The Ashes Briefing: Travis Head onslaught takes Australia to stunning win after England collapse

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This will forever be known as the Travis Head Test as the Australia batter carried his team to a barely believable victory to begin their Ashes defence.

Within two days of Test cricket-on-fast-forward, Head took to the Perth Stadium crease as Australia’s makeshift opening batter and played as if he was in ‘The Matrix’, showing everyone that there really was nothing to fear if you simply kept your head, writes Michael Bailey in Perth.

England had already lost theirs. On another frantic day of Test cricket:

• Australia completed the first Ashes Test win inside two days for 104 years.
• It ended the ninth shortest Test match to produce a result ever, in just 847 balls and inside six sessions.
• Travis Head scored Australia’s joint third fastest century in Tests off only 69 balls.
• Scott Boland took three wickets in 11 balls after lunch as England lost nine wickets in the session.

The careless collapse through Friday’s middle session, which had begun with England leading by 99 with nine wickets in hand, turned a significant advantage into a modest target of 205. That was still more than either side had managed in the previous three innings, yet Head devoured it.

Head eventually departed for 123 with a bearhug from his batting partner Marnus Labuschagne and a series of handshakes from England rivals, led by a crestfallen Ben Stokes, fresh from having the heart ripped out of their hopes of a first Ashes win Down Under in 16 attempts.

Moments later, Australia had romped home by eight wickets.

Those expecting a more stable day of Test cricket after the record carnage of Friday’s 19 wickets found the reality to be like Usman Khawaja’s preparations for the opening day: wide of the mark.

Back spasms forced the Australian opener to miss his opening slot yesterday. He also played golf on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday — missing an optional session (of cricket practice) — ahead of Friday’s play. Those two details were completely unrelated, according to Cricket Australia CEO Todd Greenberg.

But his absence was why Head took Jofra Archer’s first ball having walked out to bat alongside Jake Weatherald. It proved a master stroke.

The journey to Australia’s target was fraught with peril, as their tail propped them up to 132 — a first-innings deficit of 40 that, at the time, felt like 400 given the low-scoring nature of the game to that point. Another first-over dismissal for Zak Crawley made it a scoreless first Test for the England opener, and the first time in Test history the first three innings of a match had brought a wicket before a run was scored.

Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope appeared to be ramping up England’s advantage before their innings unravelled after lunch. Scott Boland took three wickets in 11 balls as England collapsed from 65-1 to 88-6.

England’s ill-discipline duly gave Australia a sniff. Then Head arrived already smelling the money; he was head and shoulders above all the rest.

Here, James Wallace and Cameron Ponsonby dissect the key talking points from day two of one of the most remarkable matches in Test history — never mind the Ashes — at Perth Stadium.

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What did Australia have for lunch?

At lunch, it was 59 for one as, all through Perth Stadium, not a creature stirred.

For the first time in the match it was a period of calm. England’s grip on the contest was tightening, their lead reached 100 upon the restart and, with Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope well set at the crease, it looked as if an afternoon’s pleasant batting lay in wait. Then it fell apart as Scott Boland hit his straps and changed the game.

Boland had been miles off it on day one, bowling a stream of half-volleys as he was the only bowler on the day to find the going tough. His 10 overs cost 62 runs and went wicketless. But in the space of 11 balls on day two he removed Duckett, Pope and Harry Brook to flip the game in an instant and put Australia ahead.

“It felt a bit better than yesterday,” offered Boland to the former Australia wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist of Seven Sport on the boundary edge as the players retired at tea. “That was one of those days where you don’t feel great at the crease. I put that behind me last night. I thought about it a lot, obviously, because I wanted to start the series well, but I’m happy with the outcome today.

“I did want to start a bit fuller yesterday with the new ball, but I found my natural length today and that worked.”

When Starc joined the party to get rid of Joe Root and Ben Stokes, becoming the first Australian to take 10 wickets in an Ashes Test since Warne over 20 years ago, the hosts were in charge.

Four wickets fell in three overs as, all of a sudden, it looked for the first time as if the match could finish altogether on day two.

Starc’s double-dismissal of Root and Stokes kept two storylines that will rumble across the series going. First, the lack of a Root ton Down Under as, for only the fifth time in his career and the first time against Australia, he failed to make double figures across a Test match when he has batted in both innings.

The second theme is Starc continuing to have the wool over Stokes’ eyes. The left-arm quick has dismissed Stokes 11 times in Test cricket and in both innings of this Test match. Against Starc, Stokes averages 17.36. Only India’s Ravichandran Ashwin has ever got him out more often.

Cameron Ponsonby

England’s two innings lasted a grand total of 67.5 overs.

The last time they were bowled out twice in a Test so quickly was in 1904.

— Yas Rana (@Yas_Wisden) November 22, 2025

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The Travis Head masterstroke

The BazBallers got Travballed.

Australia’s ursine and unbelievable Travis Head punished a sloppy England side with an Ashes century for the ages in Perth. Flogging 123 runs off just 83 balls that included 16 fours and four sixes, Head secured a tub-thumping victory for Australia and, in the process, handed England a gut-punching defeat.

Those in the know agreed that England had a huge opportunity to make a statement in Perth, to capitalise on a weakened Australia XI and get some money in the bank on the hardest tour of all.

Recovering from defeat by eight wickets inside two days represents a daunting challenge for Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum.

The real hammer blows from Head came in the 16th over of England’s bowling effort. The southpaw swashbuckler had made 51 off 44 balls and had just called for a drink and a change of gloves. Taking off his helmet to reveal a freshly shorn and sweat soaked Beavis and Butthead haircut, he doused himself in water before lighting the flames good and proper.

