London: Fatigue was not difficult to spot in the final instalment of what has been six Tests in little more than seven weeks for both these sides.
Steve Smith, famed for not sleeping much if at all during a game, was tired enough to fall into blissful slumber while waiting to go out to bat.
England’s captain Ben Stokes is bowled out by Mitchell Starc.Credit: AP
For Smith and his Australian teammates, the most obvious manifestation of that fatigue was the dropping of five catches in a single day, when one of the defining facets of the Ashes is the fact they had scarcely missed that many over the previous four games.
There was something here to parallel four years ago, when Tim Paine sent England in on a drier surface than this one, after securing the Ashes in Manchester. Paine then dropped one of three chances given by Joe Root as the hosts scrambled to 294.
All but one of the catches missed four years later were of the kind the tourists would expect to clasp: David Warner off Ben Duckett, Alex Carey off Harry Brook, Mitch Marsh and Todd Murphy both missing Chris Woakes.
And yet for all those misses, there was a grim resolve from the Australians to jump over these self-imposed hurdles and get to grips with England. By creating 15 chances inside 55 overs, they gained a chance to shape proceedings in a game where 3-1 will look a hell of a lot different to 2-2.
Todd Murphy celebrates with Pat Cummins and teammates after taking the wicket of Moeen Ali.Credit: Reuters
That realisation was the main takeaway from the rest of the game four years ago. Australia had been unable to match England’s first innings, slipped behind in the game, and were ultimately well beaten. As joyfully as Paine and his team held the urn at the end of an England tour for the first time since 2001, the sponsor’s backdrop declared something else entirely: “Series Drawn”.
Determination to avoid this outcome was personified by Mitchell Starc, dropped here for Peter Siddle in 2019. Starc winced through shoulder pain from the ailment picked up at Old Trafford, yet summoned figures of 4-82, including an away swing/seamer to Ben Stokes that would have dismissed most left-handers to have ever played the game.
It was also embodied by Pat Cummins himself, who came on at first change when Duckett and Zak Crawley had snuck away to a useful start. Oddly out of sync at Old Trafford, Cummins had indulged in a spell of self-analysis between games, not so much around his captaincy but his bowling.
This time, granted the most lively pitch of the series other than that at Headingley, Cummins’ finger and wrist action on the ball reaped some prancing seam movement, and he conjured a delivery for Crawley that had been close to impossible to produce at Old Trafford, Edgbaston or Lord’s.
That was Cummins’ only wicket, but the sharpness of his bowling added much-needed punch to the Australian attack, allowing others to coalesce behind him: by finding enough seam and swing to get through Root and then Jonny Bairstow, Josh Hazlewood did so in some style after starting slowly.
On other days, Cummins would have defeated Brook early on for the third time in the series, having got the newish ball past him in the second innings at Lord’s and the first innings at Headingley. This time, Carey’s footwork was not his best, and only one glove was stretched out. The ball scuttled harmlessly away.
Brook made the most of it with another spiky innings, impudently flicking Mitch Marsh for six and hooking Starc for another. At 3-184 in the 34th over of the day, Brook and Moeen Ali were going brilliantly berserk.
In both selection and tactics, the Australians reverted to something more classical and sensible given the players at their disposal. Murphy’s recall was not merely for later in the game. Cummins used him much more bravely than on the final day in Leeds, noting Moeen’s groin strain and using his spinner to stretch it – the stumps soon splayed.
And when Woakes and Mark Wood threatened a late innings union of substance, Cummins recalled Murphy, who used angles on the crease and changes of pace to find a way past the England fast man.
Moeen Ali of England is bowled by Todd Murphy.Credit: Getty Images
Refreshingly, after some of the binary extremes of the previous three Tests in particular, there were no radical changes to the field when the bowlers came to the crease. Cummins kept his slips up, and kept the lower order unsure as to what would be full or short. Woakes and Stuart Broad succumbed to the guessing game.
Overcast all day, the skies had started to look genuinely threatening towards the end of England’s innings. It offered up the prospect of a humid, swinging and seaming amphitheatre for the hosts to use the new ball.
But there was resolve evident, too, in how that new ball was negotiated. David Warner had some good fortune in the first over, glancing Broad into and out of Bairstow’s gloves. But he and Usman Khawaja offered a sound combination of attack and defence to get Australia most of the way to the close, in a position where they might do better on Friday.
Warner could not see out the final half an hour, half-committing to a cut shot at Woakes and offering Crawley another slips catch. But the fact that this was the evening’s sole wicket mattered more than a slow scoring rate, more so given Moeen’s injury.
So it was much too untidy to be considered a great day for Australia. But at the end of a tour that has packed in so many matches and dramas in the space of a couple of months, there was reason to admire the determination to see things through.
