Test Match Special - Daily Ashes Quiz: Difference between innings

Episode Date: December 15, 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, Simon Mann and Jim Maxwell. England's 2005 Ashes-winning captain Michael Vaughan, legendary Australia seamer Glenn McGrath and ex-England spinners Phil Tufnell and Alex Hartley will be part of the punditry team.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. The Dakar Rally is the ultimate off-road challenge. Perfect for the ultimate defender. The high-performance defender, Octa, 626 horsepower twin turbo V8 engine and intelligent 6D dynamics air suspension. Learn more at Landrover.ca. This month in football, everything is up for grabs. The Premier League battles intensify.

The Champions League reaches its crucial turning point and the World Cup draw sets the stage for the biggest tournament on earth. Football Daily from the BBC brings you sharp analysis, instant reaction, expert insight

and the stories driving the game on and off the pitch. Your essential football podcast delivered every day. Listen to Football Daily on Spotify, to Football Daily on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Andy Zaltzman, test match special statistician, and this is today's TMS Daily Ashes quiz.

Every weekday during the current Ashes series, I will give you a question to take a guess at, see how close you can get to the statistically correct answer. This is exclusive on BBC Sounds, and you have a scoring system, so you can tot up the quality of your answers over the course of the series. Let's start with the answer to Friday's question, which was about England's chances of winning the final three tests at the Adelaide Oval at the MCG and the SCG based on their previous win percentage in Ashes tests at those three grounds. The correct answer was 4.4%, which I'll be honest, was higher than I was expecting. And it's definitely not zero. So let's cling to that

in Ashes test at the Adelaide Oval. They've won nine out of 33, they're 19 out of 50 in Ashes test at the MCG, and 22 out of 52 wins at the SCG. So multiply those altogether, you get 4.4%, which is about a 1 in 23 shot, which, to be honest, I'll take. Under our scoring system, if you said anywhere in the 4% range, you've hit a 6. If you're 3 or 5%, I'll give you 4. 6 or 7%, you can have 2. If you said 2, 8, 9 or 10%, you can have 1. But if you said 0% or 15% or over,

well, A, you're either a cynic or B, you're a hopeless optimist, and C, you're out. Otherwise, it's a dot ball. Luckily, I don't think the disappointing run of five consecutive Adelaide Oval defeats from 1890s, 95 to 1908 is going to be weighing too much on England's minds this week. Their more recent record is slightly less hopeful. Since 1990, they've won two out of nine at all three of those grounds, but that gives a 1.1% of winning all three matches, around about a 1 in 90 chance.

But, well, after how the series has gone so far, I think I'd take that as well. Today's question now, the Adelaide Oval has the biggest drop between the average scores in team's first innings and their second innings of any test ground that's hosted five or more tests since the year 2000. But my question for you is, in terms of runs per 10 wicket, so basically the average team score,

what is the average difference between teams' collective first innings and their collective second innings in all men's test cricket everywhere around the world since the year 2000? So the average difference between teams' first inning score and their second inning score in all men's test cricket at all grounds around the world since the year 2000. I will have the answer for you tomorrow, Plus another question, exclusively about the Adelaide Oval, do join us for ball-by-ball coverage of the third test and the fourth and fifth test, indeed, with Test Match Special on Five Sports Extra and BBC Sounds to listen live on Sounds whenever you want.

Just scroll through the live radio dial at the top of BBC Sounds and tap on Five Sports Extra or ask your smart speaker nicely to play Five Sports Extra. Football, everything is up for grabs. The Premier League battles intensify, the Champions League reaches its crucial turning point, and the World Cup draw sets the stage for the biggest tournament on earth. Football Daily from the BBC brings you sharp analysis, instant reaction, expert insight,

and the stories driving the game on and off the pitch. Your essential football podcast, delivered every day. Listen to Football Daily on Spotify, to Football Daily on BBC.com, or wherever you get your podcasts.