When ‘baseball’ intent meets conservatism: England’s Ashes post-mortem | cricket news

Baseball came to Australia promoting fearlessness and fun but left Australian shores in tatters.

After nearly four years of planning, England lost the Ashes in just 11 days and the series 4–1.

With an arsenal of raw pace bowlers, Ben Stokes’ England and their thousands of travelling fans arrived Down Under with optimism and hopes of returning the pitcher to Australia after 15 years. Instead, the bowlers were beaten.

Mitchell Starc, emulating Ian Botham, led Australia to unprecedented success throughout the series with 31 wickets and two half-centuries.

Travis Head became the first Australian opener to score more than 600 runs in a series since Michael Slater’s 623 in the 1994-95 Ashes

Led by Starc and Scott Boland, who claimed 20 wickets, the Australian bowling attack was outstanding even without Josh Hazlewood in five tests.

Pat Cummins in four out of five matches and Nathan Lyon in three. England,

The England team has struggled to keep its bowlers fit.

In contrast, England has struggled to keep their bowlers fit and has made minimal adjustments in their selection to address this issue.

. England came closest to victory in the series opener in Perth and the fourth match of the series in Melbourne before winning the Boxing Day Test.

Guess how many quick bowlers have played there? Four. Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson, Mark Wood and Braydon Kars. With Wood ruled out of the second Test injured,

England did not bring in fast bowler Josh Tong but opted for batting all-rounder Will Jacks, who also bowls off-spin, at

The Gabba. With a first-class bowling average of 43.47, slightly better than Joe Root, Jacks was at best a batsman who could bowl and not the other way around.

It was a poor selection, made with the intention of shortening England’s tail rather than taking Australia’s wickets.

England did not rectify this mistake throughout the series and did not play four fast bowlers together in a match except in the Perth Test.

In the four tests he played, Jacks took six wickets and bowled just 65.4 overs.

In contrast, Josh Tongue took 18 wickets in three tests and bowled 97.2 overs.

Interestingly, England’s only spinner Shoaib Bashir, who was backed by the current management for 19 Tests,

did not play a single game in the five-match series. Replacing a wicket-taking fast bowler with a batsman who can provide some off-spin,

Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes effectively increased the workload and pressure on England’s fast-bowling attack led by Jofra Archer.

England’s eccentric selection allowed Australia’s lower order to add valuable runs and failed to fully capitalise on Australia’s own injury concerns.

Down Under matches India’s defeat

When India toured Australia for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in 2024-25, they employed a somewhat similar strategy and lost 3-1.

Between Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammad Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Harshit Rana and Akash Deep, they had five frontline quick bowlers in their squad for the India series.

However, these five bowlers never played together in any of the four matches. Nitish Kumar Reddy has effectively worked as India’s fourth fast bowler in all five tests.

He bowled just 44 overs in the series, taking five wickets and giving away runs at an economy of 4.31.

With defensive selection throughout the series, the team management repeatedly pressed Siraj and Bumrah.

The selection not only broke Bumrah in the fifth Test but also reduced India’s chances of winning the match.

With three quick bowlers, Nitish Reddy and a spinner, sometimes even two, India’s primary problem throughout the series was the lack of consistent threats suited to the situation.

Between 2018 and 2022, India played four fast bowlers in 14 Tests outside Asia, winning six and losing seven.

At the same time, when they chose three quick bowlers in 18 tests, they won five and lost ten.

Using long-tail strategies in army conditions yielded better results than prioritising batting over bowling power.

Two defensive coaches

Although they exude an aggressive personality and hunger for results, both McCullum and Gautam

Gambhir has often pursued respectable scores rather than maximising their chances of taking 20 wickets in test matches.

In their respective tours of Australia, both communicated effectively by choosing to play an extra batsman or all-rounder instead of a frontline quick bowler to strengthen their playing eleven.

That is negative thinking. An extra bowler contributes much more to the bowling attack than an extra batter in the batting unit.

The lack of threat makes life difficult for the batsmen, as the opposition can attack for longer periods.

selection was aimed at providing an extra batting cushion in the event of a collapse rather than increasing their chances of taking 20 wickets in the lower order.

This does not mean that England would have won the series if they had selected a fourth frontline quick bowler.

They needed better catches (17 chances dropped) and more disciplined batting.

However, it would significantly improve Australia’s chances of getting out twice in a Test match and competing for a win.

Winning Test matches in SENA countries is never easy for visiting teams.

It also becomes difficult when teams reduce their bowling due to lack of faith in their batting. India learnt that lesson last year, and England learnt it again the hard way.

As seen during India’s tour of England in 2025, unless both sides adopt similar conservatism, this approach rarely succeeds.