It cost $30 to gain admission to the last day of this third Test – not a token gold coin donation, but cheap in these inflationary times. It was, to be sure, a speculative investment: four deliveries and it could all be over. As it happens, a crowd of glass-half-fullers had bought themselves a piece of some absorbing cricket. A Test match that began with Usman Khawaja rising from the grave ended with England almost conjuring a Bazball Christmas miracle.
At 2.11pm, Josh Tongue edged Scott Boland to slip where Marnus Labuschagne pocketed his fourth catch of the innings and ninth of the series, prolonging Australia’s Ashes tenure beyond eight years. While the victory margin was 82 runs, it felt tighter. At times across the day, when Will Jacks’s consecutive partnerships with Jamie Smith and Brydon Carse were unfolding, a genuine hush fell, even among the Barmy Army. Chase 425? They couldn’t, could they? No, they couldn’t. But they might have.
As at Lord’s in 2023, Australia were reduced to ten men by injury to Nathan Lyon, who left the field with a hamstring injury that could rule him out for the rest of the series. As then, England could not quite take advantage – all the more reason for them to rue yesterday’s self-immolations by Ben Duckett and Harry Brook, and for Australia to bless Pat Cummins’s abiding edge on Joe Root. The strain to Lyon’s right hamstring occurred without warning, in the 77th over, when Jamie Smith pulled Cameron Green to long leg. Lyon, momentarily unsighted, responded late, dived full-length to his right, made a brilliant one-handed save, but rose to his feet as though shot in the leg – he is in for a sore Christmas and, one strongly suspects, an inactive Boxing Day. His captain has hinted he might be joining him too.
Smith abruptly resembled the player the English summer promised, taking toll of the second new ball. He crashed consecutive fours off Cummins’s first over, through cover and over mid-off, then took Mitchell Starc over mid-wicket and extra cover, reducing the target to 150. Hunting a full house of boundaries, however, he top edged to leg, where Cummins took a composed catch out of the sun.
Still England did not yield. Jacks, who has given up more than five an over with the ball, has made bowlers earn his wicket; Brydon Carse, who came to Australia with a batting reputation to which he has failed to live up, now bedded in. Cummins resumed after lunch with Travis Head, like Napoleon searching for a lucky general. Scott Boland offered a yeoman spell including a spell of 26 consecutive deliveries in which he beat the outside edge monotonously. But there were runs on offer at the other end, including a sweep for six by Carse hit as hard as any shot in the match, and a ration of luck – England’s No9 overturned an lbw decision and offered a half chance to Green at second slip.
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As at Brisbane, where Josh Inglis’s direct hit conjured something from nothing, so Australia regained the initiative with moments of brilliance. Jacks, who had batted almost three hours, as long as one of the T20 games in which he specialises, threw his hands at Cummins, and Labuschagne threw out a left hand at slip. He and Steve Smith have been so successful standing a metre in front of Alex Carey in the last two matches as to have you questioning the conventional wisdom that slip sits deeper – their reflexes are setting a new standard for close catching.
This was also Starc’s 50th wicket of the year at 17, making him the world’s most penetrative bowler as well as the swiftest and slipperiest. When Jofra Archer then holed out to deep backward point, the game was finally in Australia’s keeping. Speaking of keeping, Carey won his fourth Test man-of-the-match award in the last two years. He, too, is sustaining new heights.
This was a terrific Test, bursting with spice and variety – after the 41 degrees of the second day, today there was even a rain break. Just about all it had in common with Perth was a Travis Head hundred, the wallop and thud at Optus Stadium yielding here to an old-fashioned ebb and flow as England fell in with a tempo check mandated by their captain. It’s like the visitors have finally realised that Test matches involve five allowable days.
Hitting the brakes ahead of the impending cliff, however, has not prevented England plummeting to an 11-day Ashes defeat. It has also reinforced how competitive they could have been, given half an ounce of preparation and application. Three-nil is a harsh scoreline but a fair one.
Photograph by Philip Brown/Getty Images