Play gets underway early once more, featuring an extended morning session of two and a half hours to recover some of the overs lost on the first day. The athletes are making final preparations to begin play.
Pink Tributes and Batting Might
They do things well in Australia. The opening day of this final Test featured a moving homage to the victims and first responders of the Bondi tragedy, and on the third day the Sydney Cricket Ground was transformed into a sea of pink to once again generate donations for the McGrath Foundation.
Between the wickets, however, Australian charity was in far shorter supply. Across three sessions their batsmen wore down the English attack, addressing any queries about their drive since securing the Ashes and posing a few more regarding their beaten opponents.
Visibly weary from the effort, Ben Stokes and his team walked off at stumps seeing pink elephants. Steve Smith’s 37th Test century, 129 not out from 205 balls, had come after the latter part of Travis Head’s blistering 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.
A Cricketing Icon's Opinion
The legendary Neil Harvey, 97, offered his perspective in a charming interview.
I've been unimpressed with England. I think the way they handle the batting side of things, they get too careless, nobody seems to want to construct a knock, like a Cowdrey or a Boycott.
It might work against average opponents but when you get a quality outfit like Australia it's a different ballgame. I used to score runs relatively quickly, and everyone gets a lot of satisfaction out of it, but when you try to play this Bazball thing it reduces the chances of winning an important Test. I'd like to see them rein themselves in.
A Harsh Welcome
Forty-five minutes into a somewhat cloudy morning at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Matt Potts came into the England attack from the Randwick End, and immediately began trying out his change-ups.
His first ball was sprayed down the leg side and hammered through cover by Travis Head. His second ball was both short and wide and slashed over gully by Travis Head. His third ball was short and straight and smashed past midwicket by Travis Head. His fourth ball was defended with a show of studious defense, to loud, mocking cheers from a crowd that had begun to tuck into the day. A tough initiation, Pottsy. And yes, it's always like this around here.
Scaling the Ashes Mountain
There was a time, while Steve Smith was at the pinnacle of his batting prowess, when “best since Bradman” was used with confidence. The thing about that line is that even when the recipient has dominated for years, it gets applied too quickly, given the point of comparison is a career spanning twenty years. Lots of players hit their peak for a time, no other has maintained that level.
The blend of those phases, though, took him to a rare position on the third day. In the statistics of the game there are achievements, then there are peaks. For a long time in Smith's Ashes-focused 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 anticlimactic series in the 144 years since Fred Spofforth raised hell at The Oval, is staggering to a fitting conclusion. Australia are poised to defeat comprehensively England at Sydney and win the series 4-1, a scoreline not even the most partisan Pom could dispute.
It's been a triumph of maturity, maturity, skill, ability and Travis Head. His bold 123 at Perth exposed English frailties that have yet to mend; four Tests later he is cheerily grinding salt into them. 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 comfort that is hard to comprehend. Maybe that's an Anglocentric view. It's not Australia's fault that England failed to turn up – even if, on some level, they probably wanted a greater challenge.
The concluding chapter will be conducted either this evening or tomorrow. There's a chance of a total collapse when England bat, just as there was in the last knock of 2013-14 and 2021-22. Their bodies are exhausted, their confidence broken, their spirit crushed. It's nearly time for everyone to go home.
