Key events
Preamble
There are certain things that don’t come naturally to English people. Eye contact, relaxation – and winning every Test in a home summer. That’s for those ruthless MFs down under. In home seasons of at least five Tests, there have been 17 cases of teams winning every game:
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8 Australia
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3 South Africa
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2 England, West Indies
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1 India, Sri Lanka
England’s two clean sweeps were in 1959, when they thrashed a poor India side 5-0, and 2004. Michael Vaughan’s team beat New Zealand 3-0 and West Indies 4-0, an achievement for which they probably don’t receive enough credit. The 2005 Ashes casts a long shadow.
England hope the 2025-26 Ashes will do likewise. That’s been the focus of this summer, which makes their five consecutive wins even more notable. Easy to say they should always beat West Indies and Sri Lanka at home, but before this summer they’d done so only twice in their history: 1928 and 2004. (We’re not including the two-Test series of 2009.)
The weather has helped. Or rather, had helped. There’s a yellow warning for rain at The Oval today, so there could be a delayed start. The forecast, though never utopian, gets better as the match progresses so there should be plenty of time for a result: either a demonstration of England’s new ruthlessness, or a reminder that they will be forever England.
