Green shoots no laughing matter as Ben Stokes insists fifth Ashes Test is ‘big game’
“I don’t think a groundsman has ever been under as much pressure as the guy here this week,” Ben Stokes had a smile on his face during his final pre-match press conference of this Ashes series at the Sydney Cricket Ground, as he responded to a question about the nature of the pitch for the fifth Test, which starts on Sunday,This is no laughing matter, however, for Adam Lewis, curator of the SCG, who has already been moved to defend the greenish tinge at the edge of the strip a day before a single ball has been bowled,In a surprising twist to Australia’s obsession with grass lengths in the week since England’s two-day victory in Melbourne, Lewis also described how he “shuts out the noise” while rolling, mowing and watering the strip,“I don’t scroll, I don’t have social media, so I try and keep all that negative energy away from me.
We just put our own pressure on ourselves,” Lewis said on Friday, talking, to be clear, about producing a pitch for other people to play cricket on.Lewis also pronounced himself “happy with the colour” and predicted “a nice even surface” with “good carry” for the seam bowlers.By Saturday lunchtime, Stokes and his fellow tour selectors had yet to settle on the team that would be culled from England’s 12 for this Test.This is likely to boil down to a straight choice between Matthew Potts, a like-for-like replacement for the injured Gus Atkinson, and Shoaib Bashir, who has played one proper game of cricket since July.There were no clues, however, in Stokes’s own reading of the SCG surface, which was refreshingly honest on the mysteries of how a pitch can develop over the course of a match.
“I looked yesterday and looked the day before as well,” the England captain said.“I mean, we try and act like we know what we’re doing when we’re looking down at the pitch and rubbing it and knocking it, but no one really has a clue.You can only try and give yourself the best chance by thinking: ‘What XI do we need to give us a chance of winning this?’“We’ll have a final look, at some point at training.But we all play a good game by looking like we know what we’re doing when we’re looking at the wicket.”Stokes did promise this would be a genuinely vital occasion for his England team, despite being 3-1 down in the series and the scent of home now in their nostrils.
“This is a big game because we’re walking out there representing England,” he said,“The Ashes, unfortunately for us, hasn’t gone the way we wanted it to, but we’ve got one more game in a big series and it’s a real big one for us,“Although we can’t get the thing that we came here for, we’ve still got a chance to go there and win a game of cricket for England,”Stokes also paid tribute to the deciding factor in the series; Australia’s vastly superior seam bowling, key to the hosts’ three straight wins when the contest was still alive,“The one thing you take away from the Australia team in particular is the amazing execution with the ball that has put us under heaps of pressure,” he said.
“There’s a big difference between what Australia are able to do with the ball compared to what we’ve been able to do with the ball,“We know that, we own that, we haven’t been able to execute as well as we would have liked to,”
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Emma Raducanu remains hopeful she will be able to compete this week at the United Cup after her 2026 season began with a concerning false start when she was forced to withdraw from her opening match in Perth because of a foot injury.Raducanu pulled out of her highly anticipated clash with Naomi Osaka only an hour before play got under way but the Great Britain team admirably battled hard in the searing heat and emerged from a tough day with a solid 2-1 win over Japan.Billy Harris, who played in the absence of the British men’s No 1, Jack Draper, opened the tie by defeating Shintaro Mochizuki 7-6 (4), 6-3. Raducanu was replaced by Katie Swan, who performed well against a much higher-ranked opponent before losing 7-6 (4), 6-1 to Osaka. In the decisive rubber, Neal Skupski and Olivia Nicholls used their doubles expertise to seal the tie with a 7-5, 4-6, 10-7 win over Nao Hibino and Yasutaka Uchiyama
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In the end, it was a relief. Not to say that a lot of Australians would exactly have been tuning into the Sydney Ashes Test hoping to hear that England were doing well, but at least seeing a couple of sessions yield a score of 211 for three felt normal. The run rate was trending towards the adventurous, but it was a day within the accepted frame, and that is a template that not many days in this series have been able to match.In the context of this current England team, a fast opening stand of 35 from 40 balls was normal. The wickets of both openers in quick succession to follow was normal
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One down. Devilish gamble on Aussie plonk (5, 7)Would Douglas Jardine have cheated at the crossword? No he would not. Or rather he would, but only in a way that still technically complied with the current rules of crosswords, while also causing a violent crossword-based diplomatic incident. Would Mike Brearley cheat at crosswords? No. He would instead ask the crossword why it feels it needs to be so difficult
Harry Brook urges England to make most of ‘good wicket’ after series-best score
Harry Brook may have played like a man without a care in the world en route to a freewheeling 78 not out on a rain-shortened day one of the Sydney Test, but at close of play he was reassuringly phlegmatic on the topic of his own batting output during the live part of this Ashes seres.“We’re in a very good position, three down at the end of play and hopefully we can make the most of that going into tomorrow,” Brook said. “When I first went in it felt like the bounce was fairly steep, but then it started to get a little bit lower and slower and it just generally feels like a good wicket out there.”Brook and Joe Root shared an unbroken 154-run partnership to leave England in a rare position of strength and Brook with his highest score of the series. The post-lunch session in particular was a gripping spectacle as Australia bowled short at Brook and he alternated between skewing a series of pulls and carves up in the air, and nailing the odd one for four or six
Root and Brook star for England before storm halts Ashes charge against Australia
As the rain fell on the Sydney Cricket Ground, cutting the opening day of this fifth Ashes Test into exactly half the number of allotted overs, you could practically hear the champagne corks being popped in the Cricket Australia offices. Perhaps the groundsman’s hut also.The huge losses incurred by the two-dayers in Perth and Melbourne put CA and the SCG on red alert as regards a repeat. Unless something absurd were to happen on the second day – England had reached 211 for three when play was abandoned at 5pm on the first – this series finale should last a fair bit longer.Another cause for administrative optimism was the ease with which Joe Root and Harry Brook built an unbeaten fourth-wicket stand of 154 runs
England reach 211-3 against Australia on day one of fifth Ashes Test – as it happened
Alex Carey is calling this SCG wicket “a decent track” and reckons good weather on days 2-5 will see a result. That rain storm has passed over Sydney’s north and strong winds are now clearing the clouds at the SCG so there’s still a chance of more cricket this afternoon.Ali Martin reports on what turned into half a day of action to begin the fifth Ashes Test at the SCG.That’s stumps on day one of the fifth Test. England won the day
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