England batters under huge pressure in Brisbane Ashes Test against Australia, Will Jacks pick a surprise, and why you can't avoid media gauntlet
Published 03/12/2025 at 14:55 GMT
England's batters will be under huge pressure in the second Ashes Test in Brisbane, says Alastair Cook. Ben Stokes' tourists go into the Gabba clash desperate to get back in the series after their opening loss in Perth, and have picked Will Jacks for their XI. Cook says the Surrey man's inclusion surprised him. Watch and stream the second Test from 3.30am UK time on TNT Sports 1.
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Ex-England captain Sir Alastair Cook will be providing his insight and analysis for TNT Sports throughout the 2025/26 NRMA Insurance men's Ashes. Here is his second column ahead of the crucial second Test in Brisbane, in which he discusses the "huge" pressure on England's batters, and the surprise selection of Will Jacks. Watch every ball of the Ashes live on TNT Sports and discovery+.
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England batters under huge pressure
Perth was such an opportunity for England because of Australia’s current state of flux.
You hope they don’t regret what happened there. They had such an opportunity to open up some cracks in that Australian side.
Everything gets papered over very quickly when you win, but England had earned the right to ask the questions of Australia, but they never got to the answer, because a) they lost nine wickets in a session and b) Travis Head played so well.
That’s still the frustration from Perth, the manner of it from the position they got themselves into to how it ended was very hard to take.
The pressure on these England batters when they walk out to bat in Brisbane is huge, because of the talk of the lack of preparation, not going to Canberra and not practising with the pink ball – it does ramp it up loads.
But if they get through Australia’s initial burst in the first hour - when all their players will be reminding them of what happened in Perth – we know this England side can score runs quickly and put any bowler in the world under pressure, if they do it smartly.
And they have done that before, there is no doubt in that. They haven’t done it as consistently as they would have liked or needed to in order to win big series, but it feels like now or never to do so.
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Jacks selection surprised me
I was a little bit surprised that England picked Will Jacks; it tells me a couple of things. Firstly, the curator said this pitch is a bit drier than usual.
Probably, after the Western Australian Cricket Association lost however many millions of dollars of revenue, you can kind of see Queensland Cricket thinking 'we need a slightly flatter wicket'. They want this game going four days.
And if you’ve got a flat wicket, you need to play a spinner, you need a change of pace.
It also tells me that, unfortunately, I don’t think Shoaib Bashir is bowling as well as England would like him to be. That has to be the only reason why he isn't playing.
England will say that Jacks adds greater strength in depth with the bat – of course he does, he’s a better all-round cricketer – and that will bode well, but the amount of time and investment into Bashir was because they wanted a tall off-spinner to bowl in Australia.
And if he isn’t going to play now, he’s not going to play at all in the series. That’s what I read into it.
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I don’t think Jacks’ inclusion is an admission of worries over the batting. That’s not how Brendon McCullum thinks.
With Gus Atkinson, Brydon Carse and Jofra Archer as the tail, they can all hold a bat anyway.
In the first Test, they tried to hit every ball for four or six and lost five wickets for 12 in that period in the first innings that cost them, and they must put a bit more value on their wickets, but they are capable with the bat.
It helps that Jacks bats as well, of course it does - him coming in at eight will help England.
But someone coming in at eight is not playing to score match-winning runs; he’s a spinner and they obviously think that he’s bowling much better than Bashir.
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Jacks’ inclusion shows that the best planning doesn’t always go well. You look at Australia, they’ve got two debutants, Jake Weatherald and Brendan Doggett, in an Ashes series. You never plan for that.
But I think the modern player, in particular people who’ve played franchise cricket, it’s less of an issue throwing them into a big series.
If the only thing you’ve done is play county cricket in front of a few hundred or thousand people, to then go into The Gabba would be a jump.
But Jacks has opened the batting in the IPL, so it’s a different thing, and the players now are far more used to it than they’ve ever been.
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England have been trying to change their style
I actually think England have been trying to play differently. Against India last summer, they did try and bat differently. There’s no doubt about it.
When Jasprit Bumrah came on, they knew he was only bowling a five-over spell, so they saw him off – in the couple of games that he played – and then just went out and attacked after that.
I honestly think that in Perth, the moment just caught up with England when they lost those four wickets in 19 balls in the second innings.
They had such a good lead in a low-scoring game, they probably thought 'we’ll fight fire with fire', whereas it was probably the time for a really calm, cool head, and think ‘no, I will soak up the pressure here’, and do it the other way.
