{"id":391288,"date":"2026-01-04T15:20:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T15:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/391288\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T15:20:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T15:20:16","slug":"harry-brook-urges-england-to-make-most-of-good-wicket-after-series-best-score-ashes-2025-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/391288\/","title":{"rendered":"Harry Brook urges England to make most of \u2018good wicket\u2019 after series-best score | Ashes 2025-26"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harry Brook may have played like a man without a care in the world en route to a freewheeling 78 not out on a rain-shortened day one of the Sydney Test<\/a>, but at close of play he was reassuringly phlegmatic on the topic of his own batting output during the live part of this Ashes seres.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in a very good position, three down at the end of play and hopefully we can make the most of that going into tomorrow,\u201d Brook said. \u201cWhen I first went in it felt like the bounce was fairly steep, but then it started to get a little bit lower and slower and it just generally feels like a good wicket out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brook and Joe Root shared an unbroken 154-run partnership to leave England in a rare position of strength and Brook with his highest score of the series. The post-lunch session in particular was a gripping spectacle as Australia bowled short at Brook and he alternated between skewing a series of pulls and carves up in the air, and nailing the odd one for four or six.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s obviously a ploy, which has been used against me in my whole career. I\u2019ve experienced it a lot so far and I\u2019m expecting to experience it a lot in the future, so I thought I\u2019d played it all right. I could have played it better at times. It didn\u2019t feel amazing today but on another day it\u2019ll feel a hell of a lot better, so happily I just got through it and can take that momentum forward to tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Brook this has been a tour of promising starts and knuckle-chewing dismissals, although his aggression in Melbourne on a seaming pitch was a key ingredient in England\u2019s victory. Here there was a notable emphasis on strike rotation in partnership with Root.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve just got to be a little bit more patient and take my ones here and there and, thankfully, I did that today; I did that in a couple of the other innings as well. So that\u2019s something I\u2019ve got to think about going forward, put that into my game and look to try and be a little bit patient at times. But it\u2019s obviously not worked this series because I haven\u2019t scored as many runs as I would have liked.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been a frustrating series. I\u2019ve been in double figures every innings bar one and that\u2019s what I\u2019ve done so well in my career. I\u2019ve managed to go on and get big scores. It just hasn\u2019t happened this series and there\u2019s obviously been periods where I\u2019ve played them slightly differently and it\u2019s all part of the learning curve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if he though the surface would break up from here, Brook echoed his captain\u2019s shrug of the shoulders before the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely no idea. Nobody ever knows what they\u2019re talking about when it comes to wickets apart from the groundsman, so we\u2019ll have to see. It depends on the weather, obviously, if it cracks the flags the next few days then it might break up and it might spin towards the back end of the game. But there\u2019s a decent layer of grass on it, so it\u2019s fairly true at the minute.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quick GuideBangladesh refuse to travel to India for T20 World CupShow<\/p>\n

Bangladesh has refused to travel to India for next month\u2019s T20 World Cup and asked the ICC to move its games “outside India”, due to strained political relations between the two countries.<\/p>\n

The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) said it has decided not to send its cricket team to India “following a thorough assessment of the prevailing situation and the growing concerns regarding the safety and security of the Bangladesh contingent in India”.<\/p>\n

In a statement on Sunday, BCB said it also considered advice from its government before reaching out to the ICC “to consider relocating all of Bangladesh\u2019s matches to a venue outside India”. The T20 World Cup will be jointly hosted by India and Sri Lanka; Bangladesh are due to play three group games in Kolkata and one in Mumbai.<\/p>\n

Pakistan are already scheduled to play all their games in Sri Lanka, due to tensions with India that brought both countries to the brink of war last year.\u00a0The 20-team event will take place from 7 February to 8 March across five Indian venues and three in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, the Indian Premier League side Kolkata Knight Riders released the Bangladesh fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman on the instructions of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. Mustafizur was the only Bangladesh player picked in the recent IPL auction.<\/p>\n

Bangladesh announced its 15-member squad for the tournament on Sunday, with Litton Das named as the captain and Mustafizur leading the pace attack. Associated Press<\/p>\n

Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n

With the omission of Todd Murphy and Shoaib Bashir, neither team came into this game with a specialist spinner. Brook tends to favour the seamers, although perhaps not on this tour when Australia\u2019s revolving quartet has been the difference in this series.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was expecting to face a little bit more spin. Something came up on the TV that there\u2019s only been 60 overs or something per side this whole series. So yeah, I was expecting to face more spin than we have, but their seamers have been outstanding this whole series. They\u2019ve been relentless and they\u2019ve hit the length over and over again. So you can see why they\u2019ve gone with a five-seam attack this week; five-, six-seam attack. However many they\u2019ve got in there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Harry Brook may have played like a man without a care in the world en route to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-391288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}