{"id":1257,"date":"2025-11-16T13:35:23","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T13:35:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=1257"},"modified":"2025-11-16T13:35:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T13:35:23","slug":"the-ashes-2025-tms-pundits-players-to-watch-including-root-stokes-smith-labuschagne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=1257","title":{"rendered":"The Ashes 2025: TMS pundits’ players to watch including Root, Stokes, Smith & Labuschagne"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

Former England bowler and BBC chief cricket commentator Jonathan Agnew:<\/b> “Frankly, I can’t see England winning the Ashes without Ben Stokes. <\/p>\n

“He’s a talismanic figure, a resourceful leader, but more than anything, his bowling is important. He’s critical in that department. All of the bowlers, including him, do have fitness concerns. <\/p>\n

“Stokes has to play four out of the five Tests for England to win.<\/p>\n

“For Australia, Travis Head will be an interesting character to watch. I think England are going to bombard him and bowl with great hostility at him. And he hasn’t had a great start to the Australian season. <\/p>\n

“Obviously, Steve Smith is crucial to their batting, but I think Head is too. There’s a lot of uncertainty about how Australia are going to bat and he can change the game in the course of an hour. <\/p>\n

“England will have some serious plans for Head – he’ll need to go and buy some extra padding, and he doesn’t play the short ball well. But if he does get away with it and does find a way of adapting to that attack, then I think he is potentially the most dangerous batsman in the Australian side.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former England bowler and BBC chief cricket commentator Jonathan Agnew: “Frankly, I can’t see England winning the Ashes without Ben Stokes. “He’s a talismanic figure, a resourceful leader, but more than anything, his bowling is important. He’s critical in that department. All of the bowlers, including him, do have fitness concerns. “Stokes has to play<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cricket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}