Ashes 1st Test preview: How fast is the pitch at Perth’s Optus Stadium? Who should be afraid? How ridiculous are England? Can Australia possibly counter them?

6 minute read

Somewhat unusually, this first Test of the 2025/26 Ashes is in Perth. There’ll therefore be much talk about Australia surrendering the supposed advantage of kicking things off at the ‘Gabbatoir’ in Brisbane. Australia have certainly won a lot of first Ashes Tests at the Gabba, but our personal feeling is that if they’d instead played those matches at the Alf O’Rourke Oval in Biloela then the main difference would be that the Alf O’Rourke Oval would now be considered a fortress.

Nevertheless, it’s noteworthy that the venues for the first three Tests of this Ashes series are the three bounciest pitches in the world. The Gabba – where England have played first Tests in recent decades – is in fact the bounciest, but Optus Stadium isn’t far behind. The new Perth ground has taken on the Waca’s fearsome reputation, and you know what? Fair enough. The stats suggest it’s about as quick.

So…

Except the ground’s hosted five Tests and do you know who’s been the most successful bowler?

Nathan Lyon.

Nathan bloody Lyon.

It’s not like fast bowlers can’t also be successful – Mitchell Starc’s taken 26 wickets at 21.61 – but yeah, Lyon’s taken 29 at 20.86.

We’d pick a spinner. But it’d be weird if we didn’t think that. It is after all our official editorial position on the matter.

But it’s not just Lyon. Fast-medium bowlers can succeed too. Tim Southee took 4-93 and 5-69 when he played here, for example.

Everyone thinks bouncy pitches help fast bowlers because they make them seem EVEN FASTER, but sometimes Pace + Bounce = Missing The Stumps.

We’re not against England playing their quickest bowlers – pace is an attribute and they’re also bowlers we love – but we do tend to think that a varied attack can often prove more dangerous than a fast one, especially when a pitch is otherwise pretty flat. And bouncy as it is, the Optus Stadium pitch really is pretty flat in the first innings, when batters have so far averaged 44.93. (Tosswatch: the batters in the teams batting second have only managed 22.14.)

Sticking with batting, it’s interesting to note that Marnus Labuschagne is the top scorer at the Optus. He appears to be returning to form this season and there’s worse places for him to exploit that than a ground where he’s hit three hundreds in four Tests – one of which was a double. Steve Smith has made a double hundred here too, but we’re not sure that really qualifies as newsworthy.

The big question is of course whether Perth can bring the same level of ridiculousness as Brisbane. On this, we’re quietly confident. 

How ridiculous are England?

Key to our confidence is a touring team capable of fresh flavours of on field mayhem, but which nevertheless retains the ability to serve up classic, tried and tested England nonsense, like obviously wrong team selection and horrific batting collapses.

You want a pair of openers to put on 200 before lunch on the first day? Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett could conceivably do it. The fact it’s infinitely more likely that Crawley will be bowled through the gate in the first over doesn’t alter the fact that these two are more likely to achieve the 200 feat than probably any other opening partnership in the history of the game.

The vast sprawling expanse between those two possibilities is what makes this team such a powerhouse of ridiculousness because a similar scope of possibilities can be seen throughout the team.

Mark Wood and Jofra Archer might bring a fire and a fury rarely seen from touring England attacks, or they might both find brand new ligaments to tear before they’ve got through even a single over. 

Gus Atkinson is the quiet one, but a quiet one averaging 22 in Test cricket, who has also, by the way, hit a century from number eight. 

Wicketkeeper Jamie Smith is similarly a great deal sillier than first appearances might suggest. The man can engage the long handle with the best of them, but Australia isn’t often kind to England keepers, so there’s also every chance he’ll crash and burn like a paper aeroplane thrown over an active volcano. 

Then there are the Yorkshiremen.

Statistically speaking, Harry Brook is almost twice as good as some of his colleagues in this team – colleagues who have become long-term ever-presents – yet his consistency has somehow been built on a method where preservation of his wicket is at best an afterthought.

Joe Root is not obviously ridiculous, but he is walking into an unavoidably ridiculous situation as England’s finest batter of modern times but famously without a century in Australia. Plus, don’t forget he might end up as England’s frontline spinner.

Presiding over all this is Ben Stokes.

How ridiculous are Australia?

Pat Cummins’ absence is a big one. Australia’s captain may not have written the book about ridiculousness in Ashes series, but he did contribute the foreword.

The absence of Cummins and the far less ridiculous Josh Hazlewood does allow for new faces though and this is an overly-familiar team that can only benefit from that.

Scott Boland isn’t exactly new, but his five Tests against England have been positively awash with absurdity. In three Tests at home, he has taken 18 wickets at 9.55, including that comical return of six wickets for seven runs on his debut. Conversely, in two Tests in England, he has taken two wickets at 115.50.

We know nothing of Brendan Doggett, other than that his father, FBI Special Agent John Doggett, must be proud as punch that he’ll be making his Test debut.

They’ll join proven purveyor of top flight nonsense, Mitchell Starc, who kicked off the last series Down Under pretty damn strongly; first-rate runner-outerer, Nathan Lyon; and promising up-and-comer Cameron Green, who can be silly simply by standing at gully, hoovering in cricket balls like some gigantic teddy bear with its own gravitational field (but who also bats and bowls for good measure). Even more ridiculously, Green isn’t even Australia’s biggest all-rounder. At 2m, Beau Webster isn’t permitted to take certain routes because of low bridges.

Elsewhere in the line-up, Jake Weatherald brings the promise of the unknown – not to mention the fact he’s set to become Usman Khawaja’s seventh opening partner in Australia’s last 16 Tests. For his part, Khawaja gets points for being an admirably singular individual; a man who told Justin Langer his team were afraid of him and who then drew bonkers criticism from the same man for batting in a sweater.

If Australia decides to ditch either of those two, we heard talk this morning that the selectors are encouraging Mitch Marsh to become a top order batter with a view to maybe picking him later in the series. Wonderful stuff. More gigantic all-rounders please.

But not too many. Don’t squeeze anyone out of the middle-order. Travis Head is the least showy attacking batter in the world, while Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne are the two weirdest weirdos to ever devote every single waking thought to cricket.

If you listen to the ongoing series of The Ridiculous Ashes podcast, you’re going to hear an awful lot about Smith, while Labuschagne is congenitally incapable of doing anything normally – not even making a cheese toastie.

UK TV coverage: The first Ashes Test starts in the early hours of Friday morning – 2.20am to be precise. Live coverage is on TNT Sports, which you can access via the Discovery+ app. Highlights will be available on the BBC’s iPlayer from about 5pm each day – although we’re slightly nervous that they haven’t actually said how long those highlights will be.

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