Ashes 2019: Paine and his men backed themselves out of a corner that four days earlier looked like a cul-de-sac

The Australian team celebrate after England were bowled out on the fifth day of the first Ashes cricket Test match between England and Australia at Edgbaston.

This was one, as an Australian prime minister once famously put it, for the true believers — which, it’s fair to say, were scarce when Tim Paine’s Australians dwindled to eight for 122 on the first day.

Yet Test matches reveal themselves slowly, and sometimes only in hindsight. The seemingly crucial can be made to seem trivial; the apparently insignificant can emerge as vastly influential.

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Turns out that even at their nadir, the Australians had already accrued two advantages: Paine had won the toss, leaving England to bat last on a pitch powdery beneath its surface crust; and James Anderson had gone in the fetlock, reducing the hosts’ ranks to ten, a handicap to burden the best of teams. Their challenge, then, was to extend proceedings long enough for these opportunities to crystallise.

Enter Steve Smith, whose centuries spanned 11 hours, completely free of chances, effectively devoid of error. The achievement of England’s centurion, Rory Burns, seemed momentous at the time, but has proven material only to his career.

Like perhaps only the very best players, Smith brings to a dressing room a belief in bright sides and silver linings, if not unicorns and rainbows. Could any other player have so inspired Peter Siddle on the first day, Travis Head and Matthew Wade on the fourth? Has any previous Australian team, it is also worth asking, been so leveraged to the fortunes of a single player?

As it is, just as Smith’s career has turned into a redemption tale, his presence suggests that no cause is beyond recovery. Yesterday he could even be seen offering a solicitous back-pat to umpire Joel Wilson. Had a bad Test, Joel? Let me tell you about some of the decisions I’ve made …

Australia's David Warner (L) and Australia's Steve Smith (R) appeal for the wicket of England's Moeen Ali.

One long-term prediction, at least, was convincingly substantiated, that England’s porous top order would struggle with the solvent of Australia’s bowling. Once Nathan Lyon had taken the ball at the City End just before noon, local conviction rather dissolved, and no sandbags were on offer.

With the match pushed into its fifth day, Lyon had things exactly as he wanted: not just a ragging pitch, but batsmen on the defensive. As if to raise the stakes further, Jason Roy played a culpable, heedless shot, recalling Dick Greenwood’s immortal line after an England rugby international with Wales that a costly error had not demoralised his own players but had moralised their opponents. Root tried to remain impassive at the non-striker’s end; the Australian celebration lacked only streamers and balloons.

Australia captain Tim Paine celebrates with Nathan Lyon after the pair had combined to dismiss Ben Stokes.

Joe Denly then made a decision more orthodox but less pardonable, gaining Root’s consent to review a regulation bat-pad dismissal. This was hard for a dressing room to look away from — a desperate act of self-preservation wasting an asset his teammates were likely to need. When Root followed, England went to lunch at 85 for four, with Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes barely started. Stokes, weighed down by his 40 overs in the match, suddenly looked as solemn as a Lewis Chessman.

Thereafter only the margin was at issue. By 3.15pm, Australia had shot to the top of the World Test Championship with a 24-point win. By 3.30pm, David Warner was playing tiggy with two of his daughters in the shadow of the Hollies Stand. So much for its talismanic qualities.

Australia's David Warner celebrates with his children at Edgbaston in Birmingham.

So perished another hashtag, the gimcrack #fortressEdgbaston. So stumbled another advertising campaign: a preening Australian wine company has here been calling itself “the only Aussie to applaud’’, which makes you want to treat their product like a 1970 Coq du Rod Laver.

So to Lord’s, where belief will be put to different tests. Anderson may already be out of calculations for the series. Faith here was severely misplaced. Is it to be invested in Jofra Archer? And how long does England persevere with Denly, Moeen Ali and Jonny Bairstow, whose poor games suggested conglomerated thoughts as well as technical issues?

Root said afterwards that England would avoid “emotional’’ decisions, which sounded very reasonable and grown-up, but the game has emotional as well as rational layers. Moeen and Bairstow are players who thrive on confidence, but in other circumstances require careful handling and rebuilding — perhaps more than can be offered in a Test match that England can hardly afford to lose.

Australia, meanwhile, can point to six Ashes wins at its last seven starts — a strained statistic perhaps but not without significance. They have the best batsman on either side. They have, in Anderson’s absence, quite possibly the best bowler: Lyon’s 352 Test wickets leave him only three short of Dennis Lillee’s totemic total.

They have fresh pacemen in the shed, fresh heart about English conditions. They have confirmed this country’s most notoriously hostile crowd to be mainly piss and wind.

Above all, they have backed themselves out of a corner that four days earlier looked like a cul-de-sac. A walkover is good for the ego. A hard-fought win is better for the soul. To paraphrase that same prime minister, Australia did England slowly. For here on, they will now take some stopping.

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