Test Match Special - Daily Ashes Quiz: Wins in the first three tests

Episode Date: December 22, 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.

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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, welcome to the test match special Daily Ashes Quiz with me, Andy Zaltzman TMS statistician. Every weekday during the current Ashes series, I am posing an Ashes-related stats question for you to have a guess at.

For the rest of the week, you can hear it exclusively on BBC Sounds. We'll start with Friday's answer. For the third match in a row this series, Australia scored at more than four runs per over in Adelaide. England did so in all five tests in 2023, plus for what it's worth, in Perth. The question was in all men's England v. Australia tests to the end of the 20th century, 296 of them. How many times did one of the teams score at four runs per over or faster? And the answer was only six. England did it twice, both in 1985, at the Headingley and Edgebaston tests,

and Australia did it four times, all of them in England, twice in 1921, once in 1934, and once in 1997. It's happened 35 more times since the start of this. Millennium, including, as I said, Australia in all three tests this series. For our scoring system, if you got it bang on and said six, you can have six. Anything else below 10, you can have four. If you're below 20, you can have two. Below 30, you can have a single. But if you said 60 or more, you are out.

Today's question, after the Adelaide defeat, England's record in their last 10 trips to Australia since 1990, in the first three tests of series is now, brace yourselves, played 30, 1-1, drawn 4, lost 25. But over the previous 20 Ashes trips to Australia from 1901 to 1987, in the first three tests played in those 20 series, so 60 matches, how many wins did England have? Pedant alert, I'm including the fourth test in 1970 to 71, because the third test was abandoned without a ball being bold. So we're counting the first three tests played in that series.

so 60 matches, how many wins did England have in the first three tests of Ashes series in Australia from 2001 to 1987? I'll have the answer for you tomorrow. Plus another question. Test match special is bringing you daily podcasts throughout the men's ashes. If you want to be notified as soon as a new episode drops, make sure you're subscribed to the TMS podcast on BBC Sounds and have push notifications turned on in your phone settings. 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.