When does it start?
The first Test starts in Brisbane on Thursday morning local time, or for Blighty-based fans at 12 midnight GMT, with further matches to come in Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney. Brisbane Cricket Ground is better known as the Gabba – it being situated in the borough of Woolloongabba – and also, worryingly for England, as the Gabbatoir, due to the regularity with which visiting teams are slaughtered there. West Indies were the last touring side to win at the Gabba, and that was in 1988. England last won in 1986 and have lost five and drawn twice since.
Midnight? That’s no time to be watching cricket
Count your blessings: the second Test in Adelaide is a day/night match which thus starts for local audiences in mid-afternoon and for viewers in England at 3.30am. On the plus side, there’ll still be cricket on at breakfast time (unless you’ve stayed up until 3.30am, in which case you might sleep through it).
How can I watch this unfolding joy/nightmare?
BT Sport have exclusive UK rights to their first Ashes tour, and in addition to live coverage they will show extended highlights at the end of play, and put a briefer version online for free every day at 7pm GMT. There will be radio commentary on 5Live Sports Extra, and over-by-over coverage of every session and every match at theguardian.com/sport.
Who’s going to win?
Australia have won six of the last seven Ashes series on home soil and are odds-on favourites to win this one as well. It’s not just England who have a bad record there: in the last five years only South Africa have won a series in Australia, while not a single one of the other teams to have tried – Sri Lanka, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan and West Indies – has won so much as a single Test. On England’s last visit, four years ago, they lost all five.
Why are England so bad at playing cricket in Australia?
It’s partly about the conditions, which are slightly but crucially different to their own. In Britain it’s often a bit chilly and cloudy, with moisture on the ground and in the air, all of which helps bowlers get the ball to swing and seam. England’s best fast bowlers, James Anderson and Stuart Broad, are particularly good at harnessing this, while foreign batsmen can find the experience of facing them rather bewildering. England also use English-made balls with pronounced, hand-stitched seams which offer extra assistance. Australian summers are normally hot and dry, making the ball less likely to move unpredictably and favouring pure pace and aggression, while they use Australian-made balls with slim, machine-stitched seams, which rarely swing beyond the first few overs. On their last tour England were repeatedly taken apart by the fastest, most aggressive bowler to be seen, Mitchell Johnson, who took more wickets than Broad and Anderson combined. But as well as all that, England tend to come off second best in the psychological warfare that Australia specialise and delight in.
vCard.red is a free platform for creating a mobile-friendly digital business cards. You can easily create a vCard and generate a QR code for it, allowing others to scan and save your contact details instantly.
The platform allows you to display contact information, social media links, services, and products all in one shareable link. Optional features include appointment scheduling, WhatsApp-based storefronts, media galleries, and custom design options.
Does the first ball really set the tone for the series?
It certainly has. In 1994 Phil DeFreitas opened up with a long hop that Michael Slater smashed before going on to make a rapid 176. Australia won the Test by 184 runs and the series 3-1. And then, there was 2006 when England came to the Gabba to defend the Ashes having won the urn back for the first time in 18 years in the historic 2005 home series. The hype was enormous and, first ball, Steve Harmison sent down a ball so wide it ended up in the hands of Andrew Flintoff at second slip. Harmison later said: ”I can’t think of a worse ball to bowl than that. In fact, I can’t remember ever bowling a ball as bad as that.” The result? A 277-run victory for the Australians en route to a series whitewash.
Australians specialising in warfare? Surely you’ve made a mistake?
Just as a cuddly Mogwai turns into an evil Gremlin if it’s fed after midnight, otherwise friendly Australians turn all sorts of mean when they come into contact with someone who might beat them at cricket. Their crowds are rabidly hostile, and their players more likely to engage in a secondary non-contact sport known as “sledging”, which involves flinging the most novel and intimidatory of threats and insults at opposing players during the brief periods when nobody is flinging rock-hard cricket balls at them. For example there was the time when Anderson, not the most gifted of batsmen, came out to face Johnson on England’s last tour and Australia’s captain, Michael Clarke, suggested he should “get ready for a broken fucking arm”. Anderson scored two runs; Clarke was given a small fine.
Who are the star players?
Australia’s fast bowling attack of Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins is pretty scary, though Nathan Lyon, a spinner, has taken nearly twice as many wickets over the last year as any of them. The captain, Steve Smith, and David Warner are the standout batsmen. England’s own captain, Joe Root, and the opener Alastair Cook lead what has been described by one Australian broadcaster as “one of the poorest English batting lineups I have ever seen”, which will be sorely missing the absent all-rounder Ben Stokes.
Where’s Stokes?
He’s watching from home, having been arrested in September on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm in an incident outside a Bristol nightclub. He is still under investigation, and will stay in England while that remains the case. Should police decline to proceed he could join the tour, thereby replacing the threat of prosecution by the authorities with the threat of persecution by the Australians.