AAs well as being a bucket list venue for players and supporters, the Sydney Cricket Ground has a reputation in England as the site of one-cap wonders. This is based on Mason Crane, Scott Borthwick and Boyd Rankin starting at the end of recent Ashes tours, rather than anything more historically substantial.
As the traditional setting for the final Test of the Australian summer, the SCG is more like the Oval: the ground where careers often end. And on Friday, surrounded by his family and with quite a bit of work to do, Usman Khawaja confirmed that the final leg of this Ashes series, starting on Sunday, will be his international farewell.
Funnily enough, there was a brief panic in the afternoon when it was announced that Steve Smith, like Khawaja the day before, would be moving his press conference forward. Was this the possible harbinger of a second Sydneysider retirement? News soon followed that this was a case of the 36-year-old wanting to keep his training light. Phew. One is enough, thank you very much.
As it stands, Khawaja is the only player known to join the ranks of those who have opted out of the SCG voluntarily or otherwise. There have been some good ones in the last twenty years. Virat Kohli played his last Test here 12 months ago, David Warner the same a year earlier. There was Kevin Pietersen in 2014, scapegoat for an Ashes whitewash, while eight years before that came the farewells of Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Justin Langer after that great Australian team sealed a 5-0 Ashes sweep.
The question for England is whether this fifth and final Test similarly marks the end of an era – the era that, despite protests from one of its chief architects, Brendon McCullum, has become widely known as Bazball. Down three to one with one to play, having lost the Ashes in a record eleven days, there are plenty of England supporters who would love to see them thrown off the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
But while things may change – not least if the quick win in Melbourne is followed by a bloody defeat more akin to the first three Tests – the jungle drums don’t seem to be beating this way. Ben Stokes is the key figure in all this, a captain whose strength comes from his all-round central position in the side and a contract that runs until the end of the 2027 Ashes. Two days after the match he expressed his wish for McCullum to stay on as his head coach.
While this answer might be expected on one level, it was not a given. Sometimes the two have diverged in vision. Not least when 2-0 down when Stokes spoke of ‘weak men’ and despite three years of telling players to apply pressure as quickly as possible, he started digging a trench with the bat. Had they stuck to their guns at Adelaide Oval, the flat pitch might have been approached with more than just confused caution.
But Stokes’ argument, as well as that of those higher up at the England and Wales Cricket Board, is that if you were to tear it all up the team would return to where it was four years ago when Ashley Giles and Chris Silverwood were sent off after a 4-0 Ashes defeat and Joe Root fell on his sword as captain a series later.
If the status quo is to hold outside of some possible additions to the backroom staff, there needs to be a greater acceptance that, as excellent as Australia were when the Ashes were live – and not least the remarkable Mitchell Starc – this defeat was partly self-inflicted. Light preparation was one aspect, but more broadly due to the lack of overall seriousness in the setup.
As liberating as this was during the first year of McCullum’s tenure, not least for established players worn down by the fug of Covid, it has failed to improve many newcomers and two Ashes series have been co-opted as if they were any other. The exceptionalism may grate in some quarters, but playing against Australia is very different for English cricketers, while playing in Australia is doubly so.
The less spotted Shoaib Bashir is back in a squad of twelve for England. But unless the public meltdown that followed the two-day match in Melbourne leads to an overcorrection and the SCG field is cleared of all grass, the previously unused Matthew Potts replacing the injured Gus Atkinson is likely to be the only change.
For a regime that ironically is now keen to dig in, this is a last chance to salvage something from the tour and prevent positions from becoming untenable. For the players, it’s a matter of making sure they are part of what follows, rather than getting swept up in Sydney’s farewell tradition.
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