Australia 4-0 in day-night Tests

Having won in Adelaide, Australia now take a substantial lead in this Ashes series. England have to win a minimum of two more games and draw one to retain the Ashes. However on the last three occasions when England have lost the first two Tests of a series they have been whitewashed. England suffered whitewashes against Australia in 2006-07 and 2013-14 and Pakistan in the UAE in 2012. England will be hoping to change their fortunes this time around. With this win, Australia have now won all the four day-night Tests they have been part of. They have won three in a row in Adelaide and one in Brisbane. Shaun Marsh and Mitchell Starc played key roles in Australia's victory at Adelaide. Marsh scored an unbeaten 126 in the first innings and received his first Man of the Match award in Tests while Starc became the seventh left arm-pace bowler to take a five-wicket haul at home against England. In the last seven Ashes Tests in Australia, left-arm pace bowlers have taken five five-wicket hauls. Mitchell Johnson took one each in the first four Tests of the 2013-14 Ashes while Starc now has one. This is Starc's first five-wicket haul at home since 2012, when he took 5 for 63 against Sri Lanka in Hobart. It has taken Starc 25 innings since then to take five wickets in an innings. In the same period, Starc has taken two such hauls away from home, in Sri Lanka and England respectively.

Nathan Lyon has 11 wickets in the series so far and is the second highest wicket-taker after Mitchell Starc. Lyon has been constantly troubling the batsmen and has taken a wicket every ten overs. However, his wicket-taking ability is severely skewed towards left-handed batsmen and Lyon will hope to change that over the next three matches. Lyon averages 119 against right-handers and has taken just one wicket from 281 deliveries. In comparison, Lyon has 10 wickets at an average of 13.1 and strikes once every 37 deliveries against left-handed batsmen. In this series Lyon has dismissed Moeen Ali on all four occasions while conceding 67 runs from 149 balls.

Joe Root's inability to convert the fifties to centuries have come to the fore once again. This is his second 50-plus score in the series so far. Root now has 34 fifties and 13 centuries from 114 innings. He passes 50 once every 2.42 innings but often fails to go past the three figure mark. Since Jan 2016, Root has 17 fifty-plus scores - the most for any batsmen. The next highest is 11 for Jonny Bairstow. Incidentally, In the same period Virat Kohli, Steven Smith and Kane Williamson together have scored only 17 half centuries. However, they have managed 21 centuries to Root's five. Root's fourth-innings average is now 36.31 with four fifties and no century. All the four half-centuries have come in defeats for England.