ESPNcricinfo UK editor Andrew Miller buckles up to recount the big moments that kept England fans going through the small hours
Andrew Miller21-Nov-20254:01
Speed of England’s collapse gave them better bowling conditions
Ashes first-day dramas have been a staple of England’s winters for more years than most fans would care to count. But this latest opening gambit might just have taken all the biscuits, and every other snack needed to stay awake all night. Andrew Miller tries to fight sleep long enough to remember the madness he just watched…Full disclosure. I am writing this at 11.19am on [checks notes] Friday, November 21, which is, of course, the day that every England cricket fan has had in their calendar for months. But, unless you happen to be one of the 40,000-strong crew to have made the long journey down under – and well done you if you are – you’ll by now have realised that that date is completely wrong.Because, of course, for the purposes of Ashes nightowl action, everything in Australia actually happens on the day before it happens. This phenomenon gets me every time, just like the changing of the clocks (including – full, full disclosure – as recently as last month, when I set my sights on a 1am start for England’s ODI debacle in New Zealand, only to discover the 1am in question was the one that jumped backwards an hour at 1.59am).And so, in short, I am a borderline catatonic mess right now. My 2025-26 Ashes experience started at roughly 8pm on Thursday, November 20, when I said goodnight to my family, lay in bed for three fitful hours of non-sleep, then got up again early to pace around the living room, confuse the dog, watch the first hour of because TNT’s bolt-on coverage hadn’t factored in any sort of extended build-up, then settle in for the longest, wildest night of my sports-watching life.Related
Stats – Stokes and Starc lead the charge as wickets tumble in Perth
Starc difference in Australia's day of two halves
Fast-forward Brook sets tempo in thrilling Ashes curtain-raiser
Australia on the ropes after frenetic 19-wicket opening day
Shots fired in battle for Ashes as England roll out heavy artillery
That’s quite the statement, I know. But, hell, I’ve been doing this Cricinfo ball-by-ball business for a fair old while now, and cocking my ear to Ashes first-night bedlam for significantly longer still. And even by the (almost universally) horrific standards of my previous experiences, the opening night of Bazball Down Under was a doozy.Here then, before I expire, is a barely coherent stream-of-consciousness intended to weave its way through my very personal Ashes first-day history before landing on a spectacle in which 19 wickets tumbled in 71.5 overs, or at a rate of one every 22.68 balls.My first Ashes first-night came way back in November 1994, in typically clichéd fashion: via , under the covers in the dead of night at school, with Michael Slater mashing Phil DeFreitas through the covers to trigger that knowing dread that has probably never fully left any England fan of a certain age.My first first-night in a professional capacity came eight years later in 2002, in a post-student hovel in Finsbury Park, where we collectively punched the ceiling upon Nasser Hussain’s correct call at the toss, only to sink into our sofas and tinnies and despair in equal measure after you-know-what call.My “job” back then was to watch the first session from home, jump in a cab to Shepherd’s Bush in the lunch break, grind through the pre-diluvian gears of Wisden.com’s formative internet commentary service, and bash out some words at the close before crashing out to rinse and repeat. They truly were the Golden Years…He did it again: Mitchell Starc struck in the first over to remove Zak Crawley•Getty ImagesFour years later still, in 2006, I’d made it to Australia for the first time, in the overflow press-box high in the gantries of the Gabbatoir, where I was actually too far away from either the action or a replay screen to tell for certain that Steve Harmison’s first ball had landed in the hands of, not first, but second slip. But I was close enough to feel that dread descend once more, across both the fans in the stands and more importantly the England team.Next on this indulgent whistlestop witter-tour, it was back to the Gabba to watch Andrew Strauss cloth his third ball to point and for Peter Siddle claim a birthday hat-trick. Then, on through various miserable iterations, it was back to Blighty during Covid, for Rory Burns’ spectacular first-ball faux-pas, which is memorable to me only because my wife romantically offered to stay up to midnight to share the occasion, then laughed uproariously, and headed straight to bed.Which brings us, not exactly directly, to November 21 (sort of 20), 2025, and a hotch-potch of already fading vignettes that might just be my eyelids drooping. I’ve got a fairly well-set routine for nights such as these. Lots of tea. Enough fruit to sedate a fruit-bat. As few carbs as possible (because they are heavy and send you to sleep) and tons of emergency chocolate biscuits because fruit is boring and sugar rushes are very useful if you need to sound exciting/excited at 5am.Well, that wasn’t exactly a problem on this night of nights. Although, it has to be said, that first-over wicket of Zak Crawley turned out, in my line of work, to be a strangely dislocated affair.It’s hardly the fault of TNT’s equally dislocated commentary team that their paymasters have chosen not to dispatch them on an actual Ashes tour. But – for the purposes of ball-by-ball text commentary – the audio cues of a properly embedded commentator who can actually see the full context for a moment of sporting drama is really rather crucial. When, instead, the moment is relayed by a slightly confused third party who sounds like he’s talking through a locked bathroom door, it does somewhat draw the sting. Apologies if I sounded flat in that remarkable moment. I was too busy trying to join my own dots to colour in the picture.
