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For all England’s claims that Bazball will save Test cricket, it wasn’t the hosts’ debonaire batting, nor Ben Stokes’ madcap field placement, that provided the most captivating passage of play at Edgbaston thus far.
That honour goes to the 22 balls Australia were able to bowl in between rain delays on a much-shortened third day of the first Test.
There were no crunching boundaries, nor any innovative shot-making, nor anything to leave the Eric Hollies Stand baying for blood in Birmingham.
But there was classic Test match bowling in difficult batting conditions, the ball compelled to do just enough in the air and off the pitch. There were plays and misses, regular appeals, spectacular catches and relentless bowling from an Australian pace attack relishing the first time all match they have found conditions in their favour.
It brought with it two wickets – openers Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley out to catches behind the wicket – for just two runs, England’s famed penchant for rapid scoring shelved in a desperate struggle merely to survive. Two for two, in the immortal inflection of the great Richie Benaud.
And it was utterly engrossing for it.
The latest spectacular catch Cameron Green clutched in the gully to remove Duckett may have been the most memorable moment, but for aficionados of the longest format, it was top of a lengthy list.
It is upon this simple bedrock that Test cricket has built its church: the contest between bat and ball, with every run holding its own significance and every ball bringing with it a chance at a breakthrough.
Scott Boland and Pat Cummins repeatedly rapping Joe Root on the pads or beating his outside edge with seam upright and movement both ways won’t make the highlights packages like the latter’s audacious reverse-ramps for six off the former duo on the opening day. But in the moment, under darkening skies and with the previously raucous crowd’s passion giving way to a nervous energy that positively crackled around the stadium, it was perfect.
It was a passage of play so mesmerising that, even after the rain returned to call a halt to proceedings, umpires Marais Erasmus and Ahsan Raza delayed the inevitable for more than two hours in hopes of a resumption, before finally bowing to the conditions and abandoning play.
The record says that just 32.4 overs were bowled on Day 3 at Edgbaston. But that doesn’t begin to tell the story of another memorable day of Test match cricket.
Pat Cummins celebrates. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
As it stands, England will take a 35-run lead into Day 4, with eight second-innings wickets in hand, the prized scalp of Root among them, plus a lengthy line of hitters for Australia to prise out in likely more agreeable batting conditions and a history of their opponents bottling run chases of all shapes and sizes to add steel to their resolve.
The tourists, meanwhile, will have their eyes firmly fixed on removing the first-innings centurion, ramping up the pressure on the still-green Ollie Pope and Harry Brook, and giving Bazball its most fierce challenge yet – one of determination rather than execution. It’s a Test match that could scarcely be more tantalisingly poised.
Up until then, the day’s honours had belonged quite handsomely to the hosts. With Australia resuming on 5/311 with Usman Khawaja and Alex Carey well settled, there was nevertheless a feeling that a brittle lower order could bring with it a flood of wickets if the first breakthrough came quickly.
Jonny Bairstow’s torrid time with the wicketkeeping gloves took no time to continue, grassing a difficult but eminently catchable chance diving low to his right in the day’s first over to spare his counterpart Carey once more.
If that wasn’t enough to raise the ire of James Anderson, then the sight of the Australian gloveman dispatching rare loose offerings for consecutive boundaries in his third over of the morning, the first cut immaculately behind point and the second whipped elegantly off his pads through mid-wicket, would have done the trick.
Anderson, though, would soon have revenge: the very next ball after those twin fours, he produced the delivery that has netted him 686 Test wickets and counting.
Hitting the perfect length, the 40-year old, who turns 41 on the series’ penultimate day, found seam movement in to find the gap between Carey’s bat and pad and rattle the stumps for a well-made 66.
With Australia still 55 runs in arrears, the situation called for a captain’s rearguard, which Cummins, for all his deterioration as a batter over the last four years, was prepared to provide.
Gifted a fast start by a Moeen Ali full toss dispatched over deep mid-wicket, Cummins would proceed to hit the England veteran out of the attack – and perhaps the match, if his despondent reaction to a wounded spinning finger is any guide – with a second six in the same over, high and handsome over the bowler’s head.
Khawaja, though, found the going more frustrating: tied down by Stuart Broad and Anderson’s meticulous line and length, he resorted to repeatedly skipping down the track and looking to drive on the up, the first time in his serene innings anything could be described as being ‘Bazball-esque’.
With Cummins’ innings slowing too as a result of the beginnings of a short-ball onslaught from Broad and Ollie Robinson likely to be seen repeatedly for the rest of the series, a partnership that began with 22 runs from its first 27 balls would bring just 12 off the next 56.
