England ended their 14-year-long wait to win a Test match in Australia, as the English team beat the hosts Australia by four wickets on the controversial Melbourne Cricket Ground pitch, as the fourth Test of the five-match Ashes 2025/26 series ended in just two days.
While hosts Australia have already secured the series by winning all the first three matches of the series, the MCG Test drama started after England chose to bowl first. The opening day of the Test match experienced 20 wickets with the beginning of Australia’s second innings, which recorded one over before the stumps of the day. The second day experienced 16 wickets, as the adventurous visitors successfully chased the 175-run target after losing six wickets.
While Australia scored 152 all out at the end of the first innings, England replied with 110 bundled out, as the hosts got a 42-run lead. However, Australia were bowled out for only 132 runs in their second innings, and England reached the 175-run target after losing six wickets (178/6).
In the first three innings of the Test match, only one batter in each innings managed to reach the 30-run mark. While Michael Neser scored 35 runs in the first innings, Harry Brook scored 41 runs during England’s first innings, and Travis Head managed 46 runs in the second innings of the Australian innings.
In the fourth innings, English openers Zak Crawley (37) and Ben Duckett (34) scored 30s, while Jacob Bethell scored a crucial 40 runs.
Due to picking up seven wickets (5/45 & 2/44), English pacer Josh Tongue won the Player of the Match award.
Previously, England won a Test match in Australia in January 2011, when England won the Sydney Test by an innings and 83 runs. After remaining winless in 18 Tests (lost 16 and drew 2) in Australia, starting in November 2013, England finally won a Test match in Australia.
Here are some key stats of the match:
England equalled the record for most winless Tests for a visiting team in Australia. Between December 1987 and December 2011, New Zealand remained 18 Tests winless in Australia.
While there was not a single ball from a spinner, it was the first-ever Test match in Australia when there wasn’t a single delivery from a spinner.
It was the seventh Ashes Test that finished in two days. The other six Ashes Tests were the 1888 Lord’s Test, the 1888 The Oval Test, the 1888 Manchester Test, the 1890 The Oval Test, the 1921 Nottingham Test (excluding rest day between 1st and 2nd days of the match), and the 2025 Perth Test.
This Test match took 852 balls to complete. It was the fourth-shortest Ashes Test match finish, while the other three shortest were 788 balls (1888 Manchester Test), 792 balls (1888 Lord’s Test), and 847 balls (2025 Perth Test).
While the match completed with 572 runs, there were no fifty+ scores in the entire Test match, with the best score of 46 by Travis Head from Australia in the third innings. It was the third-highest aggregated score in a Test match without any fifty+ scores. The top two are 787 runs (Australia vs England in the 1981 Edgbaston Test) and 652 runs (India vs South Africa in the 2015 Nagpur Test).
