Test Match Special - Daily Ashes Quiz: Centuries for nought

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

Every weekday during the 2025-26 Ashes, comedian and statistician Andy Zaltzman poses new a cricketing conundrum. It won’t be easy though. You might want to take it away, share in your group chats and challenge your friends. Andy will reveal the answer the following day.Test Match Special has live commentary on BBC Sounds with a team including Jonathan Agnew, Isa Guha, Michael Vaughan, Sir Alastair Cook and Cheteshwar Pujara.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Bring more gear, carry more passengers, face greater challenges. Welcome to the world of Defender, with seating up to eight, ample cargo space, and legendary off-road capability. It's built to make the most of every adventure. Learn more at landrover.ca. Daily Quiz. I am Andy Zaltzman, test match special statistician, and I will be part of the team bringing you ball-by-ball coverage of the men's ashes on five sports extra and BBC sounds over the next couple of months. Throughout what promises to be an absolutely gripping series every weekday morning on the Ashes Daily Quiz, I will set you a question. If you listen to the

TMS quiz in the summer, welcome back. If you didn't, welcome to a quiz which tests not so much your knowledge as your ability to take a well-constructed guess or a wild stab in the dark at a statistic or fact. To spice things up a bit, we have a new scoring system for the ashes. The closer you are to the correct answer, the more runs you score. If you're way off, you're out. I'll explain each question scoring system each day, and you can keep tally if you want through each week. And look, let's get this out there. No cheating, please. You're umpiring and scoring yourselves essentially here. So if you want to claim to have smashed every single question out of the park for six, that's on you.

And no looking things up either. That's my job. So to start with, for our first question, we'll begin with some beginnings. Obviously, it's very important to start well on a challenging tour and harrowingly awful starts to Ashes Series in Australia can feel like just a natural part of the rhythm of life for English cricket fans of recent vintage. My question for you to guess at today is this.

This will be the 37th Men's Ashes series in Australia. How many times in the previous 36 have Australia reached 100 for naught in their first innings of a home Ashes series? How many century opening stands have Australia had in the first innings of the first test of Ashes series in Australia? The scoring system for this one, if you get it exactly right, you've started the series with a six. Within two either side, four, if you're within four either side,

I'll give you two runs, within eight either side, you've nudged it for a single. If you're wrong by more than 12, you're out. Otherwise, it's a dot ball. So good luck with that question. How many opening stands have Australia had in the first innings of the first tests of Home Ashes series? I'll give you the answer and another question tomorrow.

Do follow ball-by-ball coverage of every test from the Men's Ashes with TMS on BBC Sounds to listen live whenever you want. Just scroll through the live radio dial of the top of BBC Sounds and tap on five sports extra or ask your smart speaker as politely as you want to play five sports extra.