It was a forlorn hope, perhaps, but after a second year of pandemic-era monotony — pat your pocket for a mask; yep, there’s the QR code; ooh, the text says we’ve got another parcel coming soon — a few of us had hoped the Ashes might occasionally offer something exciting and unexpected.
Maybe exciting wasn’t the word for it, but on day three in Adelaide, it was certainly novel that England went the entire first session without losing a wicket. Joe Root and Dawid Malan, their country’s first and last batting defence in this series, put on 123 runs in 32 overs.
And it was not just that England played well, it was that Australia didn’t. Shorn of the best fast bowling combination in cricket, Australia was learning that the excellence of Jhye Richardson and Michael Neser is not quite the same as the outright brilliance of generational quicks.
Every second over, it seemed, there was a boundary-ball. Singles were easily accumulated. The pink ball softened. And wasn’t this pitch meant to take spin?
What happened after lunch — combined with the British media’s depressed chuntering of the last 24 hours, which suggested the tourists’ performances this summer are actually the result of years of meticulous planning — showed that comedy remains England’s great cultural export.
Cameron Green, who Australia picks mainly to bat, dismissed world-beater Root for the second time in three innings. From a relaxed 2-150, England fell apart like Nigella Lawson’s aromatic lamb shank stew.
The paltry score of 236 was one thing, England’s rolling out of the greatest hits another. Like so often, one brought two (and then many more) when Malan departed for 80. Faced with a crisis, Jos Buttler brought his usual gung-ho-no-matter-the-stakes batting. To go with his sketchy keeping, it’s made him as useful as a chocolate teapot in this game.
Again, Ollie Pope did everything in fast-forward and was hopelessly undone by spin, looking more and more like a bunny for Nathan Lyon. Again, England was revealed as a team with three No.11’s. And again, as he’d done with the ball, Ben Stokes was left to restore some sense of national pride, although he was so stiff and sore he could barely play shots.
The respective home-team advantages being what they are, we have come to expect a competitive imbalance in the Ashes. But this one is really testing the theory that Australians don’t care for even contests when England is down and out. It’s over.
Green swings momentum Australia’s way
A hallmark of the top Test sides is not putting in two bad sessions on the trot, a metric by which Australia fared well. In the second session, 4-57 from 30 overs was a faultless recovery from the morning and the momentum kept rolling.
Already a dominant presence in this game with the bat, Steve Smith pulled off a tactical masterstroke after Root’s departure. Common sense said keep Green on — he was troubling the new man Stokes, too. But to murmurings all over the country, Smith replaced him with Starc. Immediately Starc removed Malan.
For all the pre-game excitement about Neser and Richardson, the biggest ticks were for Starc, Lyon and Green, who accounted for nine of the wickets. After forcing a collapse of 8-74 in the second innings of the first Test, Australia rammed home its advantage with 8-86 here.
Green proved the great upside to being an all-rounder, banishing thoughts of his batting struggles with two subtly aggressive spells of genuinely fast bowling. You wouldn’t call it mongrel, but Green has revealed that he has a few more gears than his first summer of Test bowling suggested. He is a momentum-changer.
Lyon turned the ball square, taking 3-58 from 28 probing overs that kept the quicks fresh. “Can SOMEONE please smack Lyon?!?!! FFS!” Kevin Pietersen had tweeted at one point. “Off spinner with zero variations and bowling on world crickets flattest road!!!!” (Sorry, but if we began to fix the grammar and punctuation, where would it end?)
If remotely true, of course, Pietersen’s diss could be read as a more scathing review of England’s performance. And are variations even needed against this lot? Chris Woakes can handle himself with the bat. Lyon made him look like a synthetic-wicket slogger.
The bigger boon for Australia was Starc, the recipient of more than a few scathing reviews over the years. He rose impressively to the challenge provided by the contenders for his spot, taking four wickets with fast spells full of attitude. Neser was tidy, Richardson uncharacteristically loose, if a little unlucky.
There is nothing unlucky about England’s bleak prospects. At the end of the day, Smith could have enforced the follow-on and made things really ugly. Instead he batted again, which opens up the possibility of a fifth day of this very dreary contest. Thanks for that, skip.
SOURCE: ABC NEWS