Jofra Archer’s first ball zinged towards Jake Weatherald and screamed just past the bat. His second arrowed into his pads, knocking him off his feet, and after a review the umpire raised his finger.
Forty-five overs later, Australia were all out for not many. But that was Perth, a bowling performance that started with a statement of intent from England’s premier fast bowler and a lead followed by his teammates.
Archer’s first ball of this Test pitched outside leg stump and flew harmlessly behind Travis Head. His second was more wayward still, again going down leg. His third a wild overcorrection, well wide of off stump. His fourth went back the other way, down the leg side.
Again the tone was set, much more discordant this time, and the lead was followed. By the end of the first session of day two here, the main topic of conversation was whether the bowling unit could possibly have fumbled an obviously key period any more clumsily. That kind of behaviour, after all, is normally their batters’ preserve.
The pink Kookaburra is not known for being helpful for long, but it is known for being very helpful indeed for the short period when it is fresh and hard and the bowlers fresh and fast. Mitchell Starc had offered a blueprint on day one and in the 13 day-night games he had played in Australia over the past decade.
England did not appear to have so much as glanced at it. The plan was right there for them, but instead they went in with none: they peppered the pitch in all the wrong places, bowling too wide and then too straight, too short and then too full. It was miserable to watch and easy to face: much of the time the only thing that could possibly have been feeling less threatened than the two batters was the top of off stump.
Australia’s innings, it is true, started with three maidens, but then Gus Atkinson bowled short and wide to Weatherald, who leaned back to nudge the ball down to the third man boundary – the first of an infuriating number of similar gifts, a flood of easy runs off the back foot – and they were away. Another boundary followed later in the over; in the next Archer got his line wrong again, the ball flicking Head’s buttock and running away for four leg byes.
From no runs after three overs they went at 7.1 an over until drinks, which gave England a sorely needed few minutes to regroup, an opportunity to huddle and chat, for someone to say a few telling, motivating words.
The players’ body language here was fascinating: Ben Stokes spoke quietly to Brydon Carse, whose first over had just bled 14 runs, and everyone else just stood around.
They had by then been toiling for an hour in the Brisbane heat, mounting misery interrupted only by the moment when Archer – by a distance the least bad of England’s bowlers – happened upon the right line, found the edge of Head’s bat and Jamie Smith flubbed a straightforward catch behind the stumps.
It was as close as they had come to encouragement and its effect was instead demoralising. The only thing the bowlers successfully achieved thereafter was identifying a method of guaranteeing it was not repeated. Head was struggling a little at the time of the drop and scored four off his first 29 balls. And then 29 off his next 14.
Between drinks and tea the run rate dropped only marginally, to 6.8, even though Head miscued another of Carse’s invitations to score and Atkinson backpedalled to take the catch at mid-on.
As this was happening, the words of Zak Crawley the previous night floated irrepressibly to mind. “I think it’s a good score,” he had said of England’s overnight total of 325, to which they would add another nine, “and the fact that we might score a bit quicker and get more runs in the day than Australia might play in our favour.”
Well, yes, about that. It turned out it wasn’t just dinner Crawley was eating at the end of Friday’s first session, at which point Australia had ransacked 125 off their previous 18 overs and the tone for the day had been set.
There was one period when they scored 91, with 16 boundaries, in the space of 11 overs, most of those bowled by Carse, whose inconsistency of line and length was at times bewildering, and Stokes – the pair who would briefly hint at rescuing the situation towards the end of the day.
Crawley’s comment, and indeed the England total, may have felt reasonable at the time, but it seemed a bit less impressive a couple of playing hours later when only going off for tea halted Australia’s teeing off.
