Emotional Ashes Goodbyes: Khawaja Confirms Retirement – Smith, Root & Lyon Next?
Published - 01 Dec 2025, 05:23 PM | Updated - 01 Dec 2025, 05:25 PM
The upcoming 2025/26 Ashes Series in Australia has all the electricity you’d expect, but beneath the familiar buzz, there’s the sense that we stand at the end of an era. As the cricketing world turns its gaze toward Perth and its stunning Optus Stadium, the site of the first test of the series, there’s a deeper story unfolding beyond the final destination of the urn: This winter could well be the last time we see some of the defining figures of modern Test cricket battling for the sport’s oldest prize.
England stagger Down Under, ghosts of 2011 trailing them, 15 years without a single test match triumph on enemy turf. For a generation, English fans have had to watch highlights on YouTube of the likes of Kevin Pietersen, Alistair Cook, and Graham Swann storming to a 3-1 victory all those years ago. Since then, their team has lost 13 of 15 tests, with the other two being rain-affected draws.
Heading into the series, the bookies think it's wide open. Outlets such as the popular crypto betting site Thunderpick currently make the tourists a live 2/1 underdog, with the hosts priced as the 8/11 favorites. Both teams will need their veterans on song if they are to emerge with the urn and prove Thunderpick right (or wrong!), but which of them could be featuring at the vaunted series for the last time? Let's take a look.
Usman Khawaja
Usman Khawaja has already written his own script. The 38-year-old has publicly confirmed that the upcoming Ashes series will close the book on his remarkable two-act career.
In his initial stint with the Baggy Greens, Australia's first-ever muslim player was thought of as a perennial underachiever - an unquestionable talent, but prone to dismal form slumps. Over the course of the last three years, however, his newfound maturity has led to him becoming one of the key Aussie weapons at the top of the order.
Since 2022’s recall, Khawaja averages over 50, providing steel and serenity when Australia needs it most. The numbers glow, but they don’t paint the whole portrait. Khawaja topped the run charts in the most recent Ashes series on enemy territory in 2023, proving to the doubters once and for all that he doesn't need favorable Aussie pitches to pile on the runs. He will be aiming for one last hurrah, and while he's the only one to have confirmed his retirement, he may not be bowing out on his own.
Steve Smith
Even at 36, Steve Smith remains a run-scoring machine. Flickering, twitching, then erupting into strokes that redefine technique, the Sydney native is the kind of enigma that comes along once a generation. His numbers are staggering: Over 9,500 Test runs, an Ashes average north of 60, and a 774-run demolition of England in 2019 that will long outlive a cricketer's short career.
Yet, even the greats face Father Time’s slow march. Smith has retired from ODIs, doubling down on his quest for Ashes immortality and, if his own hints are to be believed, an outside shot at making it to England in 2027. Still, there’s a sense of fragility—a recent lean patch, musical chairs up and down the batting order, and the looming burden of leadership should Pat Cummins’ back not hold up.
There’s drama: Will we witness another scorching run-fest, or see Smith edged toward a poignant exit? Outlets hint that Australia’s balance might hinge on his mood as much as his runs. The results in 2025/26, fairly or not, could define the legend’s final chapter.
Joe Root
If ever a player deserved a twist in his own tale, it’s Joe Root. Already England’s record Test run-scorer—he surpassed Sir Alastair Cook last year—Root’s relationship with the Ashes is bittersweet. His numbers are elite: 12,000-plus runs, the bedrock of England’s batting for a decade. Yet in Australia, the numbers reveal a ghost he’s never quite managed to exorcise: 892 runs on Australian soil, not one of them converted into a century. His average Down Under, 35.68, is serviceable but a world away from his career 51.29.
This is his fourth tour to Australia, but for once, he travels without the shackles of captaincy, able to let Bazball’s wild optimism flow through his bat. Pundits, ex-players, and fans alike point to Root—if England are to achieve the impossible, it is he, not the brash newcomers or vice-captain du jour, who must find both form and fortune.
Critics sharpen their knives: another unproductive tour and whispers grow of him following Virat Kohli’s late-career retreat into silence. Yet, if Root crafts a match-defining innings—if he, finally, finds glory Down Under—this series will be his monument, and those same critics will hymn his name far beyond Sydney or Melbourne.
Nathan Lyon
If spin is an afterthought in Australia, no one told Nathan Lyon. At 38, sporting 562 wickets, already the second most all-time for an off spinner behind the 800 of Muttiah Muralitharan, Lyon is that rarest creature—a finger spinner who flourished in pacemen’s paradise. Dismissed early in his career as an oddity, the veteran has long since passed cult-hero status. He is now Australia’s weather-beaten constant, the one who keeps coming, keeps asking the same questions—flight, dip, bounce—until batsmen crack.
His Ashes numbers form a sub-plot of their own: 84 wickets at 30.77, and in 2023, he became folklore—hobbling out with a torn calf, refusing to surrender, taking wickets and running between the wickets when common sense and pain begged him to stop. With Cummins’ fitness uncertain, Lyon could be even more pivotal this time, his partnership with the quicks critical to Australia's strategy.
So—the last home Ashes? Lyon isn’t saying. He’s hinted the 2027 Ashes in England might be a target, but even as time prowls closer, there’s the sense he isn’t done rewriting history. Each ball this summer is a fresh stanza in arguably the greatest Australian off-spin epic of all time.
