Australia’s 4-1 Ashes triumph in Sydney wrapped up an outstanding home summer, yet the make-up of the XI felt more like a reunion than a youth movement. Ten of the eleven who walked out at the SCG were 30-plus, putting this group among the oldest Test sides ever selected. Only seven Test teams have fielded ten thirty-somethings; Australia provided two of those line-ups in the space of a fortnight, matching England’s run between 1909 and 1926.
The age debate had followed Pat Cummins’ squad all series. Mitchell Starc, now 35, responded by claiming Player of the Series. Scott Boland, 36, pushed through five successive Tests for 20 wickets at 24.95, while Michael Neser, also 35, chipped in with 15 at 19.93 across three matches. Usman Khawaja, 39, bowed out at his home ground. The rest are already looking towards England in 2027, though no-one is entirely certain who will still be around.
“I’m sure everyone’s excited to go there and try and win the Ashes,” Steven Smith told Fox Cricket shortly after lifting the urn. “It’s something that I certainly haven’t done in in my career, and something I’d like to tick off, whether I get there or not, it’s a different question. The squad we’ve had over the last four or five years has been amazing. So hopefully we can keep growing, getting better.”
Smith will be 38 when the next Ashes starts in England; Cummins 33; Starc 36; and Boland pushing 40. Selectors must decide how many can realistically soldier on. Australia have blooded younger seamers such as Lance Morris and Xavier Bartlett, yet it was the established trio who delivered when Josh Hazlewood, Nathan Lyon and Cummins himself missed sizeable chunks of the summer.
Without a specialist spinner in three of the five Tests, the attack still managed to take 20 wickets in each of the four victories. Boland and Neser operated at high 130s kilometres per hour, Starc hovered near 145 kph, and Alex Carey’s glovework knitted everything together. Smith singled out his keeper’s influence.
“He was unbelievable with both bat and gloves, I think,” Smith said. “Just the way he was able to go up to the stumps, in particular to the quicks. Those guys are bowling late 130s [kph] almost hitting 140s at times. And he’s just taken them easy. He works incredibly hard on it. And against this opposition, we thought that was a real threat, being able to keep them stuck on their crease and not allow them to dance at our bowlers. And he just did that so well, and the guys bowling to it just reciprocated and put the ball in the right areas.”
Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne again shouldered much of the batting, but the depth was exposed only once, at Melbourne, where England’s sole win arrived in two days of seam-friendly mayhem. The defeat prompted some hand-wringing over squad balance; by Sydney, the same ageing group had answered most of those questions.
“Mitchell Starc was sensational, and then supported by everyone that played,” Smith said. “I think just recognising [the key moments] and trying to play them in real time, not getting to a situation afterwards and saying, we should have done this, we should have done that,” he added, trailing off before heading to the dressing-room celebrations.
Selectors, meanwhile, have mirrored the captain’s pragmatic tone. Chair George Bailey noted last week that succession planning is underway yet stressed that performance, not birth certificates, will decide spots in 2027. A few fresh faces may slip in for the New Zealand tour later this year, but no wholesale clear-out is expected.
For now, Australia can reflect on a near-faultless campaign achieved with limited bowling resources and a batting order that, Khawaja aside, should remain intact until at least the next home summer. The burning question is whether a core group who came within one session of winning in England in 2019 can stay fresh enough—physically and mentally—to mount one last overseas push.
If they do, Smith hopes to be part of it, but he sounded realistic rather than sentimental. That balance—between ambition and acknowledgement of time’s march—seems to sum up Australia’s post-series mood.
