To capture the very essence of Bazball - England's positive, ultra-aggressive (and on numerous occasions, outlandish) style of play - it's crucial to revisit two things.

First, what preceded for England before Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum took over, and what followed thereafter. This one's fairly straightforward. Between January 2021 until the start of 2022 home summer, England had won four, lost 11 and drawn five Tests. Joe Root, who led in all 20, contributed 805 runs with a hundred each in those wins (ft. two doubles and a 186). The next best aggregate for an England player across those four games was 192. Thereafter, between June 2022 until the start of Ashes 2025/26, they had won 25, lost 14 and drawn two (in which they had first innings lead of 275 and 311 respectively). While Root extended his imperious run, he had better support from the ones at the top and lower down the order.

Second, those basic mantras (that sound more like cliches) in sport: "Get them before they get you", "Attack is the best form of defence" and so on. England have experienced that in some of their most significant triumphs in Ashes history. Ian Botham's 149* laced with 114 runs in boundaries (76.5%) against a Dennis Lillee led attack at Headingley in 1981, was the seventh and last 125-plus score at a 100-plus strike-rate in Test cricket until 1989. The 2005 series win - which came after eight straight failed attempts previously - had started with a debutant Kevin Pietersen counter-attacking Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne when England stood at 21/5 at Lord's, and ended with an even more enterprising 158 of the same recipe at The Oval. England's scoring rate of 3.87 in Ashes 2005 was their best ever in a Test series of five or more matches, until they bettered that thrice in the Bazball era.

There was a visible downgrade though if it were looked at more closely. Six of England's 17 successful 250-plus run-chases in their long Test cricket history came since June 2022, including the top two (378 and 371), suggesting they won games from unlikely situations. However, the converse of losing more from a position of strength (or when evenly poised) has been far more frequent, especially since the start of 2024. A common theme was the untimely second-innings collapses, be it in Visakhapatnam and Ranchi in early 2024, their dramatic defeats to Sri Lanka and India respectively at The Oval in the last two home seasons or more recently the Ashes opener in Perth.

England in Tests since June 2022 (Bazball era)

England in Tests since June 2022 (by opponents)

Despite all that, for England's overall record in the Bazball era compared to what preceded it, it was for a good reason that this was considered to be England's best chance to win their first series in Australia post 2010/11 in the buildup, more so given the injury-marred Australia pace attack. Instead, it turned out to be the same old story, and England now have just one win to show for across their last four trips to Australia - that too, largely courtesy of an outright second-morning session win on an unforgiving Melbourne pitch. From all the hype and anticipation in the build-up, Stokes, McCullum and co are once again left with more questions than answers.

The Ashes 2025/26 eventually topped the all-time scoring-rate records, bettering 2023, but it was Australia this time, who led the way through and through.

Best scoring rates in a five-match Test series

As can be seen in the above table, Australia scored at a superior rate to England's unlike 2023, led by Travis Head's belligerence at the top, not to forget Alex Carey's grit and Mitchell Starc's timely cameos lower down the order. In a telling contrast, Australia had bowled just 34 maidens as opposed to England's 171 in the 2023 series, the corresponding numbers this time read: 84 to Australia and 71 to England.

It may also be noted that England were forced to mend their ways with the bat during the course of the series. For starters, they batted 190.1 and 185.5 overs in Adelaide and Sydney respectively, the most they did in a Test match in the Bazball era. The 39 maidens they batted out in Adelaide was comfortably the most in the timeframe, surpassing 27 at Lord's earlier this year. 21 maidens in the run-chase ranks the most for them in an innings in the period. England's run-rate between June 2022 and before the series was 4.44, which dipped to 3.89 across the five games.

The attacking shot percentage in Ashes 2023 was 43.3% for England and 29.6% for Australia, while it was even at 31.6% for both teams this time around. In the Adelaide Test where the stakes were high, it read 35% for Australia and 26.1% for England. Barring Ben Duckett, who had a series to forget, every batter from their top-seven in the starting XI had a drop in strike-rate, considerably so for Stokes, Root and Zak Crawley.

Batting strike-rates for England since June 2022

England's top-order struggles

The underlying theme of the Ashes 2023 was how Usman Khawaja and Crawley - the leading run-scorers of the series - influenced the results across the five games. While Khawaja's average dipped from 75 to 32.66 from first two Tests to last three, Crawley had a surge from 29.75 to 72.2, in what was just the second instance in Ashes history wherein a team managed to draw or win the series after losing the first two Tests, after Australia's 3-2 come-from-behind win in 1936/37 under Don Bradman.

Thanks to Khawaja's back-spasms in Perth, Australia stumbled upon a gun at the top in Travis Head, while England's top-three were a collective failure, barring Jacob Bethell's brilliant hundred in the final Test.

