midwinter midwinter head starc
how an archaic points system creates a dead heat for winner
Congratulations to Travis Head and Mitchell Starc who have jointly won the @rickeyrecricket Midwinter-Midwinter for Player of the Series, Ashes 2025-26.
Head and Starc accumulated 11 points each during the 2025-26 Ashes for the Best-On-Ground for each playing day of the five Tests, as announced on the @rickeyrecricket Bluesky account.
Head scored 629 runs at an average of 62.90 with three centuries across all five Tests, while Starc took 31 wickets at 19.93 in five Tests with a best of 7-78, and scored 156 runs at 26.00 with a high score of 77.
The three best players are awarded 3-2-1 on each day of the series, with adjustment for shortened days. Starc received points on five separate days, Head on four.
Alex Carey, Michael Neser and Joe Root finished equal third, Neser having played only three Tests.
Full tally:
11 - Travis Head, Mitchell Starc
7 - Alex Carey, Michael Neser, Joe Root
6 - Zak Crawley, Ben Stokes
4 - Jofra Archer, Jacob Bethell, Steve Smith, Josh Tongue
3 - Scott Boland, Harry Brook, Brydon Carse, Marnus Labuschagne, Jake Weatherald, Beau Webster
2 - Pat Cummins, Usman Khawaja
1 - Gus Atkinson, Nathan Lyon, Jamie Smith
0 - Brendan Doggett, Ben Duckett, Cameron Green, Josh Inglis, Will Jacks, Ollie Pope, Matthew Potts, Jhye Richardson, Mark Wood.
In total, Australians scored 57 points to England’s 39.
The full spreadsheet of the daily scores can be seen here.
About the Midwinter-Midwinter
The Midwinter-Midwinter is the @rickeyrecricket BoG (Best on Ground) award given for the most valuable player of each Ashes Test series.
There is no physical award as such, and the Midwinter-Midwinter is not endorsed by any cricket board, advertising agency or anti-doping authority. But most importantly, it’s not the Compton-Miller Medal.
Points are awarded for the best three players on each day of a Test match in the series, on a 3-2-1 basis. This is an idea I nicked from the channel 7 commentary team of the mid-1970s which included the likes of Richie Benaud, Doug Ring and Bill Lawry.
On days when the equivalent of two or less sessions of play take place (due to weather or any early finish), I give awards of 2 pts and 1 point. Where the equivalent of less than one session is played (normally ~30 overs), one player receives 1 point only.
A rule tweak from 2019: if an entire innings is played on a day when less than ~60 overs are bowled I still give a full set of points (3/2/1).
About Midwinter
The Midwinter-Midwinter is named for Billy Midwinter (1851-1890), the only person to have played Test cricket for both Australia and England in Test matches against each other.
Midwinter played for Australia in the very first Test match in 1877 but on June 20 1878, as he was preparing to play for the touring Australians against Middlesex at Lord’s, he was sensationally kidnapped by Dr WG Grace and driven across London to The Oval to play with Grace’s team Gloucestershire.
Midwinter went on to play four Tests for England before emigrating back to Australia and concluding his twelve-match Test career for them. No one else has played Test cricket for one country, then another, and then for his original country (although some have done so in one-day internationals and Tests for Ireland and England in recent years).
I instituted the Midwinter-Midwinter in 2005 and it continued until 2010-11, being reinstated in 2017-18, awarding retrospective winners for the intervening series.
Past winners of the Midwinter-Midwinter are:
2005: Shane Warne
2006-07: Shane Warne
2009: Graeme Swann
2010-11: Alastair Cook and James Anderson (tie)
2013 and 2013-14 combined (#worldashesyear, 10 Tests): Chris Rogers
2015: Mitchell Johnson
2017-18: Steve Smith
2019: Steve Smith
2021-22: Mitchell Starc
2023: Usman Khawaja.