England were incredibly disappointing as they lost the first three Tests in just 11 days to surrender the series at the earliest opportunity.<\/p>\n
But the tourists won the fourth Test in Melbourne to earn their first victory in this country for almost 15 years.<\/p>\n
All of Stokes, head coach Brendon McCullum and director of cricket Rob Key have said they want to stay in their jobs despite this Ashes defeat.<\/p>\n
While Stokes seems likely to remain, the positions of McCullum and Key would come in for more scrutiny if England lose at the SCG.<\/p>\n
Conversely, former captain Michael Vaughan has previously said England’s victory in Sydney at the end of a 4-1 Ashes defeat in 2002-03 was the beginning of their road to an epic series win on home soil in 2005.<\/p>\n
“The Ashes for us, unfortunately, hasn’t gone the way we wanted it to but we’ve got one more game in a big game in a big series,” said Stokes.<\/p>\n
England’s next Test is not until the beginning of a three-match series at home to New Zealand in June.<\/p>\n
Including the Test in Sydney, England have 14 matches before the next Ashes series at home in the summer of 2027.<\/p>\n
However, Stokes is not viewing this match as a springboard for regaining the urn next year.<\/p>\n
“That’s so far away from where we are right now,” said the 34-year-old. “We’ve got a big Test to play here and a big gap until our next series. All that is time for reflection. Right now isn’t the time do that.”<\/p>\n
As has become a Sydney tradition, the fifth Test will have a pink theme for the Jane McGrath Foundation, a charity created in memory of the late wife of legendary Australia pace bowler Glenn McGrath.<\/p>\n
It will mark the final Test in the career of Australia batter Usman Khawaja, who announced on Friday this will be his last international match.<\/p>\n
Stand-in Australia captain Steve Smith, three years Khawaja’s junior at the age of 36, has confirmed he will not be following him into retirement yet.<\/p>\n
This is Australia’s last Test until a home series against Bangladesh in August, which marks the beginning of a busy schedule leading towards the 2027 Ashes.<\/p>\n
Australia have not won a series in England since 2001 and Smith is yet to indicate if he intends to make that trip.<\/p>\n
“I’m obviously older and wiser,” he said. “Maybe I’ll wake up one day and be like ‘that’s enough’. Who knows? Right now I’m not going anywhere.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England were incredibly disappointing as they lost the first three Tests in just 11 days to surrender the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-388720","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}