Form for Flintoff, and Langer's aggression

89 - Andrew Flintoff's highest score in 30 innings since his 102 against Australia at Trent Bridge in 2005. Since then he's reached 50 on eight occasions (including his 89 today) but hasn't been able to convert them into hundreds.

291 is England's second highest first-innings total of the series after their 551 for 6 dec at Adelaide. Their other first-innings scores of the series have been 157, 215 and 159.

73.50 - Justin Langer's strike-rate during this Ashes series in which he's scored 283 runs at 40.42 in eight innings. It's his highest strike-rate in Ashes contests, his second highest is 64.48 in 2002-03. This is also his third highest strike-rate in a series after 93.82 against South Africa in 2001-02 and 87.27 against New Zealand in 1999-00.

40 - The number of Tests Matthew Hoggard had played in a row before missing the Sydney Test. He last missed a Test in December 2003 against Sri Lanka at Colombo.

0 - the number of runs Flintoff scored against Andrew Symonds who bowled two maidens to him. Flintoff's strike-rate against Glenn McGrath was 39.47 but he was very aggressive against Brett Lee and Stuart Clark against whom he scored 29 off 28 balls and 24 off 29 balls respectively.

37 - Michael Hussey's score at the end of the second day. If he fails to score 13 more, it will be the first time in the series that all of Australia's top four failed to reach 50.