Once More Round the Park

GH watches the last rites

Sydney Test matches can be cranky affairs. Everyone is a bit over it. Everyone’s a little sick of one another. What’s holiday time for the rest of the nation is for cricketers a peak activity period. Australia and England have squeezed three Tests into the last twenty-two days, surrounded by Christmas and New Year - why, there’s hardly even been time for golf. There was a sense today that, with the best will in the world, this Fifth Test, and these Ashes, could hardly end soon enough.

As the Australians headed for the sheds with the end of England’s innings, the top three batters leading the way in the scurry to pad up, Mitchell Starc, Scott Boland, Michael Neser, Cameron Green and Beau Webster, a hundred and seventy overs between them these five days, came together for a ritual handclasping and backpatting, before coming off, a team within the team.

It’s them - take my word for it

Weary? They’d be entitled. Satisfied? For sure. A total of 1454 runs for thirty-five wickets conveys that this has been a fine pitch for batting, but there has been bounce on offer for those prepared to bend their backs, so Australia’s multi-tasking pace unit have earned their rewards. Green would be called on before the end, but the rest could put their feet up deservedly.

Ben Stokes led England on, ahead presumably of another long convalescence, but until then propped at slip, a vestigial monarch. One recalled his preliminary remarks about being ‘desperate to get home on that plane in January as one of the lucky few captains from England who have come here to be successful.’ He’ll just be desperate to get home now. ‘This is our chance to create our own history and it is up to us how that looks,’ he said that day. Skipper, it’s looked terrible. The most forlorn reminder of dashed hopes, perhaps, was Shoaib Bashir in his high-viz running a last towel errand.