England opener Zak Crawley on Saturday (December 20) accepted defeat in the Ashes 2025-26, even with the final day left in the third Test of the five-match series.
As England ended Day 4 in Adelaide at 207/6, needing 228 runs to win and keep the series alive, Crawley said he was disappointed that his team was ‘staring down the barrel’ before mentioning there was still ‘plenty’ to play for in the remaining two Tests.
Australia have simply outthought and outplayed their visitors throughout the Ashes. On Day 4, England lost Crawley (who top-scored with 85), Joe Root, Harry Brook, and Ben Stokes in a damaging final session dominated by Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon. Earlier, Travis Head’s superb 170 and Alex Carey’s 72 set up the daunting target of 435, with batting smarts in complete contrast to the BazBallers.
“It’s disappointing,” he said. “We came here to win the Ashes and we’re staring down the barrel now. There’ll still be plenty to play for [in Melbourne and Sydney] and we’ll definitely view it like that.”
Crawley was all praise for his opponents, saying how even though England have been just short of their best, Australia never allowed them to be anything better either.
“They’ve bowled very well, and haven’t given us a lot,” Crawley said. “You look at [Scott] Boland, just for one of them. He just very rarely misses, and so it’s hard to play that way that we have in the past, perhaps. They have to get credit for that there and they set good fields, in fairness to them. It’s just an attritional style of cricket over here, and they don’t allow it. It’s not as easy to score quickly out here.”
“They’re the best bowling attack that I’ve played against, for sure – especially in these conditions, when it was spinning like that for [Nathan] Lyon. They don’t give you anything, they make the ball move, and they’re relentless. We knew that coming in. We knew we had to be at our best, and unfortunately, we’ve been just short of that. But in fairness to them, they’ve been phenomenal for the last three games,” he added.