It’s another early start today, featuring an extended morning session of two and a half hours to recover some of the play washed out on the first day. The athletes are preparing to step onto the ground.
Pink Tributes and Batting Might
Australia knows how to host an event. On the first day of this fifth Test came a fitting tribute to the victims and first responders of the Bondi tragedy, and on the third day the Sydney Cricket Ground was became a ocean of pink to once again generate donations for the McGrath Foundation.
On the field of play, though, Australian benevolence was in far shorter supply. Across three sessions their batmen ground England’s bowlers into the dust, dispelling any doubts about their motivation since securing the Ashes and throwing up a few more concerning their vanquished foes.
Faces flush from the ordeal, Ben Stokes and his team trudged off at stumps seeing pink elephants. Steve Smith’s century number thirty-seven, 129 not out from 205 balls, had come after the latter part of Travis Head’s sizzling 163 from 166, and with it Australia had reached 518 for seven from 124 overs. The lead stood at 134 runs overnight and looked an daunting one.
A Cricketing Icon's Opinion
The famed Neil Harvey, 97, offered his perspective in a delightful interview.
I've been let down by England. I think the way they approach the batting side of things, they get too reckless, nobody seems to want to play a long innings, like a Cowdrey or a Boycott.
It might work against ordinary teams but when you get a top-tier team like Australia it's a different ballgame. I used to score runs at a fair pace, and everyone gets a lot of satisfaction out of it, but when you try to play this aggressive approach it lessens the probability of winning an important Test. I'd like to see them pull their hooves in.
A Harsh Welcome
Forty-five minutes into a somewhat cloudy morning at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Matt Potts entered the England attack from the Randwick End, and immediately began trying out his change-ups.
His first ball was wide and clobbered through cover by Travis Head. His second ball was both back of a length and outside off and hacked over gully by Travis Head. His third ball was short and straight and driven past midwicket by Travis Head. His fourth ball was negotiated with a show of studious defense, to jeering shouts from a crowd that had begun to tuck into the day. Welcome to the treadmill, Pottsy. And yes, it's always like this around here.
Scaling the Ashes Mountain
There was a time, while Steve Smith was at the height of his batting prowess, when “best since Bradman” was used with certainty. The thing about that line is that even when the recipient has excelled for years, it gets granted too quickly, given the point of comparison is a career lasting two decades. Lots of players hit their peak for a time, no other has remained there.
The combination of those phases, though, propelled him into a rare position on the third day. In the statistics of the game there are landmarks, then there are peaks. For a long time in Smith's Ashes-heavy career there have been two peaks drawing gradually closer in the mist. Donald Bradman's 5,028 runs against England is one that even Smith will never scale. Jack Hobbs's 3,636 runs against Australia is the one he overtook on Tuesday.
Preamble: A One-Sided Conclusion
The current Ashes battle, perhaps the most underwhelming series in the 144 years since Fred Spofforth raised hell at The Oval, is staggering to a fitting conclusion. Australia are set to overwhelm England at Sydney and win the series 4-1, a scoreline not even the most biased Pom could contest.
It's been a success of experience, discipline, application, ability and Travis Head. His audacious 123 at Perth opened English wounds that have yet to recover; four Tests later he is happily compounding their misery. Head's deceptively pitiless 163 helped Australia to 518 for 7 at the end of day three, a lead of 134. Steve Smith will resume on 129 after making a century that looked inevitable even before he faced his first ball.
Australia, despite a number of flaws in their team, have won the series with an simplicity that is hard to understand. Maybe that's an Pommy outlook. It's not Australia's fault that England did not show up – even if, on some level, they probably craved a greater challenge.
The final act will be delivered either this evening or tomorrow. There's a chance of a total collapse when England bat, just as there was in the concluding effort of 2013-14 and 2021-22. Their bodies are tired, their confidence broken, their spirit broken. It's nearly time for everyone to go home.
