A fast paced Ashes series concludes this week when Australia and England do battle for the fifth and final time when the two sides head to Sydney for the curtain closer to a series which has been quite entertaining for the time it has been in action.
Australia know that they have won The Ashes and will receive the urn after this match while England finally got an elusive Test win in Melbourne and will be looking to put further gloss on the score with another win in Sydney.
Australia
Although they had the series won heading to Melbourne, Australia still made it clear that they wanted to win 5-0 once again so they will be annoyed with how things went at the MCG. They were never really in control of anything across the two days of play and in the end they lost quite tamely to put their hopes of a whitewash to bed. You would imagine there will be a reaction to that here, but there is no shortage of big cricket on the horizon so whether they can get themselves up again remains to be seen.
The big problem that Australia had in that Melbourne Test was they lacked firepower with the ball. To be fair, there was a case that they had lacked it in the first two games as well but they won those, but this time injuries caught up with them and there is no senior player back so those bowlers who didn’t rise to the challenge in Melbourne will need to do much better here if Australia are to rubber stamp their dominance on the series score at the end of it.
England
Although England got that elusive monkey off their back in Melbourne and are only playing to pad the scoreline here, were they to come out of this series losing it 3-2 it might ease the inevitable questions over the hierarchy in charge of this side. We have heard in the lead up to this series finale how popular coach and captain are and so the players might well come together and put on a performance worthy of keeping them in the role. If they do that we have seen in the last two games that they are more than capable of winning this game.
There is no doubting that England have got better the longer this series has gone on. They had their chances to take dominant positions in the first two games but lacked the intensity and the quality in the key moments but they have got better in the pressure points the longer the series has gone on. They also have bowling injuries to contend with here but why England can win this match is they have a much better batting unit if everyone plays how they can do.
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Team News
Usman Khawaja has confirmed that this Test match will be his last appearance in international cricket which leaves two selection questions for Australia. One is whether to go with Cameron Green or Beau Webster at seven with the former preferred. The other is between the spinner Todd Murphy and the seamer Jhye Richardson.
England have been forced into a change from the Melbourne win with Gus Atkinson ruled out of this match. Matthew Potts will be the man coming in for him. Shoaib Bashir has been named in the 12 man squad for the game but isn’t expected to make the starting XI.
Betting
I’ll finish off The Ashes with three bets with the first of those being over 1054.5 runs. This pitch isn’t going to be anything like the one we saw in Melbourne and if anything it will play better than it might otherwise have done. Cricket Australia have lost enough money with two-day Test matches in this series that they won’t want another so I’m expecting a much more placid wicket here and when you consider these are two bang ordinary bowling units if you take Mitchell Starc out of the equation then there is no reason to think the runs won’t flow here. They did in Adelaide and I expect similar here and an average of 263 runs per innings certainly isn’t asking too much so I like the over in this final match.
In terms of player performance the one which catches my eye is Brydon Carse. I don’t necessarily think he has bowled all that well in this series but he has taken plenty of wickets and there is no reason why that script should change here. He has a performance line of 108.5 which Carse has covered in the three matches where he has had two bowling innings. In the other one he ended up with 87. Carse has taken four wickets or more in all four matches so far and at different times in this series he has scored 20 and 39 with the bat so there is a chance that four wickets will be enough here, especially as he’ll move back up the order to number nine. Five wickets pretty much guarantees the over landing so there is enough scope for the Durham man to convert once again.
The last bet I’ll take is for Usman Khawaja to top score for Australia in their first innings. He has an insanely good record on this ground. In 14 innings in Test cricket here he averages 87.50 and it is obvious that he’ll be motivated to finish up with a strong effort. He has four tons in those 14 innings here including in the last two Ashes matches on this ground where he has scored 171 as well as 137 and 101* in 2022. He also has a 195* on this ground so this pitch is one where he is ideally suited to batting. This is probably the weakest England attack he’ll have faced on it so the 11/2 that he top scores in a line up where he has been second in the last two first innings, looks good to me.
Tips
Back Over 1054.5 runs for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
Back B.Carse’s Performance – Over 108.5pts for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
Back U.Khawaja Top Australia 1st Inns Batter for a 1/10 stake at 6.50 with Sky Bet
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