1. Tom Curran’s debut:

A couple of weeks before the start of the series, Steven Finn was ruled out with an injury. This led to Tom Curran being flown out to join the team in Australia. There have been many English cricketers who were flown out to strengthen the team as replacements in Australia, but a small number were lucky enough to play a Test match or more during the respective tours. Some have gone on to enjoy long, successful Test careers. Others, not so much. Here is the full list:

Reg Wood (1886-87)
George Gunn (1907-08)
Brian Statham (1950-51)
Roy Tattersall (1950-51)
Ted Dexter (1958-59)
John Mortimore (1958-59)
Barry Knight (1965-66)
Bob Willis (1970-71)
Colin Cowdrey (1974-75)
Barry Wood (1974-75)
John Emburey (1979-80)
Phil Newport (1990-91)
Angus Fraser (1994-95)
Mark Ramprakash (1994-95)
Chris Lewis (1994-95)
Graeme Hick (1998-99)
Robert Key (2002-03)
Alex Tudor (2002-03)
Craig White (2002-03)
Chris Silverwood (2002-03)
Scott Borthwick (2013-14)
Tom Curran (2017-18)

2. Joe Root is the third Englishman in this list, but he may not enjoy it:

Joe Root was England’s highest scorer in England’s second innings of the final Test at Sydney. He scored 58 but, unfortunately, could not carry on due to illness. Thus, he became the third Englishman to be the top scorer in the innings despite retiring hurt or ill.

Len Hutton retired hurt on 122 with his team’s score on 237-6 in the Sydney Test of 1947. He was unable to bat in their second innings as the English batting collapsed to pave the way for an Australian victory by 5 wickets.

In England’s horrendous summer of 1988, at Leeds, Allan Lamb emulated Len Hutton. He scored 64 before retiring hurt in England’s first innings. It was the highest score in the low-scoring match. Lamb came back to bat in the second innings, albeit at number eight position. He couldn’t help his team avoid a 10-wicket defeat, though.

Now, Joe Root has joined Hutton and Lamb in this list.

3. Mason Crane’s unspectacular debut:

In 2005, Mason Crane watched Shane Warne bowl in England during that year’s Ashes. He was only eight at the time, but twelve years later, he had his own Ashes moment when he made his debut against Australia in Sydney. Australia scored a mammoth 649-7d in their first innings of which 193 were scored off Crane’s bowling. Crane picked up one wicket though: Usman Khawaja.

This is the worst display by any bowler on debut for England; Crane went past Devon Malcolm’s 1-166 on debut against Australia in 1989. Suraj Randiv conceded 222 runs on debut but he picked up two wickets. Among bowlers who could take only one wicket in their debut innings, Crane has conceded the second most number of runs, behind India’s Nilesh Kulkarni, who had figures of 1-195 against Sri Lanka in 1997.

4. The Smith & Lyon show:

Great performances in the Ashes have helped Steven Smith and Nathan Lyon finish as top run-scorer and top wicket-taker of 2017. This is only the 6th time in the last 25 years that players topping both these lists belonged to the same country.

David Boon and Shane Warne in 1993
Brian Lara and Courtney Walsh in 1995
Ricky Ponting and Shane Warne in 2005
Graeme Smith and Dale Steyn in 2008
Kumar Sangakkara and Rangana Herath in 2014
Steven Smith and Nathan Lyon in 2017

5. The very impressive Australian bowling attack:

Ashes 2017-18 provided the first instance of only four bowlers picking up all the wickets for a team in a five-match series. Moreover, all four Australian bowlers picked up twenty or more wickets in the series. This is only the third time that four bowlers from the same team have picked up twenty wickets or more in a series.

West Indies v England in 1995 (Kenneth Benjamin, Courtney Walsh, Ian Bishop and Curtly Ambrose)
Australia v England in 2006-07 (Stuart Clark, Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee)
Australia v England 2017-18 (Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon)

6. Nathan Lyon v Moeen Ali

Moeen Ali had a tough series. On the other hand, Nathan Lyon was superb, especially against the left-handers. Ali struggled against Lyon and got dismissed by him on as many as seven occasions in the series. This is the joint highest for the most times a batsman has been dismissed by one bowler in a series. Here is the full list:

Jack Siedle (South Africa) by Clarrie Grimmett (Australia) in 1935-36
Trevor Goddard (South Africa) by Brian Statham (England) in 1960
David Gower (England) by Geoff Lawson in 1989
Mike Atherton (England) by Glenn McGrath (Australia) in 1997
Moeen Ali by Nathan Lyon in 2017-18

Lyon took only 9 innings to dismiss Moeen 7 times, thus making it the least number of innings required for 7 dismissals among all five instances.

A forgettable Ashes result for the English cricketers, and these statistics only rub salt into their wounds.

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