SYDNEY, Jan \u200c4 : England captain Ben Stokes won the toss and elected to bat first on the opening day of the fifth Ashes test against Australia at Sydney Cricket Ground on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Neither team selected a specialist spinner with England bringing seamer Matthew Potts into the side in \u200cplace of the injured Gus Atkinson and \u200cShoaib Bashir missing out again. <\/p>\n
Australia all-rounder Beau Webster will also play his first match of the series after replacing quick Jhye Richardson in the team. Off-spinner Todd Murphy was named 12th man. <\/p>\n
Australia lead the series 3-1 and have already ensured \u200dthey will retain the Ashes urn.<\/p>\n
The action will start under sunny skies but there is a chance of some stormy weather after lunch.<\/p>\n
The match was preceded by a ceremony honouring first responders and “community \u200bmembers who acted bravely” \u200cduring the attack by gunmen which killed 15 people at a Jewish event at nearby Bondi Beach \u200bon December 14.<\/p>\n
The unusually high level of security for the match was \u2060evident outside the ground \u200cwith riot police observing the crowd as they entered the \u200bvenue. <\/p>\n
TEAMS FOR FIFTH ASHES TEST <\/p>\n
Australia: Jake Weatherald, Travis Head, Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith (captain), Usman Khawaja, Alex Carey, \u200dCameron Green, Beau Webster, Michael Neser, Mitchell Starc, Scott Boland. <\/p>\n
England: Ben \u2060Stokes (captain), Jacob Bethell, Harry Brook, Brydon Carse, Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, \u200bWill Jacks, Matthew Potts, \u200cJoe Root, Jamie Smith, Josh Tongue <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SYDNEY, Jan \u200c4 : England captain Ben Stokes won the toss and elected to bat first on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-672322","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115834265582056979","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}