Debutant a chance, England wait on injured pair

England are yet to make a final call on whether wounded duo Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow will take part in the final Vodafone Ashes Test starting Friday, with the potential debut of third-in-line keeper Sam Billings also riding on that fitness assessment.

Billings was added to the touring party during last week's Sydney Test, just 90 minutes before he was due to board a UK-bound plane having ended his KFC BBL stint with the Sydney Thunder, as a potential replacement for gloveman Jos Buttler, who sustained a badly fractured left index finger at the SCG.

However, England captain Joe Root told reporters today it remained unclear whether the uncapped 30-year-old would be rushed directly into the starting XI or if the keeping role would be filled by Bairstow who is, himself, battling an injured right thumb.

Bairstow and Stokes, who is hampered by a side strain that rendered him unable to bowl for much of the fourth Test and left him in excruciating pain when batting, will be assessed by England team medical staff throughout training today and tomorrow.

Root said the experienced pair's preparedness to push through physical discomfort in the interests of the team's greater good would have to be balanced alongside their capacity to perform at optimum level as England look to end their 14-Test winless streak in Australia.

"We need to make sure they feel like they're physically in a place where they can get through five hard days of cricket," Root said today in confirming no final decisions had been made on England's starting XI for the day-night series finale.

"Whatever Australia throw at them, that they're in a position where they can go out and play and firstly get through the game but most importantly put in a performance as they managed to last week as well.

"It's all right being fit to play but you've got to be fit to perform and I think that's what we've got to work out in the next two days.

"You have to trust the medical advice as well.

"Those guys (medical staff) work tirelessly to make sure we're in the best possible position to win games, and sometimes that's making some difficult calls on the other side of it.

"But ultimately we'll have to weigh everything and make sure we feel that we've got eleven players that are going to be able to manage the game and give ourselves the best chance of winning.

"There's a lot to consider in the next few days, but it's not something that we're having to deal with for the first time on this trip."

Should Bairstow be deemed fit to play, there is no guarantee he would take Buttler's role behind the stumps despite having kept wickets in 50 of the 80 Test matches he's played, most recently against India at The Oval last September.

The 32-year-old has played as a specialist batter this series and posted England's sole century of their Ashes campaign to date in the fourth Test.

But in the process he copped a blow to the thumb that would potentially make a return to the keeping job problematic even if he was keen to do it.

Root praised the "energy" Billings had brought to his squad since making a road trip from Brisbane to Sydney to join them last week, but was non-committal as to whether he would add a maiden Test to the 25 ODIs and 33 T20Is he's played for England since 2015.

"He's constantly smiling, he loves his cricket, he's a great guy to have around the environment," Root said of the auxiliary keeper.

"I'm sure if he gets his opportunity, he'll throw everything into it."

The prospect of deploying Stokes solely a solely a batter in Hobart was unequivocally endorsed by Root but it would mean England would head into the day-night Test without the balance of an allrounder unless Chris Woakes is recalled, which would leave the tourists sporting a lengthy tail.

Stokes was also clearly inconvenienced in his strokeplay after suffering the injury last week and, given this series marks his return to international cricket after a lengthy lay-off, England might take a conservative approach with their star allrounder as they eye the Caribbean tour starting later this month.

He has revealed the extent of the discomfort he endured after injuring himself while bowling in Australia's first innings at Sydney, claiming the pain he felt from the side strain was second only to the finger fracture he sustained in last year's Indian Premier League.

"I've never had a side strain before but when I bowled the ball that caused the low-grade tear, it must be what surgery without the anaesthetic feels like, it was agony," Stokes wrote in a column for the UK's Mirror newspaper yesterday.

"The big question now is whether I can play in the final game as a batsman or not.

"I'm not going to say definitively just yet because there are still a few days to go and we need to see how I respond to the treatment, but what I will say is that I want to play.

"If it is a question of playing through a bit of pain, I know it is not going to be as bad as it was in Sydney and I got through that okay.

"But there are other things to consider such as the West Indies tour to come and the likelihood of doing more damage.

"When it came to batting, any shot that made me collapse towards the left-hand side is what aggravated it.

"I thought the pull shot or the cut shot would cause me most pain, but it was actually the on-drive or shots through the on-side that hurt most."

England's most meritorious performance of a largely forgettable campaign to date was forged in Sydney despite them having endured their most chaotic pre-game preparation of the tour.

With a number of support staff including head coach Chris Silverwood remaining in Melbourne due to COVID-19 requirements, Root was among a number of senior players who took on the role of coaching assistant, with net bowlers also absent from their training as a result of NSW's virus outbreak.

But he claimed that rather than being another burden for an already struggling touring party, the adversity helped unite his men and that resolve manifested on the final day at the SCG when they endured 97 overs to salvage a brave draw.

"I think the one thing we gained from that was a sense of real togetherness, that we really had to pull together and help each other prepare in a slightly different way than we've had to before, or for a long time," Root said today.

"I do think that sometimes is a good thing, you have to be a bit more selfless and spend a little bit more time caring for the other guys around you and making sure you're all getting exactly what you need to be as ready as you can be in that situation.

"When you look at how we had to approach that last day, it paid its dividends in some respects and sometimes that's something that can really bring a side together and bring the best out of a team."

Vodafone Men's Ashes

Squads

Australia: Pat Cummins (c), Steve Smith (vc), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Marcus Harris, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Michael Neser, Jhye Richardson, Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Swepson, David Warner

England: Joe Root (c), James Anderson, Jonathan Bairstow, Dom Bess, Sam Billings, Stuart Broad, Rory Burns, Zak Crawley, Haseeb Hameed, Dan Lawrence, Jack Leach, Dawid Malan, Craig Overton, Ollie Pope, Ollie Robinson, Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood

Schedule

First Test: Australia won by nine wickets

Second Test: Australia won by 275 runs

Third Test: Australia won by an innings and 14 runs

Fourth Test: Match drawn

Fifth Test: January 14-18, Blundstone Arena