I am not sure what we witnessed at Optus Stadium in Perth, but it was not Test cricket as I know it. Five-day Tests between Australia and England have gone the way of the dodo.

In the annals of Ashes cricket, few matches will be remembered with quite the same mixture of awe and horror as the Perth Test of November 2025, but they still have time to get it right.

Completed in under two days – the third-shortest in 148 years of Ashes history – it was a contest that swung wildly, thrilled momentarily, and then ended in a brutal Australian victory.

It may yet come to be regarded as the moment Test cricket either redefined itself for the entertainment age or the precise point at which Bazball finally crashed into the unforgiving wall of Australian reality.

As Mark Twain once observed, “It’s not what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” England arrived in Perth certain their approach – all care and no responsibility, as one seasoned observer put it – would conquer the fastest, bounciest pitch in cricket.

Two days later, they were shattered, demoralised, and facing the biggest existential crisis of the Stokes-McCullum era.

England captain Ben Stokes has overseen another calamity.Credit: Getty Images

Day one belonged emphatically to Mitchell Starc. Operating at career-best rhythm and control, the left-armer produced a spell of sustained 145km/h-plus hostility that England could not handle. Ben Stokes won the toss and chose to bat, a decision that aged like milk in the West Australian sun.

Zak Crawley’s tall, leg-side-dominant stance and predilection for airy wafts outside off stump proved ill-suited for Perth’s extra bounce. He fell early, as did most of the top order.

Thanks largely to Harry Brook (52) and Jamie Smith (33), England dragged themselves to 172. Starc finished with seven, swinging the ball late and relentlessly........

© The Sydney Morning Herald