“England’s brutal, blunt-instrument bowling response was hard and fast, like a Tony Greig parody tribute, as Jofra Archer, then Gus Atkinson, then Mark Wood, then Brydon Carse, took it in turns to crank up the wheels and rattle the pads, lids and elbows of Australia’s line-up”
But, fear not, because the drama just kept on coming, and coming, and coming. And so, too, did the vital support network of an overnight cricket hack – the bellicose/surrender-monkey bleatings of my various and varied WhatsApp groups.These fall into three broad categories. ESPNcricinfo colleagues in Australia and elsewhere in the globe, exchanging match updates and expletives in equal measure, as well as more prosaic news about who is actually driving the site at any given moment. Next there are the friend groups, many of whom are former colleagues (certainly the ones who are conditioned to stay engaged with an Ashes Test all night, and with whom all exchanges are a variation on the word “brawling”), and finally, my Camel Cricket Club compadres who are, for the most part, defeatist Englishmen, trolling Kiwis, meme-addicted South Asians and off-duty first-responders, drowning in too many tequila shots in far too few overs.The chaos was real, on the pitch and in the ether. Starc was bowling left-arm swing from the Gods – unrelenting in his pace and carry, harassing the pads and outside edge of every man in his sights, simply by existing in that freakish slingy left-arm manner of his. But in between whiles, Ollie Pope was everything he’s not supposed to be, continuing his life-long Ian Bell impersonation by producing an innings every bit as good (and destined to be forgotten) as Bell’s first-day 76 at the Gabbatoir in 2010 – when his greatest contribution to England’s Ashes-winning cause was to curl his lip up at a post-match suggestion that England were cooked, and shoot back: “Of course not”. There and then, the Shermanator became an Ashes Panzerfaust.And then there was Harry Brook. Yeegads. I know Bazball is not everyone’s cup of tea, but the utter chutzpah of dancing down the track to Scott Boland’s second ball after tea, to smoke an inside-out six over extra cover. By now, it really didn’t matter that TNT were gargling in their bath-tub. The inner monologue was taking over for the purposes of bashing out the BBB action, fuelled by the paranoia and bravado of the nightowls pinging on my phone – not to mention the army of commentators on feedback. What we were witnessing was magnifique (until Brook’s limp glove down the leg-side, whereupon England pretty much opted to autocomplete their innings) but was it actually la guerre? I think, by the close of play, even the sceptics were having to accept that England have rewritten their own rules of Ashes combat, and don’t really give a monkey’s what anyone outside their dressing-room thinks.Ollie Pope was England’s surprising mainstay on a nervy first morning•Getty ImagesAnd so to the final act of a fevered night-sweat of an Ashes shift. England’s brutal, blunt-instrument bowling response. Hard and fast, like a Tony Greig parody tribute, as Jofra Archer, then Gus Atkinson, then Mark Wood, then Brydon Carse, took it in turns to crank up the wheels and rattle the pads, lids and elbows of an Australia line-up that barely knew its batting order two days out from the series and somehow ended up even more confused mid-match.It was relentless, it was magnificent, it made the guzzling of emergency chocolate so redundant that I forgot it was even in the fridge. And then, swaggering into the mix came the maker-of-things-to-happen Ben Stokes, channelling the best/worst of Ian Botham to burgle a six-over five-wicket haul cut from the purest, most eye-boggling vibes ever smuggled through Australia’s customs.Somehow, despite batting with a sense and responsibility that England couldn’t bring themselves to locate if they tried, Australia somehow managed to produce at least three of the five worst dismissals of the day – starting with Travis Head’s limp welly to mid-on and culminating in Starc’s heave through the line.And now, somehow, we’re all meant to park this now, shake off the caffeine/sugar/tequila and go again tonight? Preposterous sport.Postscript (and not a word of a lie): As if the night’s batting was not enough of a car-wreck already, just as I was finally preparing to flake out and get ready to go again I heard, from over my garden wall, the unmistakeable sound of a lorry striking the infamously low bridge near my house in East London that has been luring unsuspecting truckers to their doom for generations. If you don’t believe me, check TFL for Mildmay Line updates. It’s been a deeply weird night, and I’m not sure which part of me is pointing up anymore.