By Joe Aston
- Scoreboard: as it happened, day 3
- Australia staring at defeat
- Baum: did 2013-14 really happen?
- Spot the ball game
CARDIFF:
England, observed its former captain Mike Atherton, were "reopening old wounds". Like on that unhappy tour here two years ago, the Aussie top order simply failed to do its job, and its pre-existing flaws were exposed. Our batters had the same old difficulties and made the same old mistakes.
They showed insufficient respect for the foreign conditions – only the fundamental requirement of playing Test matches away from home!
Low, slow English (or in this case Welsh) pitches require patient batting. You need to grind out an innings and wait for the home attack to overpitch or skew wide. When the ball is swinging and the bowling is tight, runs dry up but frustration mustn't set in.
Disappointing ... again: Shane Watson.Credit: Reuters
It's not as much fun as creaming the Kookaburra to all corners of the Gabba, but then neither is coming back to Australia without the Urn in your carry-on.
David Warner played a poor and unnecessary shot. Just two overs before stumps, a bogged down Adam Voges played a swipe of utter madness, reminiscent of Damien Martyn's off Allan Donald at the SCG in 1994. Rogers made 95, yes, but also lost focus and threw his wicket when a big, long ton was acutely needed.
Shane Watson – surprise, surprise – hosted an inswinger on his planted front leg and then wasted a review trying to have the perfectly reasonable LBW decision overturned, a lack of judgment for which he was pilloried in the 2013 series. Yet again (and again and again and again), he'd contributed 30 stylish runs. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Michael Clarke was cooked by Moeen Ali's flight. Much was made of Smith's entangled dismissal, but however ugly, he was done by Ali's quick thinking and England's clever fielding placements.
Everyone got a start – Warner (17), Smith (33), Clarke (38), Voges (31), Haddin (22). Unhappily, each failed to capitalise.
And unlike in 2013, Brad Haddin couldn't save the day (or at least paper over the cracks). The veteran keeper looked dreadfully out of form, stuck on the crease, playing and missing, until mercifully, he nicked off. After dropping Joe Root 134 runs before the young Yorkshireman was eventually dismissed, Haddin hasn't had a happy game. The Wales Tourism Board could yet offer him a brand ambassadorship?
With Ben Stokes in their arsenal, England's is a genuine five man attack. There is no weak link, and as a unit, it applied magnificent pressure to the Australians. It showed on the scorecard: three wickets to Jimmy Anderson, Stuart Broad (2), Mark Wood (2), Ali (2) and Stokes (1).
Australia did bowl with more accuracy on their second attempt. But it's too late to find discipline when you've ceded a 122-run first innings lead on a dry, deteriorating track. The damage was irreparably done.
With Mitchell Starc carrying an ankle injury, he's little chance of pulling on his boots in London on Thursday. That, and the sudden retirement of Ryan Harris, throws Australia's carefully formed pace plans into disarray. Surely, though, after this performance, Starc's won't be the only tourist's name missing from the Lord's scorecard.