After two days of the fourth Test the Ashes are all but back in England’s hands. Asked to make 332 to avoid an innings defeat, the Australian second innings was on its last legs at 241 for seven, still 90 runs behind England, after Chris Rogers and David Warner had given it a start of 113 for the first wicket.
However, four wickets in 20 minutes as tea approached, three of them to Ben Stokes in a combative spell of swing bowling, changed the course of the afternoon. There was a further wicket for Stuart Broad too, that of Steve Smith who fell to a superb catch by Stokes at cover point, a position he had taken up specifically to counter Smith’s scorching square drive, a well researched plan that paid off. This took Broad to 308 wickets and ahead now of Fred Trueman’s 307: “I’ll sithee”, as Fred would have said.
Stokes had left the field at one point with what was possibly cramp but he returned to take the further wickets of Peter Nevill and Mitchell Johnson to end the day with five for 35.
There was no joy for the Australia captain, Michael Clarke, who batted for the best part of an hour without ever looking comfortable, and then edged Mark Wood to Alastair Cook at first slip, who parried it and, in tumbling backwards, managed to push it up for Ian Bell to collect the catch. If Australia lose this match, and with it the Ashes, as they will almost certainly do first thing on the third day, his position must surely become untenable.
If the first day had been a remarkable one when everything went right for England, while Murphy’s Law, which says that anything that can go wrong will, applied to the Australians, it was not such plain sailing for Cook’s team on the second. In the morning the anticipated run spree failed to materialise, although the England captain felt able to declare 20 minutes before lunch at 391 for nine. Mitchell Starc, bowling beautifully, took career best figures of six for 111.
When it came to their time in the field, they made it harder for themselves than they will have liked. Broad quite possibly bowled better than in the first innings but now he beat the bat rather than finding the edge. Wood was off colour, leaking runs, and Steven Finn not quite scaling his Edgbaston heights. And, if the catching in the first innings had been flawless, now it became ragged.
David Warner was missed by Cook at first slip when 10, and again when 42, this time by Bell, a sharp chance to his right at second slip. He went on to make 64 before a mistimed pull shot ended up in Broad’s hands at midwicket.
Worse were the no-balls delivered by Wood and Finn for over-stepping which, if legitimate, would have produced wickets. In the first instance it was Rogers, on 47, who fended off a short ball to gully where Joe Root took a wonderful diving catch, only for the inevitable replay that is the norm when a wicket falls to show Wood had transgressed by a smidgin.
Rogers made only five more runs before he was caught at third slip but such things can compound anxieties. Later, at a time when Adam Voges and Peter Nevill were taking root, Finn had Nevill, then two, taken by Cook at first slip: this time the no-ball was a big one. That would have been 181 for six.
Unlike the Australians, however, who managed to go into the match without a batting all-rounder, England had Stokes and, as had Broad in the first innings, he bowled the defining spells. Swinging the ball either way in a controlled manner that would have had Jimmy Anderson purring, he troubled all the batsmen and his wickets, his second five-wicket haul in Tests, both against Australia, not to mention his batting and superbly athletic fielding, fully establish him as an international all-rounder of the highest class.
England, 274 for four overnight, were able to extend their lead but only by a further 117 runs before Cook, shrewdly, called his last pair in to leave three challenging overs for the Australians before lunch. There would have been mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, given the position from the first day, and the fact that Root had been batting like a dream, there would have been disappointment that they were not able to push on and post a total that would make their lead totally unassailable. On the other hand, however, there was a decent covering of high cloud and the ball, 65 overs old at the start of play, swung considerably and seamed as well which, given the nature of the first Australian innings, was probably more disconcerting for them to see.
That Australia were able to come back at England at all was almost single-handedly down to Starc, who for the first time since Lord’s found a decent rhythm and gradually gained control over the swing, finding the edge of Root’s bat, uprooting the nightwatchman Wood’s leg stump (although not before he had made 28, which is nine more than Australia’s top six had managed combined), and neck-and-cropping Jos Buttler. Meanwhile the bowling of Johnson and, in particular, Josh Hazlewood, much touted before the series but proving a slightly lumbering disappointment, was ordinary.
Hazlewood did collect the wicket of Stokes, who was strangled down the leg side, and Johnson finally gained a consolation when Moeen, batting at No9 now and having hit 38 from 24 balls, was spectacularly caught by Smith diving to his left at second slip. Johnson, though, had begun the series in Cardiff by conceding a hundred runs before taking a wicket, and now he had done so again, which received the expected derision from the crowd. It is tough being Mitchell in England.
