Ashes 2025-26: ‘How reckless can you be’ – Ashwin blames England batters for shambolic loss in Perth

Ravichandran Ashwin, a former Indian cricketer, blamed England’s loss in the first Test of the 2025/26 Ashes on their’reckless’ batting. England were dismissed for 172 and 164 in their first and second innings, respectively.

In a video posted to his YouTube page, Ashwin questioned how’reckless’ England’s aggressive style of cricket could become following their performance in the series opener.

He also saw connections between the style of India’s developing players when dealing with boundaries and how English batters approach the game.

“I am actually thinking, where will the bandwidth of the word ‘reckless’ remain? If you keep putting everything into that bandwidth, how reckless can even reckless get? I don’t want to take names of players. Even in the Indian team, there will be many next-generation players who, the fielders are back on the boundary, yet they take the chance, they hit lofted shots,” Ashwin said.

On the other hand, the veteran off-spinner also mentioned that the batting unit should have applied themselves a lot better, especially after claiming a 40-run first innings lead courtesy of the bowlers. He also reflected on ex-Indian captain Rahul Dravid’s piece of advice pertaining to the same theme.

“As a batting group, how reckless can you be? Because on Day 1, you were knocked out for 172, you lost five wickets for maybe 20 runs. After that, your bowling attack wrestled the initiative back, gave you a 40-run lead. Your first job as a batting unit is to give your bowlers enough rest.

Rahul (Dravid) bhai always said, give your bowlers overnight rest and see how your bowlers respond. Today, they came and cleaned up the last wicket. The England bowlers, I am sure, would have wanted to put their feet up, and in no time they were back on the park looking to defend 200 [205], which is paltry,” he added.

England only played 67.3 overs in their two innings. Harry Brook (52 off 61) and Gus Atkinson (37 off 32) scored the most runs for the foreigners in both innings. Despite scoring at a pace of 5.23 (first innings) and 4.73 (second innings), the Ben Stokes-led team was unable to spend enough time in the middle.