The Athletic has launched a Cricket WhatsApp Channel. Click here to join.
They cannot blame the shambles of Snicko, even if they have been on the wrong end of technological chaos that has been an embarrassment to the integrity of Ashes cricket.
They cannot even point a finger at ‘Bazball’ and another raft of the brainless shots and missed opportunities that saw them go 2-0 down on the biggest Test stage of them all.
England have simply been outplayed and outclassed in Adelaide by a relentless and far superior Australia. Their dream is in tatters.
They really have tried to do it differently in this third Test. All that planning — all that attacking intent and the Bazball philosophy of Ben Stokes, Brendon McCullum and Rob Key — has effectively been thrown out of the window.
England ripped up a game plan that was supposed to bring success in Australia after three tours and 14 barren years without even a Test victory and basically started again.
Far from “running towards the danger”, the battle cry of coach McCullum over three and a half mainly fruitful years, England eschewed the breathless, often reckless, cricket that saw them sell their wickets far too cheaply in Perth and Brisbane.
None more so than captain Stokes, who produced an extraordinary display of concentration and defiance in temperatures touching 40C (104F) to bat for four and a half hours and remain unbeaten for 45 hard-fought runs off 151 balls. But going against their instincts has proved just as fruitless as their best positive intentions.
Australia, in their own conditions, have been far too good for England.
Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer’s ninth-wicket partnership feels like too little, too late (Philip Brown/Getty Images)
England had to bat exceptionally well on the second day of this third Test to have any chance of breathing life into a series that will define them. On a flat pitch in searing heat, conditions made for run-making, they had no answer to their hosts.
England’s bowlers — except for Jofra Archer, who took five wickets in Australia’s first innings — had not been quite good enough with the ball on Wednesday. They got day two off to the worst possible start, allowing Mitchell Starc to hit a flurry of boundaries. Australia’s last two wickets added 45 in 50 balls.
Then they were far, far worse with the bat. They were powerless to resist an experienced Australian attack, which is almost back to full strength with the return of captain Pat Cummins and spinner Nathan Lyon. Even without the injured Josh Hazlewood, Australia’s attack in Adelaide included four bowlers in the ICC’s world Test top 10.
ICC Men’s Test Bowling Rankings
PositionPlayerTeamRating
1
Jasprit BUMRAH
India
879
2
Mitchell STARC
Australia
852
3
Matt HENRY
New Zealand
844
4
Noman ALI
Pakistan
843
5
Marco JANSEN
South Africa
825
6
Pat CUMMINS
Australia
821
7
Kagiso RABADA
South Africa
807
8
Josh HAZLEWOOD
Australia
799
9
Scott BOLAND
Australia
770
10
Nathan LYON
Australia
757
15=
Gus ATKINSON
England
693
Perhaps the most sobering aspect of it all was that only Ollie Pope threw his wicket away — even though Jamie Smith did his best to join him before he was the victim of a farcical combination of umpiring and technological incompetence.
The rest simply could not cope in the blistering heat and perished like so many England teams before them, trying in vain to preserve their wickets rather than attempting to implement their mantra of taking the attack to the opposition. Stokes, struck a nasty blow on the back of the head by one of Starc’s bouncers, stood defiant. The rest wilted.
Ben Stokes is hit on the helmet (William West/AFP via Getty Images)
Australia were simply outstanding.
Cummins stepped back into his team as if he had never been away, despite it being his first game since July. There were no worries about a lack of preparation for the Australian captain, who looks to have recovered from a back injury. He was quick and highly skilled in taking three wickets.
Scott Boland was metronomic in his accuracy. Starc was aggressive, even if he failed to take a wicket, but he had earned the right to a quieter day. Cameron Green stepped in when the big beasts needed a rest and immediately snapped up the important wicket of Harry Brook.
Then there was Lyon. The spinner had been under a bit of pressure after being left out at the Gabba, but was allowed to settle into his groove and rhythm when Pope, to the 38-year-old’s third delivery, played what will surely be a Test-career-ending shot to gift Lyon his wicket.
Pressure on England as Ollie Pope is removed in Nathan Lyon’s first over! pic.twitter.com/JcwXZQIZlG
— Cricket on TNT Sports (@cricketontnt) December 18, 2025
Three balls later, Lyon produced a beauty to bowl Ben Duckett — there is no bigger indicator of a bad English day than seeing Duckett fall while playing defensively — and Australia were up and running. By the close, only an unbeaten ninth-wicket stand of 45 between Stokes and Archer had staved off complete English humiliation.
