A place of farewells and fresh beginnings. The Sydney Cricket Ground is a stunning amalgamation of the new and old — the heritage-listed Members’ Stand is as it was when a young Don Bradman first walked by — and, as another series winds down, so these teams will pass into the pages of Ashes history, even though many of the combatants still have their stories to write.
What will be made of this series in years to come? It has been the most hyped, yet has been the most underwhelming Ashes for years. The matches have been one-sided and uncompetitive, and have produced 13 days of haphazard, error-strewn and slapdash cricket. It won’t take much here in Sydney to add a little lustre to it. It has not been a vintage Ashes.
There is wry acknowledgement of far more chin-stroking in the local media after the two-dayer in Melbourne than there was in Perth (no prizes for guessing why). Yet, even as Australians take delight in hammering the Poms, there is also a genuine yearning for a proper struggle in the final Test, one that reveals the full variety and glory of the five-day game. Otherwise, why are we all here?
Stokes will be hoping to end the series on a high after 13 days of error-strewn and slapdash cricket
ROBBIE STEPHENSON/PA WIRE
Oddly, given the results, it feels as though Australia’s team is on the cusp of more significant change than England’s. Usman Khawaja announced this will be his last Test, bringing his international career full circle, and he will surely be followed by others in the not-too-distant future. Khawaja did not go quietly, but his has been an unusual tale and one to celebrate.
On the same day Ben Stokes was in reflective mood, but less downbeat than he had been before Melbourne, when the tour reached its nadir. He’s run the gamut of emotional states: hopeful in Perth, angry after Brisbane, frustrated after Adelaide and, either side of Melbourne, he experienced the extremes of despair and joy. It has, he said, been a “tough” tour, one that has challenged him to the hilt.
Stokes remained steadfastly loyal to those around him, but was also realistic. He gave his full backing to Brendon McCullum, saying he had no doubt they were the right people for the near future, he could not imagine moving the team forward with someone else and that ripping everything up would simply rewind things to where they were four years ago at the end of the previous Ashes in Australia.
Given everything we know about the relationship between the two, and Stokes’s loyal character, that was not unsurprising — what else was he going to say? — especially with the series still going. Yet it came with a clear caveat too, and an honest assessment that results and performances have declined in the past year. He said there was the need to use the time before the next Test — five months away in June — to think about how “to get things going in the right direction again”.
Stokes wears the McGrath Foundation cap alongside his England team-mates on Friday; the fifth Test will raise funds in the name of Glenn McGrath’s late wife, Jane, who died in 2008 from breast cancer
GARETH COPLEY/GETTY IMAGES
Implicit in that is they have taken a wrong turn somewhere. While Stokes said McCullum’s role to take in white-ball duties has not affected the Test team in any way, that expansion means McCullum will be on the road until the end of the T20 World Cup in March, making immediate reflection on this tour more difficult. That cannot be a good thing for either set-up, red ball or white ball.
There should, at least, be an acceptance that the basics of preparation and planning had gone awry here, and that the pendulum, which always swings back and forth, has to move back towards an environment that embraces pressure, is results-orientated and geared more obviously towards high performance. That recalibration would be much easier to achieve than starting all over again.
Earlier in the tour, a statistic did the rounds that of the 50 England players to have played Ashes cricket in Australia this century, about half of them had their careers ended here. The four-year cycle, and the importance of the Ashes, means that Sydney has become a graveyard for England cricketers and England sides who have often fallen apart and been dismantled. Yet it doesn’t feel as if a repeat of 2013-14 is on the cards.
Ben Duckett’s few bad months will not cancel out his three good years and Zak Crawley has had a decent recovery after Perth. Jacob Bethell will now get a run at No3. Joe Root and Harry Brook, No1 and No2 in the ICC Test rankings, are secure. Stokes has got through all the Tests so far and has looked good with bat and ball. Jamie Smith has questions to answer, but is young. The fast bowlers, with the exception of Mark Wood, will come again. Shoaib Bashir, back in the 12 for this game, is vulnerable but has been peripheral in any case.
Duckett, right, has not had a great tour, but he has still enjoyed a good three years for England
ROBBIE STEPHENSON/PA WIRE
Matthew Potts will likely get a chance to show his quality in place of the injured Gus Atkinson in this game. It’s been a curious time for him: he was one of the successes of the early months of Stokes’s captaincy, showing against New Zealand in 2022 a strong action, a willing body and a capability of getting good players out. He has hardly been seen thereafter, having played five Tests since the end of the 2022 summer. The pitches in this series would have suited him.
All eyes are trained on this surface, after the schemozzle in Melbourne. Todd Murphy, the off spinner, is in firm consideration to play his first Test on home soil, and the general hope is that spin will have a role to play. Melbourne was the first-ever Ashes Test in Australia not to feature a single over of spin and there have been fewer wickets to spin in this series than any previous in Australia.
It is, though, a long way from the spin-friendly venue it used to be when Khawaja would make his way into the ground for the final, free hour of play as a young boy, and he takes his leave as one of the more significant Australian cricketers of recent times.
He came to Australia from Pakistan as a four-year-old and became Australia’s first Muslim Test cricketer, and a role model to many. He made his Test debut in Sydney and scored twin hundreds here in 2022, a comeback that sparked a late career surge.
He is the first of this ageing team to go. How well the selectors manage the transformation to come will determine the next Ashes bouts.
The strength of the system here gives them confidence that any downturn will be shallow and short-lived, as new talent bursts through. Khawaja has chosen his moment wisely; a fitting but timely end to a fine career.
The Ashes: Fifth Test
Sydney
Sunday-Thursday
TV: TNT Sports 1, from 11.30pm