Ashes: Alastair Cook caps off England’s best day of the tour

England’s tried and tested players have come to the fore over two competitive days of cricket.

England's batsman Alastair Cook celebrates his century at the MCG yesterday

Australian captains are not known for their generosity, but with ­Alastair Cook seven short of his hundred as the last over of the day dawned, Steve Smith presented Cook with a belated Christmas gift, wrapping, tinsel and all, by bringing himself on to bowl.

A full toss, leg stump half-volley and a long hop later, Cook had his 32nd Test hundred and a full house of hundreds across Australia’s five Test grounds. His relief, and England’s, was palpable as he, and they, ended their best day of the tour. Given that Smith had earlier spilled Cook at slip, England’s greatest run-getter had much to thank Australia’s captain for.

Before the Melbourne Test, with the Ashes gone and spirits sinking at home, England had reached the “something must be done” stage. Variously, there were calls for senior players to be dropped and a wholesale cull, mainly based not on cricketing logic but on the need to do something, anything, rather than nothing.

It would have been tempting for England’s management to cave in to public sentiment — much as happened in 2013-14 when throwing young players into the mix made things worse not better — much harder in some ways to ­retain faith in struggling senior players. Their inaction has so far been vindicated, with the tried and tested to the fore over two ­competitive days of cricket.

James Anderson and Stuart Broad shared seven of the Australian wickets to fall, five of them on an excellent second morning for England that saw Australia lose their last seven wickets for 67 — a very English-style collapse — ­following the early and entirely unexpected dismissal of Smith. Cook then shaped England’s reply with his most fluent batting of the series, sharing a 112-run partnership with Joe Root who, though never fluent, was better balanced than of late.

Anderson has upheld expectations to a large degree — with the wicket of Tim Paine, he went past Courtney Walsh, leaving only Glenn McGrath of fast bowlers ahead of him — but Broad and Cook have been, along with Moeen Ali, the biggest disappointments of the tour. Broad’s four wickets, then, were timely and ­represented his best return of the year, while Cook moved more confidently into the ball than he has done at any stage previously. Ali? He remained wicketless, was scantily used and will need some runs to justify his continued ­involvement.

At 33 and 31 respectively, ­neither Cook nor Broad are old in years, but they have plenty of miles on the clock. Both have been questioned in contrasting ways: Cook’s desire, rather than his ability, has been queried, while Broad’s pace, or lack of it, has raised the possibility that time is running short. The first is guesswork — only Cook knows how strong his desire is — while the second has been based on genuine evidence, not all of which was dispelled yesterday, despite a four-wicket haul. It was good to see both in the mix, scrapping for their captain and their team.

Cook’s return to form was the most heartening aspect of the day. Before the Perth Test he had put his philosophy in disarmingly ­simple terms (“I try my bollocks off, really”, he had said) but here it was apparent that as well as trying his damnedest, there was a little more freedom about his play, too. Maybe he had been trying too hard before and he relaxed a touch and expressed himself a little more.

Possibly, the realisation that the new ball is the best time to bat on this pitch helped him to be more positive in his footwork and intentions. Reverse swing had helped Broad and Anderson get a sliver of lateral movement earlier in the day and Australia found similar movement because of the abrasiveness of the surface, from around the 20th over. By this stage Cook was into the 40s and had ­already unfurled seven boundaries, including three rarely sighted straight drives off the front foot.

The hunt for reverse swing and the turgid nature of the pitch shaped the style of cricket played. Captains kept slips to a minimum unless a new batsman was at the crease, posted catchers in front of, rather than behind the wicket, gave the bowlers cover on the ­leg-side, allowing them to pitch straight looking for lbws and the stumps. Of the nine wickets to fall in the day, three were bowled, all drag-ons in the morning, and four were lbw.

England could be thankful, then, that Mitchell Starc, Australia’s best exponent of manipulating the scarred ball, was not playing and Smith was also hampered by an illness to Pat Cummins, who was variously on and off the field with nausea, below full speed when he did bowl and who generally looked very sorry for himself throughout, taking regular ministrations on the boundary edge. Without Starc’s variety and Cummins’ speed, the attack had a more humdrum quality.

It feels like the best opportunity, then, for England to achieve a first innings lead in the series, essential you would think if a winning position is to be forged. They lost Mark Stoneman to a fine return catch by Nathan Lyon and James Vince leg-before to Josh Hazlewood — evidence suggested an inside edge — and might have lost Cook, too, had Smith not fumbled a catch at first slip off Mitchell Marsh when the batsman had made 66. Smith is normally a sure hand in that position, but with Paine standing up to the stumps because of the slowness of the pitch, Smith could have been unsighted for a short while.

That was the only chance Cook gave in an otherwise assured stay and Root was thankful for the familiar sight at the other end. And it was a familiar sight by the evening session, with Cook very much back in the groove, clipping with precision through the leg-side, cutting clinically through the off and playing Lyon with far more conviction than he had done at Adelaide.

The day’s most significant event, though, involved a rookie rather than a regular and came in the eighth over of the morning, when Smith chopped a wide, long hop from Tom Curran onto his stumps, adding just eleven to his overnight score. Smith’s record at the MCG is such that he would ­regard 76 as a relative failure and his departure once again highlighted the reality that there are two Australian teams at the ­moment, one when Smith is batting, and the other when he’s not.

The back of Smith certainly spurred Broad into action, turning his overnight figures of 19-6-41-1 into 28-10-54-4 and answering a few critics in the process. He picked up the other key wicket of the morning when he moved one fractionally back into Shaun Marsh, winning a leg-before decision. With Cummins caught at slip and Jackson Bird leg-before, Broad moved to 397 Test wickets. Along with Cook’s 32nd Test hundred, England were reeling off the right kind of statistics for once.

The Times