Ashes 2023: Live Q and A, why Australia needs to win Fifth Test

The difference between a 3-1 Ashes win and a 2-2 result is huge. So how can Australia ensure the storyline isn’t about how England was robbed? Replay the live Q&A.

If Australia needs any extra motivation to win the fifth Ashes Test tonight … surely it’s to press the mute button on Ben Stokes.

The England captain is pushing the boundaries of truth and logic with almost every statement he makes at the moment, and if this series finishes 2-2, Australia will never hear the end of this being hailed a moral triumph for Bazball and one of the greatest injustices in the history of sport.

SCROLL DOWN TO JOIN BEN HORNE’S LIVE ASHES Q&A

According to Stokes, you win when you lose, rain is criminal, stumpings aren’t in the spirit of the game and now the latest in imaginative thinking … James Anderson is the greatest fast bowler of all time.

Wait, what?

Esteemed forty-year cricket writer Robert Craddock has West Indian icon Malcolm Marshall as the fast bowling GOAT, with Wasim Akram taking the silver medal, and Dennis Lillee bronze.

That’s without getting to Glenn McGrath, Dale Steyn, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh. That’s not to say Anderson isn’t one of the greats – he is. But the best?

The difference between Australia winning this series 3-1 and drawing it 2-2 is seismic in terms of the tinkering England can do to the narrative.

If it ends up 3-1 it’ll be pretty hard to spin it as England unlucky and England the better team.

Lose, and these Australian players will have to put up with decades of documentaries and interviews where the Bazballers reminisce about how legendary their drawn series, and lost Ashes, was.