England vs Australia Perth ODI 2026: UK Time & Guide

England vs Australia Perth ODI 2026 opens the tour on Friday 13 November at Optus Stadium, with a local start of 11:30 AWST. In the United Kingdom that is 03:30 GMT, and because the match is played entirely in daylight on the far side of the country, it should finish at around 11:30 GMT — late morning in Britain. It is the first of three one-day internationals and the first of eight matches on England's white-ball trip.

Everything below assumes a British reader: when to set an alarm, when to give up and join the chase, what the ground is actually like, and what the two sides are likely to be trying to achieve. Where a detail has not been confirmed publicly — ticket prices, the UK broadcaster, squads — it is flagged as such rather than filled in.

The essentials

Fixture	1st ODI, Australia v England
Date	Friday 13 November 2026
Ground	Optus Stadium, Burswood, Perth
State	Western Australia
Local start	11:30 AWST
UK start	03:30 GMT
Expected UK finish	around 11:30 GMT
Format	50 overs per side, day match

Perth runs on Australian Western Standard Time, eight hours ahead of GMT, and Western Australia does not observe daylight saving. Britain will have been on Greenwich Mean Time since 25 October, so the eight-hour gap is fixed and there is no clock change during the tour to complicate the sums.

Watching it from Britain at half three in the morning

There is no polite way to describe a 03:30 start on a Friday. It is a working day for most people, and sitting through eight hours of cricket that ends at 11:30 GMT is not something a person with a job can do without consequences.

The useful thing about a fifty-over match, though, is that it divides cleanly. The first innings runs from roughly 03:30 to 07:15 GMT. The interval falls around 07:15. The chase begins at about 07:55 and runs to the close. So the decision is not really watch-or-don't — it is which half.

• Both innings: alarm at 03:15. You will know what the pitch is doing before anyone else in the country.
• Second innings only: wake at your normal hour, check the first-innings total, and pick the game up over breakfast. Roughly three and a half hours of live cricket remain, and it is the half in which one-day matches are usually decided.
• Neither: highlights, and a determined effort to avoid your phone until you have watched them.

That last option is harder than it sounds. Because the finish lands in the middle of the British morning, the result will be on news apps, radio bulletins and social feeds well before lunch. Turning off notifications the night before is the only reliable defence.

The two later one-day internationals share the same 03:30 GMT slot despite starting at different local times — the full breakdown is on our ODI leg schedule page.

Broadcast and radio

Who holds British television rights to the 2026-27 Australian season had not been announced when this guide was written, and it would be wrong to name a channel. What is on record is that TNT Sports carried every international played in Australia between August 2025 and March 2026 for United Kingdom viewers, including the last Ashes tour, with streaming through discovery+. Whether that deal renews is a matter for Cricket Australia and should be confirmed nearer the date.

BBC radio is the more dependable route. The corporation's audio arrangement with Cricket Australia for England's overseas tours extends to the 2026-27 season, which has historically meant full ball-by-ball commentary on BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra and BBC Sounds without a subscription. For a match starting in the small hours, an earpiece and a dark room is arguably the superior format. Live text commentary on the BBC Sport app runs alongside.

A wider explanation of how cricket rights are carved up between British broadcasters is in our UK viewing guide.

Optus Stadium: the ground

Optus Stadium sits on the Burswood peninsula, inside a loop of the Swan River about two kilometres east of Perth's central business district. It opened in January 2018, holds a little over 60,000 for cricket, and is the largest stadium in Western Australia by a distance. The bronze-anodised facade is meant to evoke the local geology; from the upper tiers the view takes in the river, the Perth skyline and the Darling Range beyond.

It replaced the WACA Ground as the city's international venue, and that change matters for the cricket. The WACA's reputation — the fastest, bounciest, most hostile surface in world cricket, with cracks you could lose a coin in — belonged to a specific square that no longer stages internationals. Optus uses drop-in pitches grown off-site. They have generally offered good pace and consistent bounce without the old ground's malice, which in a one-day context tends to mean high scores and value for strokes played square of the wicket.

The playing area is large, with long straight boundaries and comparatively short square ones. Mid-November in Perth is hot — low thirties is routine and higher is possible — and an 11:30 start puts the middle of the innings in the fiercest part of the day. Fielding sides tend to feel it more than batting sides.

Getting there: Perth Stadium station on the Armadale and Thornlie lines is inside the precinct, and the Matagarup Bridge carries pedestrians across from East Perth in about fifteen minutes. Match tickets in Australia frequently include public transport on the day, though that should be checked on the ticket itself. There is deliberately very little car parking; the venue was designed on the assumption that most people arrive by train or on foot.

Why an 11:30 local start?

It looks odd for a stadium in a city where afternoon and evening cricket is the norm. The explanation is television. Perth is two hours behind Melbourne and Sydney during daylight saving, so a late-afternoon Perth start would land at nearly midnight on the eastern seaboard where most of the Australian audience lives. Beginning at 11:30 local puts the match into the eastern evening slot. British viewers are incidental beneficiaries of Australian domestic scheduling — the same decision that pulls the game onto national prime time in Sydney also pushes it into the early hours in London.

