England end Australia's hopes of Ashes whitewash by earning draw in Sydney; Australia unable to take final England wicket; James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Jack Leach deny hosts after fine innings from Ben Stokes, Zak Crawley and Jonny Bairstow; Jos Butter to miss fifth Test due to injury
Sunday 9 January 2022 17:12, UK
England earned a nerve-shredding draw on day five of the fourth Ashes Test in Sydney to end Australia's hopes of a 5-0 series sweep.
Stuart Broad (8no) and James Anderson (0no) saw out the final 12 deliveries, which had to be bowled by Australia's spinners due to fading light, as England ended on 270-9 in a notional chase of 388.
Australia had seemed primed for victory when the dismissal of England's last recognised batter, Jonny Bairstow (45 off 101), left the hosts needing two wickets from the final 10.4 overs at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
Jack Leach (26 off 34) and Broad followed the dogged lead set by Bairstow and Ben Stokes (60 off 123) - who braved thumb and side injuries respectively to play crucial knocks for their team - by thwarting Australia's attack for the next 51 deliveries with men swarmed around the bat.
Part-time leg-spinner Steve Smith had Leach caught by David Warner with the tourists 13 balls from safety - but Broad saw off Nathan Lyon and Anderson then blocked out Smith's final over in the tensest of finishes.
England avoided defeat for the first time in the series and for just the second time in their last 14 Tests in Australia, with Zak Crawley also impressing as he scored a fluent 77 from 100 deliveries at the top of the order - the first fifty by an England opener in a chastening series.
Jos Buttler (finger) will now fly home due to injury, with Sam Billings expected to make his Test debut in the fifth and final game in Hobart from Friday as Buttler's replacement behind the stumps.
Stokes and Bairstow seem doubtful for the pink-ball game and if they have played their final acts of the series, they can take solace in helping ensure England have avoided a third 5-0 whitewash in 15 years in Australia after suffering that fate in 2006/07 and 2013/14.
Stokes winced every time he played a shot in anger during his second fifty of the Test, while Bairstow played another gutsy knock having scored England's only hundred of this Ashes far in the first innings, during which he was cracked on the thumb by a scorching delivery from Cummins.
Stokes, Bairstow and Buttler (11 off 38) all fell in the final session as England slipped from 193-4 to 237-8 - Buttler and Mark Wood (0) dismissed lbw by vicious in-swingers from Cummins in the space of three deliveries with the second new ball.
However, Australia's victory bid was foiled by Broad, Leach and Anderson.
England now have one final chance to win their first Test in Australia since a thumping innings-and-83-run victory at the SCG in January 2011.
Head coach Chris Silverwood will return from Covid-19 isolation to lead England in the Ashes finale in Hobart, with assistant coach Graham Thorpe having taken the reins for the Sydney Test.
Reflecting on England's draw at the SCG, Sky Sports' Nasser Hussain said: "It's not just celebrating a draw but celebrating Test cricket. Five days of hard grind and hard work.
"You had two veterans in Anderson and Broad with over 300 Tests between them trying to keep out a part-time spinner in Steve Smith. It was Test cricket at its best.
"With everything England have been through - Silverwood and various other coaches hit by Covid, the injuries to Stokes, Buttler and Bairstow - I thought they showed a lot of character and fight.
"Australia played great cricket but England toughed it out and they have avoided the dreaded whitewash."
Thorpe had urged England's batters to show "intensity" and make "good decisions" as they looked to deny Australia and Crawley seemed to heed those words as he scored only his second fifty since he made 267 against Pakistan at The Ageas Bowl in August 2020.
Crawley struck 13 boundaries, predominantly through the leg-side, as he went a long way to cementing his place in the side for the foreseeable future during a morning on which opening partner Haseeb Hameed (9 off 58) suffered his sixth consecutive single-figure score.
Hameed's torturous series continued as he snicked Scott Boland (3-30) behind to Alex Carey, having been dropped by the same man a short while earlier, and the Nottinghamshire batter is now averaging just 10 across eight innings against Australia this winter.
Dawid Malan (4 off 29) also departed cheaply, bowled by Lyon on the cut, while Crawley's enterprising knock came to an end when he was pinned lbw by a delicious yorker from Cameron Green - Crawley falling 23 runs short of the century he said he felt he could score ahead of the game.
Stokes and skipper Joe Root (24 off 85) steadied England from 96-3 with a fourth-wicket stand of 60, during which time they were given some respite by a post-lunch rain shower, which shaved seven overs off the day's scheduled allocation of 98.
Root could not make it through to tea, caught behind for the eighth time in as many innings in this series as he pushed at a delivery from Boland in the channel and snicked through to Carey.
Stokes clinched his half-century early in the final session when he whipped Cummins for four through midwicket but departed 10 runs later when he deflected a delivery from Lyon that turned and bounced through to Smith at slip - Stokes, unsure whether to play or leave, was furious with himself as he trudged off, for perhaps the final time in the series.
England looked up against it at that juncture and even more so when Cummins accounted for Buttler and Wood and Boland then had Bairstow caught by Marnus Labuschagne at silly mid-off - the scalp of Bairstow took Boland up to 14 wickets in two Tests at an average of 8.64.
The Australia seamer has enjoyed a dream start to Test cricket but that will not stretch to an Ashes sweep - Leach, Broad and Anderson seeing to that with some late-day resistance in Sydney.
Australia's major dilemma ahead of the final Ashes Test is whether to keep Usman Khawaja in their XI, with the 35-year-old hitting twin tons in Sydney after making his first Test appearance since August 2019 as a replacement for the Covid-hit Travis Head.
Head is free to return in Hobart and Khawaja said after his second-innings 137 that he expects to lose his place at No 5 - although Australia do have the option of moving Khawaja up to open.
The left-hander averages 95 at the top of the order in Test matches, while current Australia opener Marcus Harris is averaging below 30 in this series with just one half-century in seven knocks.
England captain Joe Root: "It's a small step forward. Coming into the game I spoke a lot about putting pride back into English cricket and into our Test performances. I think the fight and the desire, and the character shown here in these five days, have done that in a small way.
"We never make it easy for ourselves, do we? It would have been nice if all the work had been done by the top order, as you always want, but it doesn't seem to fall like that. We found a way to get it done and it was very much a team effort."
Australia skipper Pat Cummins: "Most of all, it was a lot of fun. England fought hard, that's why we love the game. Having a lot of runs on the board meant we could get pretty creative out there
"It always felt like we were looking for wickets. The hardest thing was trying to choose amongst our five bowlers. I was able to make quite a few calls - some of them came off, some of them didn't."
The Ashes concludes at Blundstone Arena in Hobart from Friday with the second day-night match of the series. Play will start at 4am UK time.
England Women begin their bid to regain the Ashes on January 20 with the first of three T20 internationals. The white-ball matches are followed by a standalone Test match and then three one-day internationals.
England last won the Ashes in 2014, with holders Australia's triumphs in England in 2015 and 2019 sandwiching a drawn series in Australia in 2017.
