Forget Australia: England lost the Ashes at the Oval this summer

Here's a take for you: the 2025-26 Ashes was lost at the Oval, 11.57am on Monday, 4 August when Mohammed Siraj uprooted Gus Atkinson's off-stump to give India a six-run victory in one of the most dramatic Test matches ever played. The wicket also ensured a 2-2 draw in a series that had seemed destined for England but somehow slipped away at the last. 

Not all draws are equal. This one was a triumph for the tourists; for England, it must have stung like a defeat. Their wait to claim a five-match series stretches beyond seven years, and will almost certainly extend to nine.

Seven years! Not since a 4-1 victory over India in 2018 have England won a best of five. Only three members of that squad remain: Joe Root, Ben Stokes and Ollie Pope, who made his debut in the second Test and was dropped after the third. Mark Wood is the only other player in the current squad with experience of winning a five-match series, the 2015 Ashes that remains England’s most recent conquest of the old enemy. That India series was a big deal. And they blew it.

England had the series sewn up on three separate occasions, only for the stitching to come undone through a combination of Indian obstinacy and local profligation. Lunchtime on day four at Old Trafford, India 1-2 in their second innings and 310 runs in arrears. They ground out five sessions for the loss of two wickets, the type of dogged, disciplined and incredibly dull rearguard effort that England seem to view with contempt.

It’s important to remember the giddy, glorious ridiculousness of that first Bazball summer

At the Oval, England were 129-1 in reply to India’s 224, an insurmountable first innings lead all but assured. Cue a collapse that produced a very surmountable lead of 23, duly surmounted without an Indian wicket lost. ‘You’ve beaten them once,” Sir Alf Ramsey barked at his exhausted players in the 1966 World Cup Final. “Now do it again!” Having conceded a late equaliser, Ramsey’s team managed not to start extra time with an own goal.

Their cricketing counterparts were not so careful. Lax bowling begat a tenth wicket partnership of 41 and a target of 373. Daunting for most teams but reeling in big fish has become England’s speciality. Hell, they’d chased 371 earlier in the series. At 301-3, another monster was twitching on the line. Then centurion Harry Brook dropped his tackle along with his bat and suddenly it was English blood in the water.

No greater compliment can be given to Brendan McCullum and Ben Stokes than a narrow failure to successfully complete the second-highest run chase in England’s Test history somehow felt like a disappointment. In the summer of 2022, previously daunting targets were knocked off with increasing ease, culminating in the remarkable 378-3 against India that remains England’s all-time record chase and the high-water mark of Bazball. That match was a rescheduled one-off from the previous summer – Covid forcing its postponement – and victory ensured a 2-2 draw infused with the glow of victory.

Now, more than ever, it’s important to remember the giddy, glorious ridiculousness of that first Bazball summer. A miserable winter Ashes tour defined by Covid restrictions and a 4-0 shellacking – read this brilliant piece by Vithushan Ehantharajah – was followed by another lost series to West Indies and the resignation of Joe Root. The team were broken. And then along comes a tattooed New Zealand alpha male who reignites their love of a game that had become hateful. It was like that moment in The Wizard of Oz when dreary, monochrome Kansas dissolves into a colourful fantasyland. Mind the windows in the Emerald City.

Bazball is often dismissed as vibes but the vibes were so often immaculate. Cold hard statistics can’t convey the emotion of watching Johnny Bairstow lay waste to bowling attacks like a Yorkshire Thor; of a freshly liberated Root easing to yet another century; of Zak Crawley cracking a boundary off the first ball of the 2023 Ashes. Whatever happens from here, English cricket owes McCullum a debt of gratitude.

The 2023 Ashes ended in a 2-2 draw, described as a “moral victory” by Harry Brook but increasingly resembling a missed opportunity

What cold, hard statistics can convey is the 2023 Ashes ended in yet another 2-2 draw, famously described as a “moral victory” by Harry Brook but increasingly resembling a missed opportunity, the urn squandered through dropped catches at Edgbaston and idiotic batting at Lord's. (Bonus take: if England had backed their immaculate wicketkeeper Ben Foakes as fulsomely as Pope and Crawley, they’d be competing in Australia as holders.)

Miracles still occurred – overcoming a 190-run deficit against India, posting 823-7 against Pakistan – but both of those tours ended in defeat. They won three series on the bounce against West Indies, Sri Lanka and New Zealand. Worthy achievements, especially New Zealand, but hardly the stuff of legend. The 2025 blockbusters with India and Australia would always be the real quiz.

All draws aren’t necessarily equal, and some quizzes pose trickier questions than others. India are cricket’s preeminent superpower but they were undoubtedly the easier assignment. They arrived having lost their past two series, to New Zealand and Australia, along with their iconic talisman Virat Kohli and captain Rohit Sharma. Phase one of Project Legacy was there for the taking.

England needed that India series. They needed it for the immediate validation of their methods and their ultimate reckoning in the history books. They needed to prove to the world and themselves that they could win a big one. As relationships between the two sides frayed, they needed it for a more elemental motivation: to beat the bastards. It was in their hands and suddenly it wasn’t. They were going to win and then they didn’t.

The fabled Wizard of Oz is revealed to be a conman behind a curtain. To extend the analogy to McCullum would be grossly unfair and overlook the genuine magic he performed on a broken team. But here’s the thing about magic: it needs a receptive audience, a group of people eager to partake in a willing suspension of disbelief. Drop the deck, shout the wrong number, and the belief will waver.

Which brings us back to the Siraj yorker that sent Atkinson’s stump skidding across the Oval turf and cards scattered all over the stage. Three-one was revealed to be 2-2, and that statement victory vanished in a flash. Did England’s self-belief vanish with it?

The reality is obviously more nuanced but Stokes’s comments after Brisbane were revealing. “It is a common theme from the first game and before this series,” he told TNT Sports. When the game is on the line, teams are able to handle that pressure better than us.” You somehow doubt “before this series” referred to those dead rubbers dropped against Sri Lanka and New Zealand.

Three is the magic number. It is also the number of consecutive Tests England must now win, and the number of consecutive Tests they have now lost. Team and coach must pull off an unprecedented trick, otherwise the Ashes will be gone before you can say “abracadabra.”