King Khawaja outclasses England

England has had little to no luck on day 3 of the fifth and final test match as Usman Khawaja again asserted his class and elegance at the crease with a purposeful and gritty 171 to guide Australia to 4/479 at stumps.

It is one of the most special days in Australian cricket, the third day of the Sydney Test match. The 'pink day' where players and fans stand up to remember the legacy of Jane McGrath and support the wonderful McGrath foundation does help fund full-time breast care nurses to help families who have someone suffering from breast cancer. To donate please see the link at the end of the article.

There is not much to say but simply hats off to Usman Khawaja who scored his maiden Ashes ton and his 6th one of his career. It is fair to say that this series has not been his best and he had not performed to the class and standard he is well and truly known for. Moreover, whilst there has been plenty of criticism on his form and intent in this series so far, I strongly believe that the success of the team has to some extent shadowed his lack of form and allowed him to go fairly under the radar.

I believed that criticism of his intent was a bit far-fetched. His technique is laid back, but more importantly, when he does score runs like he did in 2015 and 2016 not a single person complained. Suddenly when he does not score he is all of a sudden a poor player. This simply makes no sense and I am sure that he has silenced his critics.

It's just too scrappy from England and it has been very evident across the entire series that they just do not have the firepower to compete to a winning extent in the scorching pitches of Australia. However,  I do not think that they should be too fazed by how their players have gone in this series. Teams must understand that Australia is a fortress for the home team however but the rest of the world seems to be a complete no man's land for them, so they should keep faith in players like Tom Curran, Stoneman and Vince to perform in New Zealand.

To add more pain to the English players, Shaun Marsh's consistency continued as he reached a defiant 98 not out along with his brother Mitchell Marsh on 63 not out. With a slow start to the partnership, Mitch Marsh went ballistic to see Australia reach a run rate over 3 for the first time in the innings.

With only two days left in the series, I think that Australia needs to look to go hard tomorrow and look to declare either sometime before lunch or just halfway between lunch and tea tomorrow. For England, they just need to get wickets early to reduce the second innings deficit and give themselves some form of hope of winning the game.

I do see Australia getting around 550 runs and declaring and Australia having a good chance to win the game early on day 5. However, let's hope for a more even day of test cricket and hopefully see spin take a bigger toll on day 4.


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