seven. Brisbane day one was good. Starting the day by falling immediately to five for two. But Brisbane day three was better. 90 for one, to 128 for six.
Or, was it today? Day two at Adelaide. Where, on England’s fifth opportunity with the bat, they failed for a fifth time.
If it wasn’t the worst, it was the saddest. Fortune has favoured England throughout this tour, a fact that makes the scale of the implosion all the more unbearable. In the first two Tests they won the toss, and even on this occasion when they didn’t, an under par batting display from Australia presented the perfect route to victory.
The pitch was flat. The square boundaries were short. And the weather was scorching, settling in at over 40 degrees throughout the afternoon.
This was England’s opportunity. A day of calm, where they bat the day, put overs into a melting Australian bowling attack and the match would be in their hands. Instead, they fell to 168 for eight.
“The first couple of wickets [this series] were a bit more challenging than what this is,” said a resigned Marcus Trescothick after play. “Then Australia made it tough for us today.”
Where morale sapped the fastest was that this wasn’t your typical England collapse where batters fall in a blaze of infuriating glory. They had heeded their captain’s message to “fight”, but they were instead outclassed.
All of Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Harry Brook got good balls. But this was the tightrope England had created for themselves as a result of their past failings. One afternoon of quality Aussie bowling was all it took for their hopes of a miraculous turnaround to disappear.
The exception was Ollie Pope, whose latest failure was to see a career close in live time. His three off 10 balls was tortured. Scoring three runs from his first two deliveries, he then found himself facing a Scott Boland over where he just about made it through intact. Pope has often made the point that when he’s playing well, people describe him as busy. When he’s not, the same people call him frantic. Today he was frantic.
The first ball he faced from Lyon he drove to mid-off, before from the second he advanced and chipped tamely to mid-wicket where he was caught. Aghast at what he had done, he left the field a broken man. His average against Australia now reads 17.66 from 15 innings, with not even a single half-century to his name in that time.
“I don’t think it has got to that point where he is void of confidence,” Trescothick said of England’s No.3. A sentence that is only said when the question itself is required.
Pope started this tour well with a promising 46 in Perth. He has not looked the same since. On England’s last Ashes tour he was dropped after the Adelaide Test. Only an historic contribution in the second innings will save him from the same fate here.
Even where England won, they lost. Ben Stokes battled throughout the afternoon to finish on 45 not out off 151 balls. Towards the end of the day he was cramping and barely able to run. After play it emerged that he had failed to take on the necessary carbohydrates as any attempt to do so made him want to vomit. Tomorrow he will have to finish batting, and then bowl.
“He’s pretty broken in there,” Trescothick said of the England captain. “But the medical team will work on him overnight and get him back in the frame of mind for tomorrow.”
Stokes’ innings will go down as heroic, but it also showed why it was the style of innings that England had railed against for so long. Of innings lasting 50 balls or more in the Stokes-McCullum era, it is the fourth slowest of all time. Pressure was absorbed, but it was not returned. The scoreboard didn’t move.
If England fans are to take any solace, it is that this tour is no longer becoming one of the great what-ifs, and instead becoming a certainty. Australia are better than England. And we were wrong to even hope in the first place.
Before, there was a sense of a moment robbed. England, on the biggest stage, had buckled but the damage had been self-inflicted. But if they rose to their normal levels, all would be right. That is no longer the case. The evidence is too overwhelming.
As Root and Brook went out to bat after the lunch break, Brook lay down on his back on the boundary’s edge. He did so again at the drinks break, draping his face with a white towel as the heat overwhelmed him. This is why England struggle here so often and for so long. It’s suffocating, it’s relentless and the opposition are good.
England have batted five times this series and they have five innings remaining. The Ashes are all but gone, and yet somehow, it feels it can still get worse.