Australia’s winning formula was not exactly rocket science. England had largely bowled too short and wide, but the hosts merely pitched the ball up time and again on or around off-stump, nagging away until they gleaned reward.
They were backed up in the field. Where England’s keeper-batter in Smith has shrunk in the harshest of spotlights, Alex Carey has excelled, adding five catches on day two to his first-day century and generally being, as Matt Prior told the BBC’s Stumped podcast before the Test, “the drummer in the band”.
And where England abandoned their long-held plan to use Shoaib Bashir as their spinner on Australian pitches and instead went for a part-timer in Will Jacks, Lyon was world class and overtook Glenn McGrath to become Australia’s second-highest Test wicket-taker.
The contrasting fortunes of Jacks and Lyon said it all.
The Surrey man is a good all-round cricketer and deserved his place, not least because he has out-bowled Bashir in practice and the team’s few warm-up games, but he is nowhere near ready to bowl 20 overs on the first day of a Test against this level of opposition. His bowling went at more than five runs an over.
Lyon, meanwhile, did not add to those two wickets in his first over, but he provided the control once brought by former England spinner Graeme Swann, who is sounding increasingly agitated in his role as a pundit with TNT. Like Swann regularly did, Lyon will surely become an attacking force in the second innings, when the ball is expected to turn more and more.
Nathan Lyon offered Australia a level of control England lacked (William West/AFP via Getty Images)
The role of the malfunctioning Snicko should not be entirely ignored.
While human error effectively reprieved Carey at a crucial time on day one — the wrong mic was used to gauge the nick — the lack of clarity with the technology conspired to send Smith on his way without anyone really knowing whether he was out or not.
First, Smith attempted to pull Cummins and may or may not have been hit on his glove or helmet — Snicko certainly didn’t know — before the ball looped to slip, where Usman Khawaja was unsure whether he had claimed the ball cleanly. Umpire Nitin Menon went upstairs without giving a decision and, after three minutes of endless replays offering no clear evidence of anything, Smith was reprieved.
He was less fortunate in Cummins’ next over when Smith again attempted a wild pull. The ball may or may not have touched the bottom of his bat before it went through to Carey, and again, the umpire called on his TV colleague rather than giving a decision himself.
Poor Chris Gaffaney did not know his spike from Smith’s elbow and eventually gave him out without the batter being given a chance to review a decision that was not made on the field. The non-striker Stokes could only bow his head in utter frustration.
Ben Stokes’ body language tells its own story as Jamie Smith departs (William West/AFP via Getty Images)
The eyes of the world are on this series and the technological chaos, which is making football’s VAR system seem slick, is a terrible look for the game. Snicko should be abandoned forthwith, never used again, and we should just let the on-field umpires make the decisions for the rest of this Ashes.
Human error by officials has long been a part of cricket, but mistakes by machines should not be tolerated.
Not that Smith looked likely to last much longer anyway. The gifted Surrey man started to struggle with the demands of Test cricket towards the end of the series against India last summer and now finds himself, like Pope, Zak Crawley and others, playing for his immediate Test future. He has scored 101 runs in his past nine innings at this level.
The Ashes will surely be lost again to England soon, probably on the fourth day, and with it will come a raft of recriminations for both management and under-performing players. Barring a miracle surpassing even anything that Stokes and Headingley have ever produced, this was the day the music died for this England team and regime.
Cameron Green soars away in celebration after having Harry Brook caught behind (Philip Brown/Getty Images)
Quite what Stokes makes of it all is unknown.
He started day two having an on-field argument with Archer over field placings and finished it exhausted, cramping up and with a towel over his head to try to recover from the effects of the extreme heat. Assistant coach Marcus Trescothick suggested the captain was “broken” in his media conference at the end of the day.
But he was still undefeated and had produced another heroic effort to try to show his side the way.
Stokes said after Brisbane that his dressing room was no place for weak men and, where once he would bat with reckless abandon to try to set an example, now he was positively Boycottian in his strike rate of 29.80 per hundred balls.
And to think he once said there would never be a place for an Alastair Cook, Mike Atherton or Geoff Boycott-type defensive accumulator in his side. He has become one himself due to the limitations of his colleagues.
While Stokes remains, there is always some hope. But with England on 213-8, still 158 behind Australia when they really should have been capable of at least 450 on that perfect Adelaide pitch, it is faint at best.
Largely, it has to be said, thanks to Australian excellence.
