What 5 January Tells Us About Cricket

Two of the headline Test performances on this date come from the same fixture at the same ground 71 years apart: Keith Miller's 145 and 4/37 for Australia against England in 1951, and Usman Khawaja's 137 and Jonny Bairstow's 113 in the Australia 416 v England 214 draw at Sydney in 2022. Both matches produced milestone moments too, Miller reaching 50 Test wickets in 1951 and Khawaja his 3000th Test run and 10th Test hundred in 2022. Stuart Broad's 5/101 in that same 2022 match adds to the sense that Sydney in early January is a fixture point on the calendar rather than a coincidence of scheduling.

New Zealand v Sri Lanka ODIs appear three times on this date, in 1988, 2016 and 2019, twice at Mount Maunganui. Each version delivered milestones for the Sri Lankan or New Zealand side involved: Martin Crowe and Asanka Gurusinha in 1988, Angelo Mathews and Martin Guptill's 10th ODI century in 2016, and Thisara Perera's maiden ODI hundred alongside Colin Munro's 1000th ODI run in 2019. The repetition suggests this has long been a scheduled window for New Zealand's home summer fixtures against Sri Lanka.

West Indies also recur here, winning by 7 wickets against Sri Lanka in 1996, by 7 wickets against Australia in 1997, and by 6 wickets against India in 1988, all narrow, late finishes. South Africa's 72-run win over India in 2018 and New Zealand's 21-run win over Sri Lanka in 2019 fit the same pattern of close margins rather than routs. The T20 league matches on this date, especially the Adelaide Strikers' repeated BBL appearances, show the format has also settled into this early-January slot.