England Win a Test in Australia!

The Analyst Inside Cricket

Sport Social Podcast Network

Sports, Cricket

4.5 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 27 December 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Simon Hughes and Simon Mann reflect on England's first Test victory in Australia since January 7th 2011. This was a remarkable and rather unsatisfactory Test which lasted barely a day and a half on an MCG pitch which had a bit too much help for the seam bowlers but on which no batter was prepared to be patient. An impressive opening stand between Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett showed up some rather hapless Australian batting, and the youngster Jacob Bethell made a crucial 40 in a tricky runchase. At last 10,000 English fans have an England victory to celebrate though Cricket Australia will bemoan major revenue losses. This podcast is sponsored by Nord VPN - go to NORDVPN.COM/AIC for your special deal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network.
0:04.0	Hello, welcome to The Analyst at the Ashes with me, Simon Hughes.
0:08.0	And I'm Simon Mann.
0:09.0	Sunshine at the MCG, which we didn't have much of yesterday.
0:13.0	We just had a high win.
0:14.0	But today, sunshine at the MCG and Sunshine on England.
0:17.0	They have won a test match in Australia for the first time for 5,469 days.
0:23.6	We were there on January the 7th, I think it was, in 2011 when they last won a test match here,
0:30.6	when they won 3-1 in the Ashes series under Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower. It's taken so long,
0:36.6	hasn't it? This is the fourth tour. And Joe Root and Ben Stokes can celebrate an Ashes win in Australia for the first time in their careers, which is a lovely moment for them actually. Yeah, well, Joe Root can knock off too now, can't either. An Ash's 100 in Australia and an Ash's victory in Australia. I can still see the celebrations in my mind's eye in Sydney in 2011.
0:57.0	I can still see them down on the ground doing the sprinkler drum, the sprinkler dance.
1:03.0	And I still remember Mitchell Johnson walking out to bat and the army army doing, he bowls the left, he bowls the right, and then being castled first, but I could still see that 15 years ago, very nearly 15 years ago, and finally they've done it. I have to say, I didn't think it was gonna happen today this morning when I turned up, especially when Gus Atkinson lived off with a hamstring inch, I thought, you know, they going to be a bowler down, three pace bowlers.
1:29.3	Stokes looked as though he was conserving his energy a bit.
1:32.3	He wasn't really running in.
1:34.3	And I rather feared for them.
1:35.3	But they got the job done with the ball and then they got the job done with the bat.
1:40.3	It was an extraordinary day.
1:42.3	I think in many ways quite an unsatisfactory day of cricket, wasn't it?
1:46.1	In fact, the two days, because it's just been cricket on speed.
1:50.7	There were no real kind of plot lines, were there? As soon as a little kind of story developed, it was over and someone got out, or someone played a mad shot or something.
1:59.2	And there was no kind of real flow or rhythm to
2:02.1	it it was very staccato i felt at times i mean we here we're in the the melbourne city and uh as i
	...

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