January
The final game between Australia and India at the SCG, the Aussies’ last home Test before they face England in Perth in November, features every single member of Pat Cummins’ side becoming complicit in what is interpreted within the England camp as a significant escalation in Ashes mind games. Hackles are raised after, across seven full days of training and playing, the Australians barely mention the Ashes, and at no stage appear to constantly obsess about the still-distant series at all. “You can tell we’ve really got into their heads,” a source tells the Mirror. “Ten months to go, and we have literally terrified them into silence.”
February
After his thrilling form in 2024, when he scored six centuries, five fifties and averaged 55.57 across 31 Test innings, Joe Root lays down a marker in his first international appearance of the year, and his first white-ball appearance for his country since 2023. A swashbuckling 41 against India in the first one-day international in Nagpur ends only when he hits his own wicket attempting an outlandish novel shot swiftly nicknamed the “quadriginoctuple frap ramp” because of its obviously hypercaffeinated nature. “He’s already the second highest-ranked batter in the squad,” beams Jos Buttler, “and if he starts nailing shots like that it’s only a matter of time before he overtakes the Netherlands’ Max O’Dowd and the involuntarily retired Jonny Bairstow and moves into the world’s top 50.”
