Cricket
Motorsport
Basketball test
League - Test
Combat Sports
Netball
Football
LIVE: Brook "self-destruction" sums up England's woes
SEN • December 21st, 2025 10:53 am
- Australia have one hand on the urn with 4 wickets needed to win on Day 5
- England begin the day's play at 6/207
- The visitors need a record-breaking 435 to win in Adelaide
Australia needs just four wickets on Day 5 in Adelaide to win the Ashes.
Chasing 435 in the final innings in what would be record-breaking effort, England look destined to look the Ashes in just 11 days on Sunday in Adelaide.
The visitors begin the day at 6/207 with Will Jacks and Jamie Smith at the crease.
While they're two solid batsmen, the 228 needed to win with just four wickets in hand looks a bridge too far at this stage.
Follow along here as the Aussies look to claim the Ashes 3-0 with two Tests remaining.
8:55am - Pom's view on England's innings
The Telegraph's Oliver Brown has slammed Harry Brook for for his efforts on Day 4.
With the door slightly ajar as the star No. 5 and Zak Crawley batted together, Brook tried to reverse sweep Nathan Lyon where he was embarrassingly bowled.
Brown says his 'witless self-destruction sums him and England up'.
"Wildly off balance, with his limbs splayed from an abortive reverse sweep, Harry Brook looked as if he had no idea what had hit him. It felt a fitting motif for England’s befuddlement on this tour, for their woeful inability to anticipate the Australian juggernaut thundering towards them," Brown wrote in The Telegraph.
"Brook, the country’s most extravagantly gifted young batsman, just stood there dumbfounded, confused as to whether he had been bowled or stumped. Advancing to a delivery from Nathan Lyon that pitched outside off stump and spun devilishly, he could only swipe at thin air as the ball clipped the top of leg stump. And sure as night follows day, his team would tumble through the trapdoor once more.
"At the start of this series, there were excited whispers within the England camp that Brook had the talent to decide at least two Tests on his own. But such is his addiction to circus flourishes, his high-water mark so far has been a flashy 52 in Perth.
"When his side have needed him to pace himself according to the situation, he has too often been the author of his own demise. The difference here, perhaps, was that the picture was self-evident: reach stumps only three down, and England might just have entertained a dream of completing a world-record fourth-innings chase. Instead, where he led with his scrambled thinking, others followed him like lemmings over a cliff."
