England have made four changes to the playing XI for the Boxing Day Ashes Test match against Australia at the MCG. They replaced Rory Burns, Ollie Pope, Stuart Broad and Chris Woakes with Jonny Bairstow, Jack Leach, Zak Crawley and Mark Wood.
Crawley and Bairstow will feature for the first time in this series, while Wood and Leach played the first Test match, in Brisbane, where Australia won by nine wickets.
We make 4️⃣ changes to our side for the Boxing Day Test 🎄
— England Cricket (@englandcricket) December 24, 2021
Full details 👇#Ashes | 🇦🇺 #AUSvENG 🏴
Crawley and Bairstow have both been ordinary so far in the calendar year in Test cricket. While Crawley has 156 runs at an average of 11.14 in seven matches, Bairstow has 351 runs at 25.06.
Australia have taken a 2-0 lead in the five-match series after beating England by 275 runs in the second Test match at the Adelaide.
England XI: Joe Root (c), Jos Buttler (wk), Haseeb Hameed, Zak Crawley, Dawid Malan, Ben Stokes, Jonathan Bairstow, Mark Wood, Ollie Robinson, Jack Leach, Jimmy Anderson.