The Ashes 2025: Steven Finn on what it's like to tour Australia as an England player – BBC

Touring Australia is different.
For all of the challenges, trials and tribulations that come with playing international cricket in other parts of the world, nothing compares to the furore and pressure that accompanies travelling across the world to play an Ashes series down under.
I've experienced both edges of the sword: the triumph and joy of winning the 2010-11 series, sitting among the old wooden lockers of the Sydney Cricket Ground dressing room in swathes of cigar smoke with music blaring loud long into the night in celebration.
It was a stark contrast three years later, at the end of the 2013-14 series, when you could have heard a pin drop in the very same dressing room.
Everyone's eyes were trained on the floor in sombre reflection after Mitchell Johnson and Australia had their way with us for two months.
For all of the flashpoints and battles on the field, the challenges of the tour begin before you have even got on the plane.
For months, sometimes years, eyes and minds are looking forward to the next away Ashes series. A tour of Australia gives a group of England players the opportunity to achieve cricketing immortality, or crash and burn. This isn't lost on those in the dressing room.
Players will not be able to look at their phones without seeing some sort of Ashes build-up content. In 2010, I was 21 years old and so naive as to what I was stepping in to.
It was both my first taste of Ashes cricket and my first tour down under. The naivety served me well as I went into the tour with my eyes so wide open it was impossible not to enjoy the excitement that came with fulfilling a boyhood dream so early in my career. Finding this state of mind is an important first step towards making a success of the tour.
I kept diaries throughout my Ashes tours and my entry from the night before the first Test of 2010 was about not being able to sleep before the prospect of the best day of my life the following day, a mindset I chased for the remainder of my career with varying success.
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How does a modern player insulate themselves from the scrutiny that comes with this series?
This team will more than likely go to a golf course, put their phone away and immerse themselves in chasing a scratch handicap for four hours. For all the bad press they get for enjoying playing golf on tour, the thought process behind it has solid logic.
On the 2013 tour I didn't allow myself to escape. I practised harder and harder, pushed myself to the physical limit, believing this was the only way to find my rhythm and form.
I left the tour with my brain so scrambled that I was deemed unselectable. Balance is important. Australia is an amazing country with so much to do away from a cricket ground. Embracing this and enjoying time down under lends perspective.
From the moment you step off the plane, you realise it is not just you versus the Australia cricket team, but you against a vast majority of the country.
Customs officials don't smile and insist on seeing your cricket spikes to make sure you are not bringing in any unwanted soil. You have to unpack your cricket bag on your hands and knees in the arrivals hall, digging around for your comfy bowling spikes you used in the English summer. If there's any dirt on them at all, you have to clean them. Welcome to Australia.
I once got questioned why I had a Terry's Chocolate Orange, and whether it contained real fruit. I didn't realise they hadn't made their way down to Australia yet.
Once the boots are clean and customs is cleared, you enter the arrivals hall to be greeted by news crews, asking if you're going to enjoy getting hammered by Australia for three months.
Being able to smile and offer a degree of humour can soften the perception of you.
There were times where we would put on our headphones and ignore the cameras, a surefire way to be called 'arrogant Poms'.
In reality, who wants to speak to anyone when you've just stepped off a 24-hour flight?
More than anything, the aim is to earn the respect of the Australian public and that is done through performances on the field.
In that first Test of 2010 we conceded a first-innings deficit of 211 runs. 35,000 Australians were stamping their feet in the vast concrete stadium baying for English blood in a procession toward another Australian win.
Alastair Cook, Andrew Strauss and Jonathan Trott famously pushed back against the noise to amass 517-1 in our second innings. The Test was drawn, but it felt like we had won.
You could feel the rhetoric towards us change. The people who had taken great joy in telling us we were going to be annihilated were slowly starting to say how they respected the way we had fought back and that they loved seeing the competition.
Planning is important, but so is living in the moment. Too many times England teams have gone to Australia with pre-conceived ideas about the conditions they are going to face.
Being able to read the conditions and adapt is crucial. At the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 2010, David Saker, the England bowling coach, had absolute conviction bowling first was the way to win the Test.
We bowled Australia out for 98 and won by an innings. Being bold with decision-making will serve England well.
Finally, luck is also a huge part of being successful in Australia.
In 2010 Australia didn't have a set spinner, there were question marks around the great Ricky Ponting coming towards the end of his career and uncertainty about the seam bowlers.
Australia picked a 17-man squad for the first Test, more players than we had for the entire three-month tour to the country. Catching Australia in a period of transition can be critical.
On this occasion, injuries to Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood have given England an opportunity to face an Australia team with the cracks maybe just starting to show for the first time since 2010.
There are many challenges that come with playing in an away Ashes series, on and off the field.
The stars may just be aligning for England to have a real crack at winning in Australia for the first time in 15 years.
The Ashes: Australia v England
21 November 2025 – 7 January 2026
In-play clips and highlights on iPlayer, BBC Sport website and app. Ball-by-ball commentary on BBC Sounds, BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra and the BBC Sport website and app, which will also have live text commentary and daily features and analysis
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