Captain’s rallying cry as he aims to finish on a high at Sydney

ENGLAND will travel to Sydney safe in the knowledge they cannot now be whitewashed for the third time in four Ashes tours, but Joe Root wants his players to back up the Melbourne draw by signing off the Test series with victory.

England have a better record at the Sydney Cricket Ground than any other Australian Test venue — they have won 22 times there, including on two of their last four visits.

And Root reckons the momentum from bossing the draw at Melbourne can help them nick a victory in the finale.

Root said: ‘In terms of our squad, character is something I never question. After three tough games and tough results, to come back with a performance as good as that was extremely pleasing for me as a captain.

‘They’re the sort of responses you want to see from your players. That’s a fairer reflection of us as a side.

‘We’re a better team than we’ve shown on this trip. That’s a benchmark now for us to move forward and try to make sure we go one better in Sydney and get that win we want.

‘Of course we didn’t want it to be a whitewash, but we came into this game fully excited about winning.

‘It wasn’t hard to get the guys in the right frame of mind for that.

‘They had a lot of disappointment coming away from Perth and they were desperate to prove a lot of people wrong and make sure we get something good out of this tour.’

Alastair Cook’s unbeaten 244 — a record Test score for a visiting player at the MCG — earned him the man-of-the-match award.

He said: ‘The lads have been good on this tour. We just haven’t done ourselves justice on the field. We’ve had too many people out of form to put Australia under pressure for longer periods of time.

‘In this game it was nice we did it for longer. We just weren’t good enough to get over the line.

‘Now we’ve got one more chance to do that in Sydney.’