Key events
84th over: Australia 334-8 (Starc 41, Lyon 0) Jofra Archer opens the bowling to Mitchell Starc, who is averaging 63 with the bat and 14 with the ball in this series.
Starc’s batting average rises to 67 when he hits Archer for two boundaries, a slash over the slips and a beautifully timed push through the covers.
Here come the Australian batters, Mitchell Starc (33*) and Nathan Lyon (0*). England need to get rid of them quicksmart.
“Dear Rob, writing from Tokyo where it’s a crisp sunny morning and 7°,” begins David. “I note it could reach 39 in Adelaide? Cue the wisdom of Pvte Hudson in Aliens: ‘Yeah man, but it’s a dry heat.’ We’re gonna be OK, right. Snaffle the last two wickets. Lyon and Starc are tailenders, right? Then score 600. Easy.”
Have you been watching the Old Trafford 2023 highlights again?
The consensus is that today and tomorrow will be the best days to bat. England need to go huge, because they won’t fancy chasing too many against Nathan Lyon on day five.
“As the cliche has it, it’s a crucial first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh hour,” writes Gary Naylor. “Are Australia bringing 871 Test wickets into an already winning team or imbalancing their attack with a couple of rusty bowlers? Are England Bazball zealots or pragmatic pros? Did 2006 happen at all? Feels like the opening credits of an episode of Soap.”
England have had a review reinstated after yesterday’s Snicko cock-up. That means they have two left for the remainder of this innings.
It’s already 33 degrees in Adelaide, with temperatures expected to reach 40 degrees. In short, England’s seamers will be utterly filthy if the batters don’t give them the day off (once they’ve taken the last two Australian wickets).
Tanya Aldred
Neville Cardus was covering the tour for the Manchester Guardian, his beautifully written reports later gathered together within the pages of Australian Summer. In his own cracking book The Great Romantic, Duncan Hamilton reports that Cardus told England captain Allen the night before the third Test: “For heaven’s sake clinch the rubber at once. Bradman cannot go on like this much longer.”
Cardus’s premonition was right. The third Test was at Melbourne, where, similar to the recent pink-ball Test at Brisbane, playing the conditions was as important as playing the ball. Thick, fat rain started to fall late on the first day and into the second, and the players were presented with a classic sticky dog. Bradman declared at 200 for nine and England were soon all in a tangle.
With wickets falling quickly, and desperate not to have to bat again that afternoon, Bradman instructed his bowlers to send the ball wide of the wicket and dispatched his prowling close catchers away into the outfield. The next day was to be a rest day and the weather forecast was for hot sunshine. But Allen refused to gamble on bowling Australia out for a second time. He pressed on, and on, till England had lurched to 76 for nine, batting out precious overs as he did so.
Barney Ronay
There is no doubt some parts of the Australian cricket mind have struggled to understand England’s best bowler. “This is where Jofra Archer NEEDS TO STEP UP for his team,” the interchangeable Channel 7 punditry voice rasped just after lunch. At that exact moment Archer had two for seven, everyone else 87 for one. Reality: everyone else needs to step up and support the only person currently doing it.
Tell me, what was it that first convinced you the only black Caribbean-born player on either team was somehow not to be trusted? But then the idea is always out there that Archer somehow isn’t trying, has the incorrect body language, or is uniquely guilty of not bowling his absolute fastest all the time.
It takes a degree of willed ignorance to maintain that a man who has worked his way back from serious injury, who came up as a self-made cricketer, no pathways, no academy, just hard work, is flighty and weak. And yes, it comes back to the chain, which Australia has been a little bit obsessed with on this tour in an oh-no-dad’s-making-an-unfortunate-remark kind of way.
Geoff Lemon
Chalk it up to fates or fortune or a quirk of probability, whatever your inclination. If Australia’s first day of the Adelaide Test was a jigsaw puzzle hurled into the air, most of the pieces landed face up in the right place. It has been a pattern for Australia in this Ashes series: monstered by England’s bowlers in Perth, only to create an even greater collapse; sliding in Brisbane, rescued by the lower order.
England, meanwhile, brought a gameplan built on the surety that they couldn’t win in Australia with medium-fast seamers and a keeper up to the stumps, then lost to medium-fast seamers with a keeper up to the stumps. They were given the gift of no Pat Cummins, no Josh Hazlewood, no Nathan Lyon (in Brisbane) and still managed to lose twice in six days. Their third encounter brought the next gift: Steve Smith missing with an inner-ear problem, their own personal Ghost of Ashes Past replaced in the middle order by a creaking, squinting opener whom Australia had already tried to drop.
Ali Martin
After the pandemonium of Perth and Brisbane’s pink-ball palooza came a more familiar opening day at Adelaide Oval. It was also roasting hot out in the middle – 35C on the mercury – and when the toss went against Ben Stokes and his embattled England players, they could easily have melted.
Instead, despite some sloppiness and Alex Carey’s magical century on the ground he calls home, the tourists kept plugging away with the fight that Stokes called for at 2-0 down. At stumps Australia were 326 for eight from 83 sapping overs – runs on the heritage-listed scoreboard, granted, but short of ambitions when the returning Pat Cummins got the choice first thing.
England are considering a formal complaint over the Snicko technology being used in this Ashes series after Alex Carey received a lifeline en route to a telling century on the opening day of the third Test.
Carey, who made 106 in Australia’s 326 for eight by stumps, was on 72 when Josh Tongue believed the left-hander had edged behind. He was given not out on the field and the third umpire, Chris Gaffaney, felt he did not have enough evidence to overturn the decision despite a spike showing up on the review.
Preamble
Hello one and all. There’s need for any hype ahead of today’s play in Adelaide – everybody knows that it’s on the Brobdingnagian side of huge. The likelihood is that, in the next eight hours, either Australia will take a decisive grip on the 2025-26 Ashes or England’s much maligned batters will breathe new life into the series.
First England’s bowlers need to take the last two wickets. Australia will resume on 326 for 8, a score that should have been better but could have been worse. Most of their batters got themselves out; on the flip side, their top scorers Usman Khawaja (82) and Alex Carey (106) were both dropped and Carey benefitted from a Snicko controversy.
If the pitch is as flat as everyone thinks – Justin Langer called it “a road” – England will hope to take a significant first-innings lead. Given the potential influence of Nathan Lyon in the fourth innings, this is the moment for England’s top eight to deliver. Next time, there’ll be no next time.
