To be fair to England, they gave it a shot – Sophia Dunkley came back into the side and played like I’ve never seen her play before, blowing doors open with 59 off just 30 balls – but it wasn’t enough as Australia retained the Ashes at the first opportunity, taking an effectively-unassailable 8-0 lead in the series, which they only need to draw to keep the trophy.

Australia 198-7 v England 141 #Ashes 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2025-01-20T11:31:19.762Z

A night which ended with Australia reaching for the moon, began with their captain Alyssa Healy reaching for the moon-boot after a flare-up of the foot injury that kept her out of the T20 World Cup semi-final defeat back in October. The Australian camp will deny it, but there is an argument that they are a stronger side without Healy – there isn’t much to choose between Healy and Beth Mooney keeping wicket, and Georgia Voll opening the batting looks like the player Healy used to be in her prime.

Voll gave Australia an explosive start in the powerplay, whacking a fearless 21 off 11 balls. Given a life as Lauren Bell made a total Horlicks of a straightforward catching opportunity, she simply smacked the next ball for another 4. One facet of this Australian team under Shelley Nitschke is that everyone is very clear about their role, and Voll’s is to go as hard as possible; so although she didn’t last long, she did her job on the night, putting England on the back foot right from the get-go.

Beth Mooney’s role on the other hand is to go deep. Taking her innings all the way into the 18th over today, she faced 50 deliveries and made them count for 75 runs; but the key was letting others play around her. Phoebe Litchfield wasn’t quite hitting her marks, despite one remarkable switch-hit 6, but she still kept the field busy with her disruptive strokeplay – which Beth Mooney admitted post-match had been a deliberate strategy to unsettle England’s fielding. England made error after error, including a mix-up between Nat Sciver-Brunt and Charlie Dean which could have got rid of Mooney when she was on a run-a-ball 23; and there was also a caught behind/ stumped opportunity around the same time which Amy Jones couldn’t snaffle.

Heather Knight said post-match: “If we’d conceded less we’d have been in with a real chance.” Given that Australia finished 7 down with not a lot of batting to come, getting rid of Mooney for 50 fewer runs would have made a real difference.

As it was, Mooney pushed on, as Australia upped the run rate in the middle overs, scoring at over 10 runs per over through both middle phases. Tahlia McGrath produced a brilliant cameo, just when Australia looked like they might be starting to dry-up – scoring off every single one of the 8 balls she faced before she was bowled by Sophie Ecclestone, including four 4s and a 6.

Australia 198-7 v England 141 #Ashes 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2025-01-20T11:31:45.399Z

In a sense, it could have been even worse for England if Georgia Wareham had been able to recreate the innings she played in Hobart, where she made 38 off 12 balls – instead “only” grabbing 11 off 10, to leave England requiring 199.

Within two overs of their reply, England were in deep trouble, losing both their openers to ducks – Maia Bouchier slog-sweeping to a quite deliberately placed Georgia Wareham at deep square, and Danni Wyatt apparently trying to run Kim Garth down through the vacant slip area which… turned out not to be vacant at all, but occupied by Phoebe Litchfield. (I know Litchfield is small… but she’s not that small!)

The game looked to be over at that point, but Dunkley’s daring innings gave England a slither of hope – at 10 overs they were ahead of where Australia had been, and with only 3 wickets down it felt like something extraordinary might be about to happen; but within another two overs both Dunkley and Knight had departed and the game was up – the Ashes were gone.

England were predictably insisting to the media in their post-match interviews that they could still save some pride by drawing the series, and it is the one thing that might yet save Jon Lewis’s job. But it feels like an Australian whitewash is now the most likely outcome, and even if England can salvage some or all of the remaining points it shouldn’t change the fact that they have gone backwards in the last two years under the current leadership. They are bullies who can whop the small teams, but as soon as they come up against the big guns they collapse in a heap. They are a squad set up to win these big run chases, but when push comes to shove they can’t even actually do that – even when Jon-Ball works, it doesn’t work. It’s time for the management to pay the price for that.