Live Score
Cricket Teams
Cricket Players
First Ashes without a Gabba opener in 40 years: England dodge Brisbane, but is Perth any kinder?
The first Test moving from the Gabba to Perth offers England a fresh start, but their historical performance in Australia remains poor.
Taking the first Test away from the Gabba looks like a favour to England. For the first time since 1982-83, they won’t walk into the Gabba with 42000 Australians breathing down their necks, but into a gleaming bowl on the Swan River where they’ve never played a Test.
On paper, that feels like a reset. In reality, the numbers say this: the venue has changed, the challenge hasn’t.
From Gabba to Perth fortress
Since 1986, the Gabba has been the default Ashes curtain-raiser in Australia. In those 10 Ashes openers, Australia have won seven and drawn two, while England haven’t won a single Test there this century. Their last victory in Brisbane came in 1986, when Botham’s 138 lit up a series England eventually took 2-1.
That history is why shifting the first Test to Perth in 2025-26 was instantly framed as a tiny crack in Australia’s armour. But England’s historic record in the West is, if anything, worse. At the old WACA, their Ashes ledger reads 1 win, 9 defeats, 3 draws, with that lone victory way back in 1978 against a Packer-depleted Australia.
And Perth’s new home, Optus Stadium, has already developed its own aura. Australia have won four of five Tests there; the only blot is India’s 295-run win earlier this year. In all five matches at the venue, the team batting first has gone on to win.
Put simply, England have escaped one graveyard and walked into another that is still under construction.
Why the opener feels decisive
The broader Ashes trend is brutal. Since winning 3-1 in 2010-11, England have not won a single Test in Australia. The last three away Ashes campaigns have ended 5-0, 4-0, and 4-0.
Across their nine Ashes tours to Australia in the modern era (post-1988 Bicentenary), England have managed just one series win and six victories in 45 Tests. Starting well is not a luxury; it’s their only realistic route to staying alive into Melbourne and Sydney.
There are cracks for Ben Stokes to aim at. Australia begin this series without Pat Cummins, and have now Josh Hazlewood and Sean Abbott out from the opener due to hamstring injuries, forcing Michael Neser into the squad and fast-tracking Brendan Doggett towards a debut.
England, by contrast, have had a rare slice of good injury news: Mark Wood has been cleared after hamstring scans and is set to spearhead a pace attack that could include Jofra Archer, Josh Tongue, and Gus Atkinson. Under Brendon McCullum, England have already shown they can hit the ground running abroad - they have won the first Test on all five overseas tours in his tenure, even with minimal warm-up cricket.
So does moving the opener to Perth help England? Marginally. It removes the psychological weight of four decades without a win at Gabba, and throws Australia’s patched-up seam attack straight into a high-risk surface. But the hard data is clear: if England are to finally end their 14-year drought in Australia, they’ll have to rewrite history in a city that has never been kind to them - old ground or new.
