Beneath beautiful clear blue summer skies, the Sydney Cricket Ground looked the perfect venue for the New Year’s 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 – a fifth day’s 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........

© The Sydney Morning Herald