In times of need England often turn to Stokes, their leader. He turns to himself, too. England needed to make something happen to prevent the Test match slipping through their careless fingers. But Head hit Stokes for four dismissively brutal fours on both sides of the wicket, the ball scorching so quickly across the turf to the boundary that England’s fielders threw their arms in the air helplessly, unable to track its path.

They could hear the throaty and increasingly ecstatic cheers from the 50,000 majority Australian crowd clear enough, though.

England’s leader was clubbed for 17 runs. Stokes wasn’t visibly bloodied or beaten but, as a statement, it was emphatic.

Australia and Head were rattling along at over six runs an over. So much for England’s bowlers fighting fire with fire — this was an Australian batter out-Bazzing the Bazballers with a run rate of over six an over.

Head brought up his 1,000th run against England with a turf scorching cover drive off Atkinson in the next over. He then pulled Archer for four and blasted him down the ground for six. The same England bowlers who looked like they were armed with rocket launchers in the first innings looked like they were toting cap guns in the second.

And to think he would not have been out there had Khawaja not succumbed to those back spasms. “I was happy to do it, it doesn’t bother me too much,” Head told Channel Seven of opening the batting. “I sort of floated the idea (with the coach and captain). It’s nice to play a role. We threw some ideas around the room and I was pretty keen to do it. I could quite easily have been out in the first over, it didn’t really matter. It was the right process; the right way to go about it.”

Head’s innings wasn’t pretty but it was brutal and brilliant. The highlight? A swatted six off Archer that resembled a man pounding a dusty doormat against a wall. This wasn’t an innings for the aesthetes; it was a composed take down of England’s failure to take hold of the game from a 99-run lead with one wicket down at lunch.

Australia and Head’s composed ruthlessness in the evening session in starck contrast to England’s squandered afternoon. This was brutal.

James Wallace

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What is going on with the ‘Snicko’ technology?

Yesterday it was Marnus Labuschagne; today it was Jamie Smith. Snicko controversy.

Today, the decision went against the batter as, despite the murmur on Snicko — the on-field technology designed to indicate if a batter has hit the ball or not — appearing a frame after the ball passed Smith’s bat, he was given out.

For what it’s worth, the decision that Smith had edged behind feels, eventually, correct. Smith himself had started to wander off when the replay was first shown. His body language was telling.

He knew he had hit it.

But the question is why the decision took so long to reach and the confusion around it.

Well, the answer lies in Australia being one of few countries in the world to use real-time Snicko (RTS) rather than Hawkeye’s Ultra-Edge.

Snicko uses broadcast cameras to make their decisions, while Hawkeye has specialist cameras which have a much higher frame rate. For every single frame shown on Snicko, UltraEdge would have six. This is why, for Smith’s decision, the murmur on Snicko appeared a frame after the ball passed the bat, as the slower frame rate means the pictures and sound are not able to sync as clearly.

It is also why the decision was eventually given as out by the third umpire Sharfuddoula Saikat.

“The conclusive evidence protocols with RTS,” explained former ICC umpire Simon Taufel on Channel Seven, “is if you get a spike up to one frame past the bat, that is conclusive. In this particular case, that’s what was there.

“This is the difficulty when we have two types of edge detection technologies around the world… It’s very difficult to come into a series with limited experience around how to judge RTS, but the conclusive evidence protocols with RTS (are that) if you get a spike up to one frame past the bat, that is conclusive.

“Unfortunately, the third umpire didn’t want to pull the trigger quite as quickly as perhaps he could have or should have. And the guys in the truck were doing their utmost to show him and to slow it down and to try rocking and rolling that frame. For me, the correct decision was made.”

Cameron Ponsonby

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Zak Crawley fluffs his lines

Zak Crawley drags himself from the Perth stadium wicket, pink cheeked but with a distinct hue à l’orange. Scoring a duck (nought) in cricket is never good. Bagging a pair of them in the same game is even worse.

But that is the position England’s bang or bust opener now finds himself in after chalking up the 11th and 12th scores of nought in his Test career, both courtesy of Mitchell Starc.

No matter the result of this game, Crawley is ‘sat’ on a pair — to use the cricketing parlance — and staring down the twin barrel towards a ‘Gabbatoir’ Test match played with a pink ball under lights. Not a good place to be, especially so with the prospect of the laser-armed Pat Cummins returning to the fast bowling fold for Australia.

Crawley’s feast or famine Test career has seen him score five Test centuries in 60 matches and average a tick over 30. His career high points have been a sparkling score of 267 against Pakistan in 2020 and a pulsating 189 against Australia at Old Trafford in the last Ashes series.

Both knocks showed the very best of Crawley; he’s tall, imposing, a shot-maker — on his day a destructive spawn of Michael Vaughan and Kevin Pietersen. The problem is, he works to ‘Crawlian’ rather than Gregorian calendar. His best ‘days’ do not come around very often.

In 2021 Crawley averaged a lowly 10.81 in Tests. There have been plenty of people who have called for his head, but he has always been backed to the hilt by an England management team with one eye seemingly trained on this current Ashes series. The fast and bouncy tracks in Australia were thought to be a good fit for him to play his naturally aggressive game.

But two ducks in the first match were not part of the plan.

The man who has felt untouchable at times in this England setup may yet come good and win his team a game off his own bat. That is the gamble England have been happy to take. In Perth, though, Crawley’s early innings quacking set the tone for what was to come for England in both batting efforts.

James Wallace