England were chasing a daunting 435 in the final innings to try and keep the series alive, but fell well short, being bowled out for 352.<\/p>\n
![\"Australia's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/skynews-ashes-cricket-australia_7116519.jpg\")
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Image:
\n Australia’s players celebrate their win. Pic: Reuters<\/p>\n
High expectations were resting on the shoulders of captain Ben Stokes’s men ahead of the series, but a string of underwhelming performances means the wait to regain the Ashes continues for two more years, when the series returns to England.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the clash, Stokes had hoped the “Bazball” approach might see the team secure a win in Australia for the first time since 2010\/11 – but any hopes were swept aside after England reverted to more \u200ctraditional test batting and were still beaten.<\/p>\n
The dominant nature of Australia’s victory will inevitably raise questions over the futures of Stokes and Brendon McCullum as head coach.<\/p>\n
“Everyone is obviously hurting and quite emotional about it. But we’ve got two more games to go and that’s where the focus needs to switch to now,” Stokes said.<\/p>\n
“We obviously came here with a goal in mind and we haven’t been able to achieve it. It hurts and it sucks, but we’re not going to stop.<\/p>\n
“They’ve been able to outdo us on \u200ca much higher level… I thought we did incredibly well to take us where we did in this fourth innings.<\/p>\n
“We couldn’t do what we came here to do but there was some good stuff to come out of \u200cthis game.”<\/p>\n
Asked if he still had the energy for the captaincy, Stokes replied: “Absolutely.”<\/p>\n
Speaking after the defeat, McCullum brought up the topic of preparation as one area where England may have gone wrong.<\/p>\n
“I know that’ll be something that’s questioned. And when you’ve lost 3-0, you’ve got to put your hand up and say, ‘maybe I didn’t get that preparation right’,” he told TNT Sports.<\/p>\n
![\"England's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/skynews-ashe-australia-england_7116520.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Image:
\n England’s head coach Brendan McCullum (left) shakes hands with Australia’s Pat Cummins. Pic: PA<\/p>\n
“And that’s not just leading into the first game, but it’s, ‘could we have done more leading into game one and could we have done less leading into game two?’<\/p>\n
“It’s trying to work out those things, and ultimately, you’re responsible for that. You put your hand up and say ‘I didn’t get that right’ because we’ve lost 3-0.”<\/p>\n
The intensity and scrutiny of an Ashes series in Australia didn’t catch England by surprise but the team “weren’t able to deal with it”, McCullum said.<\/p>\n
“We had such high expectations and hopes for this series that we just almost, it just constrained us a little bit,” he added.<\/p>\n
England lost the first Test in two days, the second in four days, and the third after the full five days.<\/p>\n
The defeat matches the unwanted record of Nasser Hussain’s squad of 2002-03 by surrendering the urn in the shortest number of days for a five-day, five-match series.<\/p>\n
England will now hope to avoid a 5-0 whitewash in the fourth and fifth Tests over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n
Having won back the Ashes from England in 2017, Australia have now retained the famous urn on four successive occasions, drawing two away series and winning twice at home.<\/p>\n
“It feels pretty awesome,” Australia captain Pat Cummins said. “An amazing series, one I’ve been thinking about for a long time.<\/p>\n
“One of the things I’m most proud about with this group is nothing ever really happens perfectly, there’s always something that gets thrown up, but this group just cracks on.<\/p>\n
“I missed the first couple of games, but Steve [Smith] steps right in and it’s seamless. Nathan Lyon did his hamstring today, but the boys just say, ‘okay, that’s happened but let’s crack on’. I think that’s one of the big reasons why we’ve had the success we’ve had the last couple of years.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England have lost the third Test in an historic Ashes defeat against Australia, who claim victory after just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-329519","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}