The action begins ahead of schedule again, featuring an extended morning session of two and a half hours to make up some of the time lost on the first day. The players are preparing to step onto the ground.
A Sea of Pink and a Display of Dominance
They do things well in Australia. On the first day of this fifth Test came a fitting tribute to the victims and first responders of the Bondi atrocity, and on the third day the Sydney Cricket Ground was became a wave of pink to once again raise funds for the McGrath Foundation.
Out in the middle, however, Australian benevolence was in far shorter supply. Across three sessions their batmen dominated the English bowling, addressing any queries about their motivation since securing the Ashes and posing a few more regarding their defeated rivals.
Looking drained after the toil, Ben Stokes and his team walked off at stumps exhausted and overwhelmed. Steve Smith’s 37th Test century, 129 not out from 205 balls, had come after the concluding stages of Travis Head’s sizzling 163 from 166, and with it Australia had attained 518 for seven from 124 overs. The lead sat at 134 runs overnight and looked an threatening one.
Legendary Critique
The legendary Neil Harvey, 97, offered his perspective in a charming interview.
I've been unimpressed with England. I think the way they approach the batting side of things, they get too careless, nobody seems to want to build an 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 whole new challenge. I used to score runs quite rapidly, and everyone gets a lot of pleasure out of it, but when you try to play this aggressive approach it reduces the chances of winning an important Test. I'd like to see them show more restraint.
A Baptism of Fire
Forty-five minutes into a gloomy morning at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Matt Potts came into the England attack from the Randwick End, and immediately began trying out his variations.
His first ball was full and wide and hammered through cover by Travis Head. His second ball was both short outside off stump and cut over gully by Travis Head. His third ball was back of a length and pulled past midwicket by Travis Head. His fourth ball was defended with a show of furrowed caution, to raucous, sarcastic applause from a crowd that had begun to get involved. Welcome to the treadmill, Pottsy. And yes, it's always like this around here.
Joining the Pantheon
There was a time, while Steve Smith was at the height of his batting mastery, when “best since Bradman” was used with assurance. The thing about that line is that even when the recipient has excelled for years, it gets applied too quickly, given the point of comparison is a career lasting two decades. Lots of players attain greatness for a time, no other has maintained that level.
The combination of those phases, though, elevated him to a exceptional position on the third day. In the record books of the game there are landmarks, then there are summits. For a long time in Smith's Ashes-focused career there have been two peaks slowly approaching 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 surpassed on Tuesday.
Preamble: An Anticlimactic Finale
The current Ashes battle, perhaps the most underwhelming series in the 144 years since Fred Spofforth made history at The Oval, is staggering to a appropriate end. Australia are on course to overwhelm England at Sydney and win the series 4-1, a margin not even the most one-eyed Pom could dispute.
It's been a success of maturity, composure, skill, ability and Travis Head. His audacious 123 at Perth exposed English frailties that have yet to recover; four Tests later he is merrily adding to their woes. Head's deceptively pitiless 163 helped Australia to 518 for 7 at the end of day three, a lead of 134. Steve Smith will start again 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 Anglocentric view. It's not Australia's fault that England were not competitive – even if, on some level, they probably craved a greater challenge.
The last rites 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 exhausted, their confidence shot, their spirit broken. It's nearly time for everyone to go home.
