The three England batsmen who came to Australia as unproven Test cricketers can do no more, as on a fourth day in Sydney that was as hot as Hades and proved equally torturous, Mark Stoneman, James Vince and Dawid Malan all batted, briefly, for the final time in this Ashes series.
Of the trio, only Malan can be totally secure in the knowledge that he will be travelling to New Zealand for the two-Test encounter in March. Though trapped lbw to Nathan Lyon for five in England’s second innings, to see the off-spinner become Australia’s fourth bowler to 20 wickets in the series, the left-hander has enjoyed a promising breakthrough campaign from No5.
Malan’s maiden Test hundred in Perth – one of three by England on this tour with a day remaining, compared with four from members of the Marsh family alone – and his three half-centuries have provided the one batting plus for a touring lineup that, collectively, has simply been unable to match its opposition hosts for sheer bloody mindedness at the crease.
Temperament, above all else, earned Malan his chance during the English summer and though he started out on his knees when upended by a Kagiso Rabada feet-seeking missile at the Oval, he now heads into the one-day series with chest relatively puffed out and the comfort of having proved to himself that he can indeed deliver at Test level.
For the other two, however, questions remain. They began this tour as room-mates and end it as statistically middling bedfellows with near identical returns. When the selectors finalise their plans for the second half of this antipodean winter on Monday, the pair will remain the subject of debate rather than it being a case of stamping their boarding passes.
Stoneman’s series promised so much at the start, when he set off like the Indian Pacific during the warm-up campaign and then began the real thing with a positive half-century in Brisbane. Just one more followed in Perth when mustering 56 and since a blow to the head at the end of what was an admittedly impressive display of courage under fire, the hands have chased the short ball, the footwork has been more skittish and the scores have dwindled.
When Mitchell Starc speared one into the left-hander’s pads for a first duck in Test cricket (193 overs in the field before facing the new ball make it a sod of a job sometimes) it was 42 runs in his last four innings. There remains an expectation that the 30-year-old will make the cut for New Zealand – five years of change here and few in-form alternatives should see England, rightly, stick a little longer – but Tim Southee, Trent Boult and Neil Wagner will offer little respite.
Vince, whose 242 runs are 10 more than those of Stoneman, appears the more vulnerable of the two. In his 12 Tests the right-hander has now produced more nicks than a shave on an aeroplane during turbulence, with a lazy waft to Pat Cummins on 18 here the latest slab of evidence for those who see his angled bat as little more than a seductive siren on the rocks.
England will have been minded to give Vince another chance and perhaps will be still. His 83 in Brisbane, though ended in gormless fashion by a self-immolating run out, sits as the team’s fourth highest score this series, while the 55 in Perth felt like it could be the breakthrough innings before Starc located the crack in the pitch with laser precision for an unplayable delivery.
But as Paul Farbrace, England’s assistant coach, so bluntly put it at the press conference at the end of England’s day in the kiln that was Sydney: “There comes a time when ‘this could be the innings’ has to stop and it’s got to be hundreds.”
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