Ashes 2025-26: key battles that could decide the urn’s next destination
Before Bazball, there was Travis Head.He was the one playing on fast-forward during the 2021-22 Ashes, sprinting to 152 at the Gabba in a career-shifting innings.The southpaw has since slashed tons in two finals against India, excelled in challenging Australian conditions, and can break out of a lean patch with a chainsaw-wielding knock.Never mind his three consecutive single-figure scores during Australia’s 3-1 win over India a year ago.He’d already hit consecutive hundreds to turn the direction of the series.
Harry Brook, Head’s counterpart at No 5, plays a similarly wild game.This modern duel feels more significant than the storied battle of Steve Smith v Joe Root, particularly if they face the seamer-friendly scenes that make middle-order counterattacks decisive.Brook has remarkable consistency, with seven away hundreds after four Test tours (albeit across two countries: Pakistan and New Zealand).Head has familiarity, averaging a touch over 53 in Australia since the start of 2022.Both will be pelted with the short ball and endure comical dismissals.
They will probably decide the series, too.Pat Cummins’s absence from the first Test due to injury will end an impressive streak of fast-bowling resilience.The Australia captain has played in 19 of the past 20 Ashes Tests, only missing Adelaide four years ago because of his close contact with a positive Covid case.Leading his highlight reel are the deliveries to Root, Cummins’s relentlessness in and around off-stump helping him to 11 dismissals of the England batter.The pick of them remains a rattler at Old Trafford in 2019, Root beaten despite presenting the straightest of bats.
Scott Boland will be primarily responsible for finding Root’s outside edge in Perth, but Cummins is bound to feature down the line, resuming a pretty simple rivalry: Australia’s best bowler against England’s best batter,The ball to watch out for is the one Cummins sent down at Lord’s two years ago, finding serious lift to turn the right-hander’s backfoot push into a fatal prod,Root will have to deal with that threat and the noise over his existing record in Australia,Should he be in the nineties, closing in on that elusive first Test hundred in the country, you know Cummins will return at the other end, refusing to allow entry,It took Jofra Archer three balls to strike on his Test comeback in the summer: over the wicket, nipping away, the edge taken from the left-handed Yashasvi Jaiswal, an opener with a proper record.
Usman Khawaja also brings prestige, having led the scoring charts in the 2023 Ashes,His revival over the past four years has been stirring; since being recalled at the age of 35, he has doubled his tally of Test hundreds to 16,But a decline in returns, married up with his age – he turns 39 during the third Test – has prompted questions over his future,Alongside getting the Jasprit Bumrah treatment against India, a lack of stability at the other end has surely not helped,Jake Weatherald is down to become his sixth opening partner since the retirement of David Warner.
Archer is in a strong position to thrive on this volatility, his threat heightened when he moves the ball away from left-handers,Only two of his nine wickets against India in the summer were righties,It feels harsh to burden Archer with so much expectation as he prepares for his first away Test match in nearly five years, but his breakout 2019 series still sticks in the mind,The two-Test tour is a blight on the world game but it also means South Africa, after three thrilling days in Kolkata, are on the verge of a famous triumph in India,England will be a fair way off history even if they win in Perth, three victories the probable requirement to capture the urn.
For all the talk surrounding their supposed lack of preparation, Ben Stokes’s side have won the first Test on their past five tours.Instead, England have struggled to last the distance, having not won a five-match series since 2018, squandering leads in their past two against India.Beyond keeping fit, their pack of seamers – hyped up because of their pace – face the challenge of maintaining their speeds come Sydney.It would be a victory of sorts should England avoid having to call for reinforcements and, in particular, if Stokes stays the course.
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Wall Street rallies after US economy added more jobs than forecast in September, after shock losses in August – as it happened
Newsflash: The US economy added more jobs than forecast in September, as America’s jobs market picked up after a summer lull.September’s official employment report, delayed since the start of October by the US government shutdown, shows that nonfarm payroll employment rose by 119,000 in September.That’s more than twice as many jobs as expected, thanks to gains in health care, food services and drinking places, and social assistance. Job losses occurred in transportation and warehousing and in federal government, though.But there’s bad news too
Asda to raise £568m in store sell-off as sales continue to fall
Asda is selling off 24 stores and a distribution centre – and leasing them back – to raise £568m in what has been called a “sign of weakness” as sales at the heavily indebted retailer continue to fall.The Leeds-based supermarket group, which is expected to release its quarterly results next week, has continued to lose market share to rivals as sales have gone backwards, despite an effort to win over shoppers with price cuts and improved stores.Sales fell 3.9% in the three months to 2 November, according to data from Worldpanel by Numerator (formerly Kantar), which indicated a one percentage point drop in market share from a year before.Asda’s parent group slumped to a near-£600m loss last year as sales fell and the cost of servicing its debt pile increased
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Hospitals and clinics are shutting down due to Trump’s healthcare cuts. Here’s where
Healthcare providers across the country have closed clinics and hospital wards in the four months since Donald Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the landmark tax-and-spending legislation that will lead an estimated 10 million people to lose their health insurance.The law is expected to slash federal funding by hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming years, as part of Trump’s campaign pledge to shrink government spending. But it will do so in part by paring back eligibility for Medicaid, the US government’s health insurance program for low-income people; raising the cost of healthcare under the Affordable Care Act; and defunding some family planning providers who offer abortions.Rural hospitals and obstetric wards will be disproportionately battered, since they are typically expensive to run and serve high numbers of Medicaid beneficiaries. More than 300 rural hospitals are at risk of closure or cutting services, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found
People in the US: how has the Trump administration affected your healthcare?
Healthcare providers across the country have closed clinics and hospital wards in the four months since Donald Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the landmark tax-and-spending legislation that will lead an estimated 10 million people to lose their health insurance.The law is expected to slash federal funding by hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming years, as part of Trump’s campaign pledge to shrink government spending. Though the bill isn’t thought to be the only cause of the closures – it may have an impact on local healthcare settings that are financially struggling.We’d like to find out how your area has been affected. Has your local healthcare provider closed, cut services or hours, or laid people off since the “one big, beautiful bill” became law?Tell us about changes to healthcare provision in your area by using the form below or by messaging us
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