The mounting pressure, combined with a quite extraordinary umbrella field from Stokes featuring a ring of three close-in catchers in front of the wicket on both sides of the pitch, would combine to end Khawaja’s stay.
Again advancing on Robinson, the England seamer found the perfect length to york the oncoming Khawaja, the ball worming its way under his groping bat and knocking out off stump.
Khawaja’s innings done for 141, Robinson’s boorish, expletive-laden send-off was quick to cause a stir online, though less attention was given to Root’s more classy congratulation of his fellow centurion.
While Cummins had withstood the bouncer battle, it seemed less likely Nathan Lyon could follow suit.
Sure enough, after a series of mistimed pull shots including one that pinged straight off the toe end of his bat, the off-spinner took on a Robinson bumper and perfectly picked out Duckett on the deep mid-wicket boundary for 1.
Boland would succumb to the same plan, though in less aggressive fashion, meekly fending a perfectly placed Broad bouncer into the waiting hands of Ollie Pope at silly point.
Cummins’ faith in last man in Josh Hazlewood became clear when he smacked Broad over deep mid-wicket for his third six of the innings.
But the first ball of Robinson’s next over would end the fun, the captain top-edging a hook safely pouched by Stokes running in from deep square leg, the seamer ending with team-best figures of 3/55 and the enmity of many an Australian on the other side of the world.
Taking in a first-innings lead of seven, England’s second dig would bring with it a more circumspect approach than the blaze that began the first day.
Crawley’s opening ball was stoutly defended rather than larruped through the covers, with he and Duckett keeping the scoreboard ticking over with regular singles and the occasional two.
The latter’s paddled sweep for four to greet Lyon’s introduction into the attack after just five overs of pace would prove the only boundary of the innings to date: when play was called to a halt by an oncoming shower after 6.5 overs and with 25 on the board, the hosts could be well pleased with their day’s work.
Had proceedings ended there, it would have been firmly advantage England heading into day four; but after an hour’s delay it was the three and a bit overs squeezed in before the weather had its final say that would tip the scales once more in an absorbing Test.
Finding seam movement for the first time since the World Test Championship final, Boland zeroed in on Crawley’s front pad, the lanky opener first saved by a commanding shuffle down the pitch and then his height to muffle LBW shouts of successive balls in the over after resumption.
It would be Cummins, as it so often is, to land the first blow: Duckett, on 19, once again drawn into an unwise stroke off a ball he could have left. His lazy waft brought with it a thick outside edge that flew low and fast to Green’s left in the gully, where the all-rounder took another spectacular snare to swell his burgeoning highlight reel all the more.
Boland made it two in four balls with the first of his next over: having tormented Crawley already with nip-backers, he drew the outside edge off a perfect length and with movement away this time, the opener drawn into a nervous prod and feathering a catch to a gleeful Carey.
Unimpressed by the dim conditions in which he was being forced to bat, Crawley took his sweet time extricating himself from the field; the Australians, having watched him return to form with a sparkling 61 on the opening day, would just have been relieved to see him go at all.
Having been ransacked at more than a run a ball under sunny skies on Day 1, Boland was in his element in the helpful conditions: even Root, chanceless in the first innings, was thrice beaten on the inside edge and rapped on the pad, saved all three times by a shuffle forward and across that took him outside the line of off stump.
A more forceful shout accompanied a play and miss in Cummins’ next over: though he himself had heard nothing, the captain was convinced, likely by the prospect of removing Root as much as Steve Smith and Carey’s pleas from the cordon, to risk a review.
That it failed was immaterial, though not for the gleeful crowd who, having been silenced by the double blow, rose up again with a chorus of ‘Same old Aussies, always cheating’: the English champion had been drawn into a false stroke, and comprehensively beaten to boot.
With the rain returning after just one more ball, Cummins and Boland’s probing examination would be drawn to a hold, England finishing on 2/28 with both Root and Pope yet to get off the mark.
The dawn in Birmingham will tell whether conditions will remain ideal for Australia’s quicks, and later England’s as well, to strike, or if brighter conditions will see the return of boundaries galore, defensive fields, and a pitch still far more lifeless than most in that part of the world. Or perhaps the rain will be back in force to render a Test brimming with life a mere damp squib.
But those 22 balls, either side of major delays, were worth the price of admission, or foregoing an early night’s sleep, in themselves.
England may feel Test cricket will wither without their aggressive intervention: if the third afternoon at Edgbaston is any guide, there’s still plenty of life in the old girl yet.
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