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

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

Four days of training ahead of the series – something the 31-year-old said was “unprecedented” for him – helped find his rhythm and certainly cleared any doubts.

“When you have a big gap in Test cricket and you’re lying in bed with two nights to go, you wonder, ‘Can I do this?’ He said.

“Can you still produce it? Can you, as a cricketer every year, continue to produce good results in the big moments? It doesn’t get much bigger than this.”

This last point is the most important when it comes to the header.

The game’s best senior, he now has four Ashes hundreds to go with another in the 2023 World Cup final and the World Test Championship final earlier that year.

When Australia battled hard to regain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy from India last year, Head made scores of 89, 140 and 159 in the first three Tests.

Former India coach Ravi Shastri once called the South Australian a “head ache”, and the England players must be on the verge of wishing they could draw the curtains, lie down and close their eyes in a cold room.

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

Since then he has been hitting the head at a rate of 80.20 runs per 100 balls, compared to 49.65 in the early part of his career, in a shift in style almost unprecedented throughout the history of Test cricket.

An unintended consequence of Head’s move to the top in this series was that England had to change their plans to the left-hander.

In 2023, they had a clear plan, with 52% of deliveries being thrown to the head by pacers 10 meters or less to target Head’s weakness on balls that went around his helmet.

This time, because they had the new ball in hand, England were forced to push the ball up but they only fed off their strength in the cut, not helped by their inability to hold the line.

For most of the afternoon, they resorted to trying to get the ball out wide – a tactic that must have damaged Ben Stokes to the core.

“I was coaching against Travis Head in Western Australia, and you can’t bow down to his cut shot,” former Australia coach Justin Langer told TNT Sports.

“His carriage is quite late. Either England could not carry out its plan or the plans were bad.”