The cricket: what to expect

England arrive with a white-ball side in reconstruction. Harry Brook has the limited-overs captaincy, and a tour of Australia a year out from the 2027 fifty-over World Cup is precisely the sort of assignment used to work out who the squad actually is. Expect experimentation in the batting order and in the sixth-bowler question that fifty-over cricket poses more sharply than Twenty20 does.

The senior figures remain influential. Jos Buttler is the most experienced white-ball batter in the group, Jofra Archer is the bowler England most want available for a hard, fast surface like this one, and Joe Root has periodically been recalled to give the middle order an anchor. None of that is a team sheet — the ECB names touring squads a few weeks out, and anything earlier is guesswork.

Australia will be at full strength at home and come into the summer with momentum, having taken the 2025-26 Ashes 4-1. Their most recent international at this ground against England was the opening Test of that series, which Australia won by eight wickets. Their one-day batting has leaned on Travis Head's method at the top of the order, and Mitchell Marsh has captained across the white-ball formats.

For the historical dimension to all of this, our Ashes hub covers the Test rivalry between the two countries in full.

Conditions, the toss and the shape of a Perth fifty-over game

Two things tend to decide a day match at Optus Stadium. The first is the surface early on. Drop-in pitches in Perth have generally had enough pace in the opening ten overs to make the new ball genuinely dangerous, which puts a premium on seeing off the first powerplay rather than attacking it. The second is the wind. The Fremantle Doctor, the sea breeze that arrives off the Indian Ocean through the afternoon, has been a fixture of Perth cricket for as long as the game has been played there, and it gives whichever bowler runs in from the appropriate end a noticeable advantage with swing and drift.

Captains at day matches on this ground have often preferred to bowl first, on the reasoning that the pitch is at its liveliest early and the outfield quickens as the day goes on. That is a tendency rather than a law. What is more consistent is the scoring pattern: because the square boundaries are relatively short and the straight ones long, run-scoring tends to come square of the wicket, and the middle overs rarely stall the way they can on slower surfaces further east.

For England the tactical question is spin. A fifty-over side needs someone to bowl ten overs through the middle, and Perth is historically the least rewarding Australian ground for finger spin. How England solve that — a wrist-spinner, a part-time option, or simply five seamers and a plan — will say a good deal about the balance of the side heading into the World Cup cycle. Our fast bowling tradition piece explains why England's instinct in these conditions has always been to reach for pace instead.

Tickets and going in person

Tickets are sold through Cricket Australia's official platform and the venue, with Western Australian Cricket Association members and pre-registered fans typically getting access ahead of the general public sale. No prices were available at the time of writing and none are quoted here; check Cricket Australia directly, and avoid resale sites, which for Australian internationals are frequently above face value and sometimes not honoured at the gate.

For a British supporter, Perth is the hardest of the eight fixtures to reach — it is closer to Singapore than to Sydney, and adding it to an eastern-seaboard itinerary means a five-hour internal flight each way. Most travelling fans who do the whole tour treat Perth as the arrival point and work eastwards. Accommodation in the city centre or East Perth puts you within walking distance across the Matagarup Bridge, which on a match evening is a considerable advantage.

Perth in November is warm and dry with long evenings. Kings Park, Fremantle and Cottesloe Beach are the standard non-cricket recommendations, and all are straightforward on public transport.

FAQ

What time is England v Australia in Perth in UK time?

03:30 GMT on Friday 13 November 2026. The local start at Optus Stadium is 11:30 AWST, and Perth is eight hours ahead of the UK. The match should be over by around 11:30 GMT.

Which ground is the Perth ODI at?

Optus Stadium in Burswood, not the old WACA Ground. Optus has staged Perth's international cricket since 2018 and holds just over 60,000.

Is the Perth ODI a day-night match?

No. The 11:30 local start makes it a straight day match, finishing in the early evening Perth time. The Adelaide and Hobart fixtures later in the series start later locally and run under lights.

How can I watch the Perth ODI in the UK?

The 2026-27 UK television rights had not been confirmed at the time of writing — TNT Sports held the equivalent rights the previous season. BBC radio commentary is expected under an audio deal with Cricket Australia running to 2026-27. Confirm arrangements with Cricket Australia or the ECB closer to the match.

Can I still buy tickets for the Perth ODI?

Tickets are handled by Cricket Australia and the venue, usually with a members' window before general sale. Availability and pricing should be checked on the official Cricket Australia site rather than assumed from any third party.

What comes after the Perth match?

Adelaide Oval on Sunday 15 November and Hobart on Wednesday 18 November complete the one-day series, then five Twenty20 internationals run from 21 November to 2 December. The short-format leg is set out on our T20 fixtures page, beginning with the Melbourne opener.

England vs Australia Perth ODI 2026 is the sort of fixture that rewards commitment — an early alarm, a hot ground on the other side of the world, and the first look at a new England one-day side. For the rest of England's calendar, see the England cricket section and the home summer fixtures that precede this tour.