England’s hopes of regaining the Ashes are hanging by the most frayed of threads after another dismal performance by their top-order batsman on a flat track on Day Two of the Third Test at the Adelaide Oval.
On a day of almost constant controversy and chaos surrounding more contentious decisions made by the Australian Snicko DRS system, England found themselves reduced to 162-6 early in the final session.
Australia had started the day on 326-8 in their first innings and Mitchell Starc quickly clocked up a half century as the hosts hit nine boundaries in 38 balls and added 45 quick-fire runs to finish on 371 all out.
England did muster a 50 partnership between an redoubtably obstinate Ben Stokes and Harry Brook but Cameron Green took Brook’s wicket in his first over and Smith was given out in faintly anarchic scenes after an umpire review that decided Smith had hit a delivery from Pat Cummins that carried to wicketkeeper Alex Carey even though visual evidence suggested there was no contact.
So on Wednesday, Marnus Labuschagne played the worst shot of the series so far, chipping a catch to Brydon Carse at midwicket.
Never let it be said that England cannot provide a fitting riposte to an Australian precedent – late in the morning, Ollie Pope, playing for his place, playing for his Test career, playing for his pride, playing on the flattest batting track of the series, clipped an even softer catch to Josh Inglis at midwicket off the bowling of Nathan Lyon.
He had scored three runs. Worst shot of the series? It may be the only list Pope tops on this tour.
Ollie Pope’s disastrous series hit a new low with the soft first-innings dismissal
The Australians’ old mate, Snicko, let them down for once on Thursday afternoon when it failed to detect an edge from Harry Brook to Alex Carey off the bowling of Nathan Lyon.
It failed to detect the edge because it didn’t touch the edge but after Snicko let off Alex Carey when he nicked a delivery to Jamie Smith, the day before, you can’t blame the Aussies for trying.
It was so hot at the Adelaide Oval on Thursday that temperatures were recorded at more than 40 degrees centigrade and ground officials wandered up and down the aisles spraying spectators with water and offering them sunscreen.
The seats perched atop the Riverbank Stand, which cost £130 for half-an-hour, were left vacant. Once the temperature climbs above 36, it is deemed too dangerous for customers to occupy them.
More Snicko trouble: early in the final session, Jamie Smith defended a short ball from Pat Cummins and it looped up off his gloves before bouncing just in front of Usman Khawaja in the slip cordon.
The Aussies reviewed the not out decision and were convinced the ball had hit Smith’s gloves. Snicko did not agree. The Aussies were outraged. But the ball didn’t carry anyway.
There was even more Snicko controversy with the dismissal of Jamie Smith
Graeme Swann’s been giving it to them straight on TNT, apparently. Swann knows all about Ashes tours gone wrong, of course. Things got so bad in 2013-14 that Swann retired midway through it.
A giant replica of the Ashes urn was in pride of place outside one of the entrances to the Adelaide Oval on Thursday morning. England fans paused briefly in the heat to have their pictures taken alongside it and the original verse that was attached to it, which dates from England’s 1882-83 Ashes tour and mentions prominent players from that team.
‘When Ivo goes back with the urn, the urn,’ it reads, ‘Studds, Steel, Read and Tylecote return, return;
The welkin will ring loud, The great crowd will feel proud, Seeing Barlow and Bates with the urn, the urn; And the rest coming home with the urn.’ The words betray an optimism sadly absent in assessments of the current team’s chances of regaining the Ashes.
Malcolm Conn, one of the great polemicist Pommy-bashing Australian cricket journalists, is not in Adelaide for the Third Test but that did not stop him weighing in on the Alex Carey-Snicko controversy.
‘So pleased for Alex Carey to score a century on his home ground after all he was forced to endure following a straightforward stumping at Lord’s in 2023,’ Conn wrote on social media.
There was a time when Nathan Lyon laboured in the shadow of the greatness of Shane Warne. He was Warne-lite, the anti-climax after the show-stopper. That impression was dispelled long ago but Lyon’s status as one of the greats of Australian bowling was confirmed on Thursday when he took his second wicket of the day, a snorter that dismissed Ben Duckett. That wicket took his Test tally to 564, overtaking Glenn McGrath to move into second place in the all-time list of most successful Australian Test bowlers. Only Warne, with 708, has more wickets for Australia.