England have never won or retained the Ashes in Australia prior to Christmas. Check out Benedict's stats...
Can England wrap up the Ashes before Christmas?
England have only ever won once at the WACA - that was in December 1978 when David Gower scored 102 but Australia were in the middle of the Packer revolt and were missing many key players.
That solitary win out of 11 matches comprises England's worst record at any ground on which they have played at least 10 Tests.
With Australia again overlooking Nathan Hauritz, they cannot now field a team featuring six players with surnames beginning with the
same letter - H.
The only precedent was at The Oval in 1907 when South Africa fielded Percy Sherwell, Tip Snooke, Jimmy Sinclair, William Shalders, Reggie Schwarz and Stanley Snooke.
England have never won or retained the Ashes in Australia
before Christmas.
Spinners
In Test history, Australian
orthodox left-arm spinners have taken a total of just 333 Test wickets, with John Saunders the leader with just 79. The equivalent figure for England is 1802 with twelve of them passing 100.
However, Aussie leggies have taken 2,433 while their English counterparts have just 748 to their names.
So far in the series, the
number 8s for both sides have contributed no runs in four innings with three golden ducks.
Doubles
This is the first time since 1938 that England have managed
two double-centuries in an Ashes series. On that occasion, Eddie Paynter and Wally Hammond made doubles while Len Hutton made 364. In addition they had not topped 500 in successive Ashes Tests since 1928-29.
England have already scored
five centuries in the series. They have only once lost an Ashes series in which they have scored more than five hundreds (1924-25). In addition, they have posted
six century partnerships in the first two Tests. Their Ashes record is 9 set in 1970-71, 1985 and 2005.
Over their last two innings England have scored 1137 runs for the loss of six wickets. This ratio of
189.50 runs per wicket is the highest ever in two consecutive Test innings, beating New Zealand's 187.33 when they scored 450-2 and 112-1 against India at Delhi in 1955.
Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott have shared 150-run partnerships in two consecutive Test innings.
No England pair and only three pairs in Test history have ever managed three 150+ partnerships in a row: Garry Sobers & Charlie Davis in 1971, Hayden & Langer in 2001 and Hayden & Ponting in 2005.
Alastair Cook is one of only four batsmen who have improved their highest individual score six times after scoring their first century (104*, 105, 127, 139*, 160, 173, 235*). The others are Rahul Dravid, Gordon Greenidge and Sachin Tendulkar, but no-one has done it seven times.
Before Adelaide, Australia had gone 100 home Tests
between innings defeats - their longest stretch ever and only just short of the longest home stretch by any team - the 105 home matches the West Indies went from 1958 to 1995.
Landmark
Four years ago on this ground
James Anderson was dropped in favour of Saj Mahmood. This time he needs four wickets to reach 200 Test wickets. At 28 years 139 days old on Day 1 he would be the second-youngest Englishman to the landmark, only behind Ian Botham who was 25 years 276 days old.
Matt Prior is 77 away from reaching 2000 runs in his Test career. His current batting average is 41.80. The only England keeper to have scored more than 2000 Test runs at an average of more than 40 is Les Ames.
In his 10 Tests in 2010,
Andrew Strauss has only scored one fifty in his first innings - 83 against Bangladesh at Lord's. His other nine first innings have brought him just 122 runs.
Ricky Ponting is 67 runs away from becoming the 6th Australian to score 2500 runs against England. Don Bradman leads the way with 5,028.
Perth is the world's
second-most remote city with a population in excess of one million behind only Auckland. Auckland's nearest city of comparable size or greater is Sydney, 2153 kilometres away. Perth's nearest large city is Adelaide, 2139 km away. However, the WACA is the most remote Test ground in the world.
