Cricket Australia and the ECB are in talks over a reciprocal arrangement which would see touring teams provided with better preparation ahead of Ashes series.
England played a single warm-up match before the first Ashes Test in Perth last month against England Lions at Lilac Hill, a club ground with slow and low surfaces. They had been offered a warm-up match against Australian opposition - most likely an Australia A team - by CA in Adelaide or Melbourne, but instead chose to travel straight to Western Australia.
ESPNcricinfo understands that the ECB made a request earlier this year to use the WACA as their training base in Perth - as India did at the start of their tour in 2024-25 - but were told it was unavailable due to WBBL and Sheffield Shield fixtures.
One official said that India's convincing win in Perth last year ensured there was "no chance" that CA would let England use the WACA and risk a repeat. CA have denied that this was done deliberately and cited the fact that the Barmy Army played a charity match at the WACA immediately before the first Test as evidence that the venue was not completely off-limits.
England then turned down the opportunity to send first-team players to a two-day, pink-ball fixture against the Prime Minister's XI in Canberra before the day-night Test in Brisbane, preferring extra training sessions at the Gabba. Brendon McCullum, their head coach, later suggested that England might have "over-prepared" ahead of their eight-wicket defeat.
The ECB had initially hoped that their three-match ODI series against New Zealand in October would provide them with relevant match practice. But England lost the toss and were asked to bat first in bowler-friendly, early-season conditions in all three ODIs, and only one batter in their Ashes squad - Harry Brook - made a score of even 30 in the series.
The last two years have seen significant turnover at the ECB in the director of cricket operations role, which has oversight on pre-series preparation. Since John Carr's retirement in 2023, the position was briefly filled by two former rugby players - David Humphreys, then Stuart Hooper - before Rob Hillman's appointment in July.
Richard Gould, the ECB's chief executive, was in Australia for the first two Ashes Tests and held talks with Todd Greenberg, his CA counterpart, to work on a memorandum of understanding that would come into place ahead of the 2027 Ashes series in England.
"We've been talking, not about what's gone before, but what we do next," Greenberg said on the first day of the third Test in Adelaide. "We had an open conversation about when we come across in '27. He'll share some of their prep, we'll share some of our wants and vice versa.
"I think it's just a mature dialogue between us to figure out how we can help each other. I'm happy, very happy to do the same for him here and he's happy to do the same for me there."
England's preparation had been arranged by the time Greenberg assumed the role from Nick Hockley earlier this year, and he said that it made "perfect sense" for the two boards to work together to ensure series are competitive.
"I don't know the history of it, but for me it seems relatively simple," he said. "We want these series to be competitive. We want these series to be hard fought, but we also want to give ourselves both opportunities to be the best prepared we can be in a schedule that's so hard and so tight. Helping each other makes perfect sense and that's how Richard and I left it."
Australia's training at the start of the 2023 Ashes tour was complicated by their involvement in the World Test Championship final at The Oval, and the same could be true for the 2027 series. But Australia A have already been locked in to tour England that summer, and Greenberg will consult with CA's high-performance department before following up with Gould.
Greenberg said that he has "an open mind" to the notion that English players could feature in the Sheffield Shield in future seasons to gain experience of Australian conditions, though with only six state teams, no culture of overseas signings, and the wages on offer in T20 franchise leagues at the same time, the idea is unlikely to come to fruition.
McCullum addressed England's situation before the third Test, saying: "There is no perfect preparation. If there was, if it was hitting 4,000 balls and it guarantees you average 90, everybody would be hitting 4,000 balls; if you bowled 120 balls and it guaranteed you'd take 10-for, everybody would be doing that. It's not how it works."
Meanwhile, England's own preparation for future home series may be compromised by tight turnarounds at the end of the Hundred, including next summer against Pakistan. There is a three-day turnaround between the Hundred final and the first Test against Pakistan, prompting concerns that players will go into the series undercooked.
The lucrative investment and huge salaries on offer in the Hundred mean that the ECB will effectively cede control of its players for a month. But the board plans to use the national performance centre at Loughborough as a red-ball training base for some Test players - particularly fast bowlers - during the 2026 edition of the tournament.