Ashes 2025, Australia vs England 3rd Test: England had another tough day in the office as Australia took a dominant position in the third Test of the ongoing Ashes 2025-26 at the Adelaide Oval. Australia ended the third day on 271/4 in their second innings and have taken a massive lead of 356 runs with Alex Carey (52*) and Travis Head (142*) at the crease.
Head and Carey have stitched a 122-run stand for the fifth wicket, and the hosts have plenty of time left to add more to the total before England begin a challenging run chase. While England are on the verge of a defeat in the ongoing five-match series, they witnessed another huge scare as skipper Ben Stokes wasn't seen bowling on the third day of the Adelaide Test.
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However, Stokes was 'pretty fit to bowl,' according to Jeetan Patel, England’s assistant coach. Mentioning that Stokes was 'knackered' and the way he got out to Mitchell Starc 'took a lot out of him', Patel said even he wasn’t sure why the skipper didn’t bowl, but assured that at worst, he just didn’t want to risk an injury. Despite not rolling his arm over, Stokes has bowled the fifth-most overs (51) in the ongoing Ashes and has taken eight wickets at an average of 25.88.
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He has also batted for the most balls for his team and was the stand-out performer in the first innings fight when asked to chase Australia’s first innings score of 371. He was the top run-getter with an impressive knock of 83 runs before he was dismissed in the morning of the fourth day to a wobble-seamed nip-backer from Starc.
"From what I understand, he’s pretty fit to bowl," Patel said, as quoted by ESPNcricinfo. "I think he’s just pretty knackered and he’s taken a lot out of himself to get through this point in the game."
"The disappointment of the way he got out this morning… well not the way, it was a pretty good delivery… but all the work he had done to get to the position where he was, where we could press on again and push that partnership further… that took a lot out of him as well and then you get that early wicket and the energies are up and all of a sudden it’s not quite where you think it’s going.
"From what we heard, he was (fit). He didn’t bowl, but that’s probably a different discussion with him. I don’t actually know. My sense is he’s just pretty knackered. We all know he doesn’t do anything at 80%. Maybe he thought he was a risk, so he didn’t bowl," he added.
Notably, England were bowled out for 286 in their first innings, allowing the hosts to take an upper hand.