The Ashes are finally here, but as Perth’s Optus Stadium gears up to kick things off, England are already staring into the abyss. The tourists head to Western Australia with a miserable outlook looming over their preparations—15 consecutive Ashes Tests Down Under without a single win, 13 of them outright losses in a run that spans across the last 15 years.
England haven’t hoisted the tiny urn in a decade, with their last triumph coming on home turf back in 2015 with a 3-2 series victory. You have to go back a further five years for their last series win on enemy territory, and online betting outlets think they could be in for another tough trip to the lion’s den. The latest cricket odds from popular online betting sites currently list Ben Stokes’ side as an 11/5 outsider to reclaim the urn this winter, with their hosts positioned as the 3/4 favorites.
So, when was the last time that the tourists managed to win at each of the five Ashes venues that will be opening their gates this year? And, more importantly, what will it take for them to banish ghosts this winter? Let’s take a look.
Optus Stadium
For all the WACA’s legend—the dust devils, the Fremantle Doctor, Botham’s lone-star heroics in 1978—Perth now belongs to the next generation. Optus Stadium, built on steel and glass, has never hosted an Ashes Test. England’s slate here is, quite literally, spotless—not a ball bowled between these oldest of enemies. But this is hardly comfort: the last time the English left Perth’s western shores victorious in the Ashes was way back in 1978, forty-eight years and another world ago.
What matters now are the numbers and the narrative. The Optus drop-in pitch is wider, truer, and potentially meaner than the WACA’s dustbowl. Its bounce has already chewed up visiting Indian and Pakistani lineups. Australia’s record here is daunting; England, untested, faces a cauldron of face-paint and fast bowling. For Stokes and company, it’s a paradox: both a chance at immortality and avoiding the void of the unknown.
The Gabba
If you could build a fortress out of statistics, the Gabba would be it. Twenty-four Ashes Tests. England wins? One. A single, rain-battered, almost mythical victory in 1928/29, when Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe strode out in candlewick sweaters and bowler hats. Since then, the Gabba has seen every generation of English hope reduced to ashes. Eleven defeats, six draws, and a psychological specter that seems to grow heavier with every passing tour.
Here, England’s failures are more than numbers; they are cautionary tales. The Gabba’s trampoline bounce, the humid December air, and the hostile Queensland crowds have become the setting for countless English collapses. The 2010/11 draw—Alastair Cook’s herculean double-century and James Anderson’s artistry with the new ball—remains perhaps the closest England have come to exorcising these demons. But the Gabbatoir’s legend is self-perpetuating. Can Stokes’ high-octane methods, teetering between revolution and disaster, rewrite one of cricket’s most stubborn scripts?
Adelaide Oval
Quick, close your eyes and picture Adelaide: the sweeping limbs of Moreton Bay figs, the pale dusk, the art deco scoreboard. Romantic? Of course. But for Australia in 2010/11, it was a house of horrors. In one majestic, surgical Test, Andrew Strauss’s England delivered perhaps their modern Ashes masterpiece—bowling Australia out for 245, amassing an avalanche of runs (Kevin Pietersen’s 227, rarely bettered), and then rolling the Aussies again for 304 to win by an innings and 71.
That was the Test that proved English discipline could still trump Australian swagger. It’s telling that, since day-night cricket took hold, Australia has recaptured Adelaide’s edge—no Ashes pink-ball slip yet, and England’s victories here stretch no further than that 2010/11 outlier. Still, for Stokes, Joe Root, and any Englishman with an eye for history, Adelaide remains the proof that calm heads and relentless pressure can silence even the rowdiest Aussie crowd.
Melbourne Cricket Ground
There are Ashes moments, and then there is Boxing Day 2010. The MCG, that temple of cricketing excess—a hundred thousand fans, every camera in the southern hemisphere, and a pitch with more stories to tell than the world’s libraries. Australia, eviscerated for just 98 on the first morning. Jonathan Trott’s unbeaten 168—colder than the Yarra’s banks, as ruthless as a guillotine. An innings-and-157-run victory. England retaining the urn, not with a scramble, but a full-throated roar.
Since that day, however, a day in which England successfully retained the urn on enemy territory for the first time since the 1980s, Australia has reshaped the Big G’s pitches, added layers of pace and bounce, and made the holiday crowd louder, harder, and more merciless still. For England, the ghosts linger—they have not claimed Melbourne again, the Christmas magic replaced by Boxing Day nightmares.
Sydney Cricket Ground
There was something cinematic—inevitable, even—about the way the 2010/11 Ashes ended at the SCG. The lush green, the old-world Pavilion, the Sydney skyline, a twilight watercolor. An Australian win would salvage pride and a 2-2 series draw, even if the urn would head back across the world with the tourists.
England, however, was rampant, desperate for their first outright series win on enemy territory. They scored 644 in the first innings, all but erasing any remaining hope from Ricky Ponting’s battered men. Cook, Matt Prior, Ian Bell—centurions all. The match was over by the third night, an innings-and-83-run margin stamping the tour as one for the ages.
Since then? Sydney’s stage belongs to Australia, the curtain falling on English hopes tour after tour. But for every English fan, that memory of January 2011 burns bright. There is a symmetry at play—the Ashes have run out in Australia 15 times since, each Test another turn of the screw. What better place to snap the streak than beneath the New Year’s fireworks, to bring a decade of drought to a dramatic, history-laden conclusion?
