Wicketless Jimmy Anderson was groaning away through his 156th delivery of Australia’s first innings when the kiss of death arrived in a text message from a friend: “One tour too many for these great fast bowlers?”
Anderson being Anderson, the delivery in question was sent down at a teasing length. It kept low, it jagged back and unlike the 200 other deliveries Steve Smith had faced, the stand-in Australian captain was hopelessly deceived.
Smith being Smith, a DRS ruling was sought, confirming what seemed obvious to the naked eye: the ball had thumped into the lower knee roll of his pads and would have hit middle and off. Smith was out for 93 and decidedly unhappy about it.
An over later, Anderson removed Alex Carey for 51 to close the second session, thus everyone else was unhappy — after two quite painful days watching Smith’s neurotic strivings and Marnus Labuschagne’s constipated marathon, Carey’s breezy, stroke-laden hand had been a breath of fresh air.
Australia was 7-390 at that point and you thought to yourself, “Gee, Anderson could mop up the tail here and end up with five’. But it was competing with a more compelling thought: “But England will let the tail get away, won’t they?”
By the time Smith declared, his lower order had belted 83 runs in 10 overs, and the most obvious thought of all must have been going through the minds of England’s players, if not passing their lips: “How many wickets will we lose by stumps?”
The answer was two, but it might have been worse if not for divine intervention of sorts: a bolt of lightning illuminated St Peter’s Cathedral as Michael Neser ran into bowl the ninth over and Blocker Wilson called the teams off.
England finished the day 2-17, in a gloomy frame of mind.
Starc again undid the increasingly tragic Rory Burns. Jhye Richardson and his bouncy barnet returned to Test cricket with gorgeous swing and seam movement.
Debutant Michael Neser — a dozen times Australia’s 12th man — waited only two deliveries for the precious Test wicket that has been a decade in the making.
The whole thing made for a frictionless return to the captaincy for Smith, even if it is a temporary arrangement. And even if it has been greeted with a faintly desperate triumphalism by some.
Before play had even begun on day two, Shane Warne called it “one of the biggest redemption stories in Australian sporting history”, although to be fair, in the list of topics on which Warne can offer expert analysis, that one is up there with leg-spin and pizza toppings.
Where it went wrong for England
Every day of this series, it seems, there will be the need for an autopsy of England’s mistakes.
Today there was a bit of everything: dropped catches, another wicket from a no-ball, Tufnellesque ground fielding, overthrows for four, another dire effort bowling to the tail, and the inevitable late-day collapse.
Yet it was not for lack of effort. A good summary was provided by lumbering seamer Ollie Robinson at the start of the day. It took him three tries in the space of 17 deliveries to get rid of Labuschagne, who rode his luck to 103 from 305 deliveries.
Error one by Robinson was to overstep the mark when he nicked off the Australian number three with his first delivery of the day; Labuschagne was most of the way to the pavilion when he realised and walked back to the wicket with a hero’s reception.
Error two was for Robinson to become day-dreamingly consumed by the first error, dropping a sharp chance when Labuschagne pulled hard to square leg in Stuart Broad’s over following. It was equal parts tragedy and miracle, in that it silenced even Warne.
To his great credit, Robinson persevered, finally trapping Labuschagne in front in the over following. According to the local by-laws of every Test ground, Marnus reviewed it. According to the advice of Paul Reiffel in the TV umpire’s chair, it was plumb and prompted the words so elusive to England on this tour: “It was a fair delivery”.
Labuschagne still seethed as he walked off, shaking his head once of every time he should have been out. He may end up ranked with Australia’s greatest batters. He may not be the most loved.
For England, there was little else to celebrate, save for Ben Stokes’s lion-hearted bowling effort. The raw numbers — 3-113 from 25 overs — look ordinary, but it was a performance that stopped England from completely dropping its bundle.
There were only two negatives to the day for Australia.
One was the departure of double-vaccinated, Covid-negative Pat Cummins, whose marching orders from SA Health — permission to leave his hotel, drive solo to Adelaide airport for a chartered flight home and isolation in NSW — might by now include shackles, a Hazmat suit and two days in a sensory deprivation tank listening to the collected ambient works of Brian Eno.
The other, which could equally be viewed as scope for significant improvement, was that Cameron Green failed again. Like Marcus Harris, it seems unlikely that his technical deficiencies will be sorted out at Test level.
It’s no biggie. Green will come off eventually, but Mitchell Marsh could mind his place in the meantime. Harris might never, so Usman Khawaja demands serious consideration.
England has no such options. As its players trudged off, a particularly intoxicated member of the Barmy Army swayed around in a Kermit suit. Maybe he’s worth a try at number six?
