Read our Ashes Fifth Test preview and prediction as England look to win another dead rubber following their success in Melbourne.
Finally, a win Down Under for England, but can the tourists go back-to-back and save further blushes?
Another two-day Ashes Test ended with England securing an unlikely four-wicket victory at the MCG in Melbourne to reduce the unassailable deficit to 3-1.
The series may be over as a contest but there is still plenty on the line with both sides wanting to finish on a high, and for some players, their Test career futures remain under scrutiny.
Success in Sydney?
England are winless in their last three men’s Test matches at the SCG (D1, L2), their last victory at the historic venue coming in 2011. In that match, Alastair Cook (189), Ian Bell (115) and Matt Prior (118) all scored tons as the visitors amassed 644 runs to win by an innings.
Since that match, England players have scored just six centuries in 19 men’s Tests in Australia, with only one of those coming in Sydney, which was Jonny Bairstow’s 113 in 2022. In that same match, Usman Khawaja – who will retire from international cricket after this Test – scored a pair of centuries, the only time in his 87 Test-match career he has achieved this feat.
Fourth Test Recap
The fourth Test in this remarkable Ashes series was another brief affair, over in just two days as the first Test was. The state of the pitch took most of the headlines, but the England camp won’t have been moaning too much as it allowed them to steal a Test win on what has been an arduous tour.
It feels hard to draw too many statistically significant conclusions from such a brief match, but there were a few highlights we can’t ignore. Josh Tongue picked up the Player of the Match award thanks to a seven-wicket match haul. His figures of 7/89 have only been bettered seven times by an England player in a men’s Ashes Test Down Under this century.
Tongue now has 43 wickets in just eight Tests for England; if he repeats his fourth-Test heroics and takes another seven-wicket haul in this match, he will become the joint-second fastest England player to 50 Test wickets after Tom Richardson managed the feat in seven matches in the 19th century.
With the bat, only Harry Brook (41 and 18*), Cameron Green (17 and 19) and Travis Head (10 and 46) reached double figures in both their innings in Melbourne, with no player reaching 50. This was the first time this century that a men’s Ashes match hasn’t seen a player hit a half-century; in fact the last time this happened in any Test in Australia was in 1932.
Player Form
Travis Head looks set to finish as the top run scorer in this Ashes series. He has 146 more runs (437) than anyone else (Alex Carey the next most with 291) and is the only player with multiple centuries (2). In fact, only three players have reached triple figures in a single innings this Ashes. The last time this happened was 2015 in England, when only Chris Rogers, Steve Smith and Joe Root raised their bat for a ton.
Five batters have managed a false shot rate of under 25% in this series: Ben Stokes (18.3%), Joe Root (23.3%), Marnus Labuschagne (24%), Cameron Green (24%) and Harry Brook (24.6%). Brook has the best rate (70%) of making a good connection with the ball, maybe surprisingly given the flak he has received for his shot decision making in this series.
With the ball, Mitchell Starc (26) is seven clear of Brandon Carse (19) as the leading wicket taker in the series. His average of 17.4 and strike rate of 25.8 are also the best of anyone to bowl 10+ overs, while only Mark Wood (42%) and Jofra Archer (37%) have a better rate of drawing a false shot than Starc (33%) in this Ashes.
Ashes 2025: Fifth Test Prediction
This Ashes series has been a bit daft in many ways. Four matches in and we have had just 13 days of play. The two sides have probably been more closely matched than some of the results suggest, so predicting this last Test feels like a lottery. That said we are blindly backing England to secure another win and add some sheen to the history books.
Despite that, Khawaja is set to bow out from international cricket and we think he can rekindle the form that saw him record two tons in the last Ashes match at the SCG in 2022. Starc remains one of the heroes of the series for the Aussies; his 55 Test wickets in 2025 was 12 more than any other player, and we think he’ll start 2026 in the same vein with a glut in this one.
Australia vs England Squads
Australia: Steve Smith (captain), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Brendan Doggett, Cameron Green, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Todd Murphy, Michael Neser, Jhye Richardson, Mitchell Starc, Jake Weatherald, Beau Webster.
England: Ben Stokes (captain), Shoaib Bashir, Jacob Bethell, Harry Brook, Brydon Carse, Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Will Jacks, Matthew Potts, Joe Root, Jamie Smith, Josh Tongue.
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Ashes Fifth Test Preview: Can England Restore More Pride in Sydney? Opta Analyst.
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