It was always going to need a lot of things to go right. Chases of 250 were often seen as mountainous in the early days of Test cricket, and on hazardous pitches they still can be. On a top-class Headingley surface that offered enough to both bat and ball, Australia needed to run the day perfectly in order to hold off an England team that had already bitten off 27 runs from the target the previous evening without losing a wicket.
From 171 for six, when Jonny Bairstow lost his stumps for the umpteenth time in Test cricket, the visitors had every chance. Another 80 runs to get. But Harry Brook was still at the crease, the new Yorkshire sensation coming up to join Bairstow and Joe Root, and there he stayed until 21 runs were needed, top-edging a catch on 75.
It was close enough and, after letting a 2-0 lead slip to 2-1 with two matches to play, Australia will have to look back over a performance that too often fell short, especially some of the bowling tactics that twice allowed England to push a collective foot to the floor.
That Australia got close at all fell to the work of Mitchell Starc. Often viewed as a luxury item, with caveats about flighty performances and possible runs per over, Starc deserves a more respectful reappraisal. Once a frequent injury problem, the left-arm quick’s last major absence was in 2018. He has become one of Australia’s most durable players, while also dropping his bowling average strike rate and economy. He was still left out for the opening match of this Ashes series.
During the Lord’s Test he went past Brett Lee’s mark of 310 Test wickets and Mitchell Johnson’s 311, leaving him trailing only Dennis Lillee and Glenn McGrath in the canon of Australia quicks. At 33, when most fast bowlers are winding down, he seems to be improving. His ability to strike was on display again in Leeds: his 14th five-wicket haul was also his fourth in the final innings of a match: only 10 players have done that more often.
It would be easy to look at some of the dismissals – Bairstow chopping on, Ben Stokes gloving down the leg side, Brook top‑edging a slog – and dismiss the bowling as nothing special. The thing is, they don’t happen in a vacuum. It is the quality of the deliveries around them, ones that swing in at pace or leave the bat in the channel, that can set up dismissals from other balls, players chasing runs when they sense a chance.
The combination of speed and movement and unpredictable bounce can draw mistakes even from those balls that look innocuous. Not to mention what happens when Starc gets it right. Ben Duckett and Moeen Ali both got a new wobble-seam delivery that Starc has been working on. Full, fast, angled at leg stump before decking back into the left‑hander. Duckett got his pad in the way, Moeen didn’t even manage that.
So Starc will play at Old Trafford but other things will need to change. Australia in effect lost this match at a couple of points before finally losing it on the fourth day. One was when Mark Wood amputated their batting tail on day one, the last six wickets falling in no time for 23 runs. They will need to find a way to weather his short bursts of extreme pace.
The second was when England’s own tail wagged furiously, led by Wood himself. England were 70 runs behind when Wood came to the crease, but a predictable bouncer barrage let him thrash 24 from eight balls and, along with Stokes and Stuart Broad, helped narrow the gap between the teams to 26. After Brook was out in the fourth innings, the same plan saw Wood hit another 16. Overall he made 40 runs from 16 balls in the match.
At the moment, Australia’s short-ball attack has been all or nothing. Either there are six or seven boundary riders with a bouncer every ball or, as through the first two hours of the last day, barely a short ball bowled. When players know that nothing else is coming, as Wood did, they can sit back and get ready to play baseball. It may involve risk and may work for a team with 500 on the board, but short bursts of fast scoring can make the difference in these lower-scoring games.
Conversely, when players have to switch between front foot and back foot, between attack and defence, then confusion is more likely to come into the fray. See that dismissal of Moeen Ali: two balls before coming tentatively on to the front foot, he got pushed back by an unexpected Starc bouncer that whistled past his sternum close enough to give him a chest wax. Variety is broadly agreed on as a positive. Australia have two more chances to get the balance right.
