Posted by There is no Ashes tour moment quite so clean as the naming of the squad when the wheels are still on and everyone’s fully fit – everyone that is except for Ben Stokes (shoulder), Will Jacks (broken finger) and Mark Wood (most joints). Jacks is for us the most noteworthy inclusion, because despite masquerading as a backup spinner, he might actually be England’s frontline all-rounder – or half a one anyway.
Before we get to that, we must first talk captaincy.
“Yes, if it is to be said, so it be, so it is”
When Harry Brook was named as England’s white ball captain in April, we pointed out that they’d probably also just picked an Ashes captain.
Our reasoning ran thus:
- Ben Stokes gets injured every few months
- Vice captain Ollie Pope has always given off a certain placeholder vibe when standing in for him
- Brook was now a fully-fledged England captain
It was pretty obvious Brook would be the preferred stand-in Ashes captain option and England have now acknowledged this by naming him vice captain for the trip instead of Pope.
All logical enough, but given Stokes’ history, ‘stand-in captain’ is a term that hindsight may come to rewrite.
Matter of fact
Stokes is one of life’s great optimists. A firm belief that he can defy the odds has fuelled his greatest on-field performances and also his many, many, many periods of rehabilitation from injury. Mind over matter is a remarkable feat precisely because, of the two, matter is the proven performer.
Stokes might miss one Test or he might miss five. Either way, there is an England Ashes team without him. What does a Harry Brook England team look like?
Long-term, England have lumbered their most exciting batter with triple format leadership responsibilities. That is a whole separate conversation. For now, all we’re asking is all anyone in English cricket ever asks. [Adopts shrill annoying voice] “What does this mean for the Ashes?”
“This is not ‘Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.”
Batting-wise, a Harry Brook England team is much the same as a Ben Stokes England team. The top five is exactly the same and so is the wicketkeeper. The main thing you have to change is the all-rounder and then off the back of that, you suddenly realise you have to change the bowling as well.
England don’t have any other seam bowling all-rounders in their squad, so you can’t just neatly drop one in. What they have instead is Will Jacks, who is a spin bowling all-rounder. Except he’s not. He’s actually half a spin bowling all-rounder.
We’ve seen this with the one-day team where Jacks and Jacob Bethell combine to no great effect. We also saw it as recently as England’s last Test match where Bethell and Joe Root jointly ticked the spinning box without doing anything so outlandish as actually taking a wicket. Yes, Shoaib Bashir was injured for that match, but you rather get the sense that he might have been left out anyway.
Because this is how England do things. They pick four quick bowlers and then they muddle through with spin. We doubt there’s a specific plan beyond that it’ll involve at least two of Bethell, Jacks and Root and – depending what’s going on with the batters – possibly all three. This is not very uplifting for those of us who believe the team with no spinner should lose, but the flipside is it does make for an exciting fast bowling attack.
England’s 2025/26 Ashes squad features a couple of fast bowlers and a good few fastish ones. Gus Atkinson is inked-in, but with three further slots instead of just two, you can have a lot of fun thinking about who else you might include.
In an ideal world, Mark Wood and Jofra Archer would play every Test. With Atkinson, Archer and Wood already at your disposal, the wicket-taking benefits of Josh Tongue’s awkward and unreliable action start to seem more significant than all the byes and wides that he bowls.
That’s just one example though. There are a lot of possible permutations.
Less encouragingly, Stokes and Wood are the only two bowlers in the squad to have actually played a Test in Australia. In the absence of Stokes (and, let’s be honest, probably Wood as well) Harry Brook’s spin-free Ashes attack does look a little callow. And samey.
We can already see it… Flat pitch, day two. Please no! Anything but that!
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