Roar Guru
Australia will look to seal off the Ashes for the first time in seven years while England will hope to extend the WACA Test match into the final day when play in the third Test match begins on Monday in Perth.
You can follow the live score of this third Ashes Test between Australia and England here and you can also post your comments and feedback below.
Preview: It was the 18th of December in 2006 when Shane Warne grabbed the wicket of Monty Panesar, the last of the English innings in that Perth Test match to leap ahead by a 3-0 margin in the Ashes. With that they had managed to wrest back the urn from their arch-rivals after having lost them in 2005.
Two days before the six-year anniversary, Australia will have the opportunity to repeat the same feat against a knackered English side that dished out one of their worst performances on this tour today.
The third day began with England needing an extraordinary batting performance to remain in the series, following what had been a hard-fought previous day when the honours had been shared.
Instead Ian Bell was dismissed in just the third over of the day and things only went downhill for England after that.
The unbeaten batsman from the previous day, Ben Stokes, failed to survive the pace of Mitchell Johnson and England went from 4/190 to 251 all out. Even more unfortunate for England was the injury that Stuart Broad suffered, off the delivery that also dismissed him.
While the results on the MRI scan are still awaited, it has effectively ruled Broad out of the remainder of this Test match and he may have to take medical opinion before he can feature in the Boxing Day Test match.
A lead of 134 runs being conceded, it only needed Australia to bat out the day to seal a biggish target for England.
David Warner rode his luck to a second Ashes 2013-14 century that pushed Australia to 369 runs in front of the tourists and another 60-90 minutes of batting from the hosts will be all that it could require for them to set up a near-improbable target in the fourth innings.
There’s enough in the pitch to suggest batting, though not impossible, will get only harder.
Already there have been a couple that have taken off after hitting the cracks on the pitch. One of them hit Chris Rogers flush on his chest, another sowed enough seeds in the minds of the English batsmen to trigger off the first innings capitulation.
The situation, frankly, is akin to a tennis player who has lost the first two sets of his best-of-five match and is down two breaks in the third set. A fightback, though within the realms of the possible, is hardly probable.
Join us for the fourth day on Monday and you can follow the live score of this third Ashes between Australia and England from 10.30 am AEST and post your comments below.