England lost a wicket in the first over of their innings four out of 10 times, and the maximum Crawley and Duckett batted together was for 7.4 overs. The pair lasted 22 balls on average in this series, the third-lowest balls per dismissal for a team's opening stand in any Test series of minimum four matches, after 14.9 for England on the 1905/06 tour of South Africa and 17.1 for Australia in Ashes 2019 (where ball-by-ball data is available).

Their average partnership of 19.1 is the second-lowest for any pair that opened 10 times (or more) in a series, after 18.6 for Australia's John Dyson and Graeme Wood in the 1981 Ashes.

Opening partnership stats in Ashes 2025/26

Individually, Crawley's average of 31.2 ranks lowest among the 58 batters to have batted at least 90 times in the top-three in Test cricket history. Duckett became the 11th batter to bat 10 times (or more) in the top-three in a Test series and not register a single 50-plus score while at it, the first since Phil Simmons during the 1991 England tour, and the fourth in Ashes history after Cyril Washbrook (1950/51), John Edrich (1972) and Kim Hughes (1978/79).

As for Ollie Pope, his average of 34.55 ranks fourth-lowest among all England batters with minimum 100 innings in top-seven in a list headed by Crawley. That average dips to 24.06 against India and Australia combined and further down to 16 across 12 innings in Australia.

Intent or recklessness - The Brook and Smith story

England had good reasons to have high expectations of Brook and Smith ahead of the series, given the starts they've had to their Test careers. Brook took just 50 innings to his first 10 Test hundreds, third only to Denis Compton and Herbert Sutcliffe for England. Smith took just 21 innings to get to 1000 runs in the format, second only to Quinton de Kock (20) among wicketkeepers. Less than a year ago, the two had scored stunning 150s to lift England from 85/6 to 407 in an innings that featured six ducks. They walked in at similar crunch moments throughout the series, but couldn't quite produce a performance of note.

Labelling it as intent or recklessness is up to the experts, who know a thing or two about scoring big runs in Australia or winning an Ashes series as captain, but Brook and Smith would know that they led their team down on multiple occasions across the five Tests.

Root (400) and Brook (358) were the only two England batters to aggregate above 300 in the series, but both had a contrasting set of scores. Root converted two of his three 30-plus scores into hundreds, while Brook had five dismissals between 30 and 45. His dismissal on Day 1 in Brisbane - off an attempted extravagant cover drive - saw England stumble from 176/3 to 264/9 (and eventually 334 all-out) on a surface Australia responded with 510. His missed reverse-sweep on the fourth evening in Adelaide reduced England from 177/3 to 194/6 within 37 balls.

Smith and Will Jacks ignited hopes of an unlikely heist on the following day, but the latter played a shot too many off Mitchell Starc, after having struck four boundaries off the previous six balls he'd faced. His dismissal on the second morning in Sydney drew severe criticism as expected.

The attacking shot-percentage for both teams was identical at 31.6%, but as mentioned above, it was the timing and the method to madness that benefited one team and hurt the other. It may be noted that Travis Head attacked nearly half - 47.5% - of the deliveries he faced in the series. Of the 360 instances of a batter facing at least 600 balls in a Test series since the 2006 English summer, that percentage is only bettered by Yashasvi Jaiswal's 51.3% in the 2024 home series against England.

Batting by shot-making in the series

Inefficiency with the ball and in the field

Brydon Carse (22) and Josh Tongue (18) bagged more wickets than Ben Stokes (15), but stats aside, it was the England captain who looked the more effective than any other visiting bowler through the five games. He trusted his specialists ahead of himself to take the new ball throughout the series, but it was him on multiple occasions who provided the crucial breakthroughs. Mitchell Starc was the only bowler from either side to open the bowling in all 10 innings, and bagged 31 wickets while doing so, 17 more than the next best Michael Neser.

England weren't great in the field either, their catching efficiency of 75.3% was significantly inferior to Australia's 85.3%, dropping 18 catches compared to hosts' 12.

Opening bowlers' stats in the series

Another aspect was the fact that England quicks went hit-the-deck more often in the series: 42.7% of the deliveries they bowled at Australia's top seven were pitched at back-of-a-length or shorter. The corresponding number for Australia quicks, led by Mitchell Starc's brilliant run, was 33.5%. Australia seamers hit the good length consistently - nearly half (49%) of the balls they bowled were on a good length, significantly higher than England's 39%, and that was the zone which fetched maximum success.

Seamers bowling good-length balls vs top seven in the series

Between his debut and Ashes 2025/26, Nathan Lyon had missed just one of the 73 home Tests and therefore, it didn't matter that England didn't have a genuine spinner in their squad to match his quality. Just 183 overs of spin were bowled across the five Tests, the fifth-least in a Test series of five or more matches, and the least in Australia ever.