Thank goodness the Ashes are still alive

And so to Day 4 of the remarkable Headingley Test.

When Marnus Labuschagne clung on at second slip to remove Jonny Bairstow – just as the man he was replacing surely would have done, too – the Steve Smith impersonation was complete. And so, it seemed, was Australia’s bid to retain the Ashes.

Striving for the most unlikely of record run chases, England had breathed life into their chances before the lunch break. Bairstow and Stokes capitalised on Australia’s failings with the second new ball, and the rampant Headingley crowd dared to believe, cheering every run fanatically.

As is often the case, however, the break in play favoured the fielding team, when in the shadows of the interval Bairstow edged a Josh Hazlewood long-hop through to Labuschagne in the cordon.

Easily the worst delivery that accounted for any of his nine wickets of the match, it was perhaps emblematic of the end of English resistance.

Or perhaps this moment came 14 balls later, when Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes both found themselves in the middle of the pitch, before Buttler tried in vain to return to the safety of his ground, but was ultimately caught well short of it on account of a nice piece of fielding by Travis Head.

By this point Joe Root’s team had almost quadrupled their first innings score, yet despite a much more spirited effort than their abysmal 67 in the first dig, were set to fall predictably short of the target, and Australia would retain the urn.

Australians perked up in their living rooms back home as the clock ticked past midnight, keenly anticipating an Ashes victory on English soil. This Australian team – largely forged in the aftermath of our darkest hour 18 months ago, comprised of misfits, fill-ins and a Smith impersonator – were set to be the first since 2001 to return from English shores with the urn in their keeping.

Wickets continued to fall at one end, and it was surely a matter of time.

Ben Stokes, however – the man who carried the hopes of a nation six weeks ago at Lord’s in coloured clothing and with a white ball – was doing the same here.

(AP Photo/Jon Super)

Stokes needed to repeat – if not outdo – the achievement of a lifetime. His steely resolve was evident from the outset. Batting with discipline and patience, he managed just two runs from his first 65 balls faced, and for the majority of his innings, he scored at well below his career strike rate of 58.

Blunting an Australian attack in this second innings that had been gifted his wicket in the first, the weight of responsibility fell squarely on the shoulders of the New Zealand-born all-rounder.

Still 73 runs short of an improbable victory when the ninth wicket fell, Ben Stokes shifted gears, bringing together all forms of the game and replicating his World Cup heroics. Reaching the boundary four times and clearing it on seven occasions, his swashbuckling efforts drove English cricket fans into a frenzy, his batting partner polishing his glasses with fervour to match.

Indeed, Australia let chances go begging in the final stages, but to harp on them would be to detract from one of if not the single finest Ashes innings there has been. Ben Stokes fittingly sealed the victory with a characteristic back cut, stealing victory from the Australians and stoking the fire of the Ashes in the process.

Forget Australian partisanship, this was the result we – as lovers of cricket – scarcely deserved. In an era when the merits of Test cricket hardly go a series without being questioned, this year’s Ashes haven’t gone a session without being lauded.

Each match holds its own hero and intrigue. We have happily found ourselves swept away with Smith’s incomparable greatness, the ferocity of Jofra Archer’s arrival to Test cricket, and now we are caught up in Stokes’ unfathomable personal feat.

A powerful reminder of the fickle nature of the game, Australia could so easily have retained the urn. Instead, an England side buoyed by the magnitude of their achievement in the third Test will head to Old Trafford for the fourth.

Despite the pain writ large on the faces of the Australian XI on the ground and in millions of living rooms, mercifully, the Ashes are not over.

Instead, fascination grows. Imaginations continue to be captured and the storyline of the 71st Ashes series remains as tantalisingly unclear as it was four weeks ago.