‘Finally we’ve won one’: Stokes delighted by Ashes Test win but pitch was ‘not ideal’
Ben Stokes shared a hug with Joe Root and spoke of an “awesome feeling” after watching his England side claw back some respectability on this failed Ashes tour with a rollercoaster two-day victory on Saturday.Of the England squad, none had felt the pain of an 18-match winless streak more than the captain and his predecessor.Stokes had played in 13 Tests here without tasting a victory, while for Root the number was 17.With both men aged 34, this tour may well have been their last chance.“It’s an awesome feeling,” said Stokes, his side having chased down 175 on a bowler-friendly surface that had produced 36 wickets in six sessions.
“To end up on the right side of a result after such a long period of time is a pretty special feeling.“At the end there, when all the boys came out of the dressing room, [Root and myself] had a little hug and just said: ‘Finally we’ve won one’.I’m sure later tonight there might be a few words spoken about it.“We know Australia is a very hard place to win a game, let alone a series.It will be another four years until England come back here, but there won’t be a narrative that we haven’t won a game – that goes back to zero now.
”Stokes had looked like a broken man before this fourth Test, with the strain of sitting 3-0 down and criticism of the team’s mid-tour break in Noosa led him to plead for some empathy from the public,Losing Jofra Archer to a side strain only deepened the growing sense of crisis,“The couple of days leading up to this Test match were difficult for us,” said Stokes,“The way the leadership group – Baz [the head coach, Brendon McCullum], myself, the other coaches and senior players – were able to keep as much focus as possible on the cricket was important,“Once you do cross that line on to the field you put everything else to one side and your focus switches to what you need to do.
When you’re not on the field, things can start fluttering around in your head.The way we were able to keep that focus on the cricket was important in why we were able to get on the right side of the result.”Stokes singled out Josh Tongue for praise after seven wickets in the crapshoot meant he was named player of the match, while the decision to bring in Jacob Bethell paid off with a top score of 40 in the run chase.“Josh has that natural wicket-taking ability that is so hard to come by.He should be very proud of himself because he has bowled some long, big spells and backed it up.
He’s been phenomenal.Beth played well coming in under a little bit of pressure from the first innings and to play the way he did shows a lot about his character and the confidence he has within himself.”As regards the pitch, which after having 10mm of grass left on is likely to trigger an investigation by Cricket Australia, Stokes said: “When you go out there and you’re faced with conditions, you’ve got to crack on and deal with it.But being brutally honest, that’s not really what you want.Boxing Day Test match, you don’t want a game finishing in less than two days.
Not ideal.”Steve Smith, Australia’s stand-in captain, said: “It was obviously a tricky one.Thirty-six wickets over two days [means it] probably offered just a little bit too much.Finances aren’t great, I think it was a sell-out tomorrow.So, yeah, disappointing for those [fans] that wanted to come along.
”The nature of the win means the sides have seven days to recover before the fifth Test in Sydney – a match that could hold huge significance for England and the futures of McCullum and the team director, Rob Key.One player almost certain to be missing is Gus Atkinson after straining his hamstring, with Matthew Potts the next seamer in line for a spot in England’s attack.
European leaders condemn US visa bans as row over ‘censorship’ escalates
European leaders including Emmanuel Macron have accused Washington of “coercion and intimidation”, after the US imposed a visa ban on five prominent European figures who have been at heart of the campaign to introduce laws regulating American tech companies.The visa bans were imposed on Tuesday on Thierry Breton, the former EU commissioner and one of the architects of the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), and four anti-disinformation campaigners, including two in Germany and two in the UK.The other individuals targeted were Imran Ahmed, the British chief executive of the US-based Center for Countering Digital Hate; Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of the German non-profit HateAid; and Clare Melford, co-founder of the Global Disinformation Index.Justifying the visa bans, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, wrote on X: “For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organised efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship
‘A gamechanger’: 200,000 UK small businesses sign up to TikTok Shop
It is better known for its viral dances and for making hits out of forgotten songs, but the social media site TikTok is becoming a force to be reckoned with as a shopping platform.Major retailers such as Marks & Spencer, Samsung, QVC, Clarks, and Sainsbury’s are now selling their wares on the site’s e-commerce service, TikTok Shop, alongside more than 200,000 UK small and medium businesses.Launched in Britain in 2021, TikTok Shop recorded its biggest sales day in the UK on Black Friday, with 27 items sold every second. Across the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period, sales were up by 50% on last year.The service works by letting brands sell directly inside TikTok through videos and livestreams with embedded links to items for sale, as well as through a separate shop tab on their profiles
Former EU commissioner and activists barred from US in attack on European tech regulators
The state department has barred five Europeans from the US, accusing them of leading efforts to pressure tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints, in the latest attack on European regulations that target hate speech and misinformation.Secretary of state Marco Rubio said the five people targeted with visa bans – who include former European Commissioner Thierry Breton – have led “organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.”“These radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states – in each case targeting American speakers and American companies,” Rubio said in an announcement.In recent months, Trump officials have ordered US diplomats to build opposition to the European Union’s landmark Digital Services Act (DSA), which is intended to combat hateful speech, misinformation and disinformation, but which Washington says stifles free speech and imposes costs on US tech companies.Late on Tuesday night, Breton posted on social media: “Is McCarthy’s witch hunt back?”Tuesday’s move is part of a Trump administration campaign against foreign influence over online speech, using immigration law rather than platform regulations or sanctions
Elon Musk, AI and the antichrist: the biggest tech stories of 2025
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, wishing you a happy and healthy end of the year. I myself have a cold.Today, we are looking back at the biggest stories in tech of 2025 – Elon Musk’s political rise, burst and fall; artificial intelligence’s subsumption of the global economy, all other technology, and even the Earth’s topography; Australia’s remarkable social media ban; the tech industry’s new Trumpian politics; and, as a treat, a glimpse of the apocalypse offered by one of Silicon Valley’s savviest and strangest billionaires.At the close of 2024, I wrote that Elon Musk’s support of Donald Trump had made him the world’s most powerful unelected man
Activist group says it has scraped 86m music files from Spotify
An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86m music files from Spotify and 256m rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100m tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, said it had “identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping”
Chinese robotaxis due in London next year as Lyft and Uber reveal tie-ups
Chinese robotaxis are due to be on the streets of London next year after the US ride-hailing companies Lyft and Uber announced tie-ups with Beijing-based Baidu to deploy its self-driving technology.Lyft is the third firm to announce plans to introduce self-driving taxis to the UK capital next year, after Uber and Waymo, the main operator of robotaxis in the US.Its ride-hailing services are the major rival to Uber’s in the US and Canada, and this year Lyft expanded into Europe after acquiring the Freenow app in the summer.While Uber had signed a deal to work with Baidu in the summer in other global markets, it had not until now said that the Chinese tech company’s Apollo Go cars were planned for London. It had previously announced its services would be operated with self-driving technology from the UK-US firm Wayve
Sustainable aviation fuel take-up in UK unlikely to hit 2025 target, data suggests
Renewed zeal for Boxing Day sales expected to ring up £3.8bn for retailers
End of shareholder revolt register ‘will help UK firms bury pay controversies’
‘Nostalgic and calming’: lava lamps are groovy again as sales glow
Security bosses warn of rise in UK building site thefts by organised crime
S&P 500 and Dow hit record highs as Santa rally reaches Wall Street – as it happened