Ashes 2025-26: Travis Head’s switch to opener is the Australian masterstroke that changed the series

Head’s struggles before this series – only scoring 40 or more in 20 innings dating back to June – are now a distant memory.

The four days of training before the series – something the 31-year-old athlete, at his calmest, said was “unprecedented” for him – helped him find his rhythm and dispel any doubts.

“When you have a big gap in Test cricket and you were lying in bed a few nights ago you think: ‘Can I do this?’” he said.

“Can you still produce that? Can you continue to score well in big moments every year as a cricketer? There will be nothing bigger than this.”

This last point is the most relevant when it comes to Head.

The greatest player of the game, he now has four Ashes hundreds in the 2023 World Cup final and the World Test Championship final earlier that year.

Head scored 89, 140 and 159 in the first three Tests when Australia fought desperately to win back the Border-Gavaskar Trophy from India last year.

Former India coach Ravi Shastri once nicknamed the South Australian ‘Headache’ and England’s players must have gotten to the point where they wish they could draw the curtains and lie down in a cool room and close their eyes.

They witnessed the dawn of Head’s reinvention as a highly aggressive batsman in 2021 when he smashed a 148-ball 152 in the first Test of the recent Ashes series.

Since then Head has batted at 80.20 runs per 100 balls, compared to 49.65 in the first half of his career, in a change of style almost unprecedented in the history of Test cricket.

The unintended consequence of Head coming out on top in this series was that England had to change their plans to suit the left-handed player.

They had a clear plan in 2023; 52% of deliveries were bowled to Head by pacers, who bowled 10m or less to target Head’s weakness for balls bouncing around his helmet.

This time, with the new ball in hand, England were forced to push the ball up, but only fed their strength by cutting back, which was not helped by their inability to hold the line.

For most of the afternoon they tried to squeeze Head with too much space; This must have hurt Ben Stokes to the core.

“I was coaching against Travis Head for Western Australia and you don’t bowl against his cut,” Head’s former Australia coach Justin Langer told TNT Sports.

“The wagon wheel is completely behind the mark. Either England failed to implement its plans or the plans were weak.”