Beneath beautiful clear blue summer skies, the Sydney Cricket Ground looked the perfect venue for the New Yearโs Test as the final act of the Ashes went down to the wire.
By mid-morning on Thursday, the English were all out for 342 and Australia began the 160-run chase to win the series 4-1, finishing with five wickets in hand.
Alex Carey celebrates Ashes victory with Cameron Green.Credit: Getty Images
It was that rarest of occasions โ a fifth dayโs play in a Test match on the very ground that some say is the graveyard of English Test careers. Indeed, some 14 Englishmen have played their last Test matches there lately.
But such pleasantries aside, the SCG Test has become bigger than the game itself and a lovely way to begin the new year just when Sydney needed a reminder we have rather a lot in common.
On Sunday, the opening day of the Fifth Test, the SCG was bursting with a record attendance of 49,574, the highest since the days of standing room only.
Providing Sydney with one more week of entertainment before a full-scale return to work, the Test is a sporting event and carnival, with spectators creating their own crowd culture as the match develops.
It unites not only Sydneysiders in celebration, but across the country, millions watch or tune in, making the Sydney Test a huge and significant cultural and economic event in our national life.
It also honours the memory of Jane McGrath by raising massive funds for breast cancer research in Australia. Off the ground and cricket aside, in a social sense, our Test match now eclipses the famed Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
While the SCG has shone over the past few days, Melbourne did not do the game any favours on Boxing Day when it cut its own throat by not cutting the MCG grass.
