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Australian cricket

Opinion

Geoff Lawson Cricket columnist October 11, 2025 — 4.30pm

As Ashes summers go, the 2025-26 edition is promising as much speculation and opining as any since perhaps Mike Gatting’s 1986-87 “can’t bat, can’t bowl, can’t field” chapter, when the tourists were written off by their own scribes.

That derisive vision was delivered after a spectacularly impotent start against the state teams in the age when tourists actually played warm-up first-class games in competitive match conditions before each Test match. Fancy preparing for a Test match by playing serious fixtures on the home team’s pitches!

Whatever England did back then must have helped them work through the early summer glitches as they returned to the Old Dart with the goodies. That

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