Even the most experienced players, sometimes, you just make bad decisions, and the whole situation can override the right decision.
I think the England side have been trying to play the situation better, but in Perth in the second innings, they didn’t play the situation well – and it cost them dearly. They created themselves a fantastic opportunity and they didn’t take it.
It comes down to the result at the end of the series how we judge all this. Suddenly, if England play a bit better, bat a bit better as the series goes on, you’ll think ‘were they underprepared, were they match-hardened?’
Because that comes, I think, from being in pressure situations. You can never replicate what it’s going to be like properly. Or was Perth just one of those games?
There are so many things you can look at, such as if Travis Head opens the batting in Perth, plays a massive shot, nicks it – then everyone says it’s a bad decision to promote him up the order.
And he did play and miss at a couple early on, but thereafter you couldn't bowl to him, it was extraordinary.
It’s such small margins, and the better sides seem to win those small margins better. It feels as if it’s time for someone to do something special for England, and the time is now.
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How I dealt with airport doorstepping
The Aussie media pile-on at the moment is nothing different – that happens when you’re in Australia.
It is different to England – the English media don’t follow people after Test matches, but they do in Australia, it’s what happens. It is what it is.
Being doorstepped at the airport is a great example of something we don’t get in England. You finish the Test match, you do your media, you’re done. You get in your car, you’re out of there, you get to the next game.
But no matter what you do in Australia, they know which flight you’re getting out of there, and they’re waiting for you. You cannot avoid walking the gauntlet.
It’s only five minutes, but it’s still five minutes where they ask you questions in an environment that isn’t controlled like a press conference, it’s not controlled at all, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so you do feel like you’re under a bit of an attack from it.
I used to stop and talk. You have no choice. In the airport you can’t walk through, you look really bad if you don’t stop. It’s just a strange environment.
I think once some of our players walked through with headphones on and pretended they couldn’t hear them, and they got more criticism for that.
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Damned if you do, damned if you don't
England have got to stay true to their principles. Ben Stokes and McCullum have been given the keys to lead England.
If they’d have sent the players to Canberra to play, people would say ‘they’re making it up as they go', and England would have said ‘we did something we said we weren’t going to do – we listened to other people.‘
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In one sense, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. No matter what is written or said, we won’t know how match-hardened the bowlers were. But for four sessions in Perth, they created themselves an opportunity to win the game.
Was their preparation that bad? Or was it the lack of preparation that cost them, because when the pressure came on they weren’t used to it? You can argue it any which way until you’re blue in the face.
England are preparing the way they want to prepare, because that’s what they want to do.
They’re choosing it because they think the heat of Brisbane in bouncier nets is better preparation for everyone. They will only ever be judged by the results.
Why The Gabba is so hard for tourists
Perth and Brisbane tend to be the two quickest wickets in Australia. That bounce and pace is just unusual for an English cricketer to have played much cricket on.
The atmosphere can be hostile, but there can be other times when it’s quite quiet and full of English people, like it was in 2010 on days four and five when we batted for our draw.
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When the Australians take a few wickets – like England did when they lost those four wickets in the second innings in Perth for 19 runs – that noise is just very different noise to anywhere else. It’s like Edgbaston on heat, in terms of the atmosphere.
And for the bowlers, trying to find the perfect length is not easy at all, with the pace and bounce. Those are the main reasons why it’s so hard.
The encouraging thing is that West Indies beat them at The Gabba in their last pink-ball game. So it’s certainly possible to play well, and it shows that if you get it right, you can put them under pressure like West Indies did, and which is what England did for four sessions in Perth.
England must get Starc into more spells
As always with the best bowlers, the more they bowl, the worse they get. That is the nature of Test cricket.
However you play, a bowler bowling in their first two spells is not the same as a bowler in their fourth or fifth spell, after spending some time in the field.
You might have to give Mitchell Starc his first spell. But if it’s doing nothing, perfect: then you can attack.
If it’s doing a bit, you might have to say ‘right, we are going to have to soak him up’, but maybe England don’t trust their defences enough to be able to do it. Starc bowling his 30th over or his third? I know which one I’d rather face.
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It would be an incredible comeback if England turned it around from 2-0 down, but they were 2-0 down in the last Ashes series and should have won all three of the next games...
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Watch every ball of the Ashes live on TNT Sports and discovery+
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