The Liebke Third Ashes Test report card: 'Is it against the spirit of cricket for English camera operators to follow the ball?'

Most of the gap between the second and third Test was spent with fans from all around the world finding example after example of England players (and coaches) taking wickets in similarly clever ways to Alex Carey’s dismissal of Jonny Bairstow.

You know, the one that caused such a hypocritical ruckus from those same England players and coaches. In case you’ve forgotten, the same one that a typically measured Stuart Broad declared to be ‘literally, the worst thing I’ve ever seen in cricket’. A brutal claim, which was clearly being way too harsh on Bairstow.

Yes, be disappointed in your teammate’s carelessness, but keep it within the dressing room.

It set things up perfectly for the third Test at Headingley, the report card for which follows.

Naming your side early

Grade: C (but open to later adjustment)

England named their team for the third Test the day before the match, as has become their tradition.

I can only hope that they’re doing this as part of a long con, in which at some point during this Ashes series, they name an XI a day early and then give a completely different side to Pat Cummins at the toss. That’s the kind of Bazball antics I can get behind. 

Into England’s side came Mark Wood, Moeen Ali and Chris Woakes. Out went Ollie Pope, Jimmy Anderson and Josh Tongue.

A relief, one might have thought, to have Tongue out, given all the sniggering Travis Head wordplay from the previous Test. And then you realise that swapping Tongue for Wood won’t help that situation. Not at all.

Cummins, meanwhile, was too busy to name his team a day early. He was instead occupied humouring the English press, by coldly standing by his decision to play by the Laws of the game, despite their repetitive demands that he not do so.

Not that Cummins would have cared one iota about the England journos. The man faced down Steve Waugh’s entire team when they all lost their minds over Justin Langer. Everything else is trivial in comparison.

Bad branding

Grade: D-

Australia did end up making three changes to their side as well. Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood and Cameron Green all out; Todd Murphy, Scott Boland and Mitchell Marsh all in. 

(Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

Not that it made an iota of difference early on. Instead, it was the Wood substitution that had the first impact, the fast bowler cranking up the speed. As per usual, he was often too fast for his own legs, regularly hurling himself off his feet as he delivered the ball. 

His spell was a terrifying blur of pace that culminated in him blasting one through the defences of Usman Khawaja and knocking his stumps everywhere.

On one hand, thrilling how Mark Wood didn’t just mark the wood, he smashed it to absolute pieces. On the other hand, bad branding from him.

England went to lunch that first day well on top, with Australia 4/91. The situation was so grim for the visitors that after the break, Mark Taylor popped up to remind Australian viewers that even though their side was dismissed here for a mere 179 back in the 2019 Ashes, they then responded by bowling out England for 67. So all hope was not lost.

(Impossible to be sure what happened after that. Records are sketchy.)

And Tubby more or less had a point, for Marsh came out and blitzed a magnificent run a ball century in the middle session that helped Australia eventually reach 263 all out.

Some of Marsh’s shots were so brutally struck that the camera operators started just flinging their cameras in random directions as he played his shot.

One can only assume that it’s against the spirit of cricket for English camera operators to follow the ball or something?

Lying about injuries

Grade: D

When Cummins dismissed Joe Root from the second ball of the second day to have England 4/68, it turned the Test emphatically back Australia’s way.

With Bairstow also falling shortly after to Mitchell Starc, Australia were like a starving seafood lover at an all-the-lobster-you-can-eat restaurant, greedily eyeing off the tail.

However they had not reckoned with an eight-ball, 24 run blitz from Wood who, impossibly, scores runs faster than he bowls. Ironic, really, given that his surname should so easily encourage the adjective ‘lumbering’.

Kickstarted (not literally) by Wood, Stokes also teed off. But was this secretly a clever ploy from Cummins’ men? It’s by now well known that Stokes’ decision to take on the England captaincy was accompanied by the monkey’s paw curse of simultaneously turning into an 80-year-old man.

And it looked for all the world like any one of those sixes might be the one that finally shattered Stokes’ ailing back into a thousand crumbling pieces of vertebrae.

But if it was a ploy from Australia, it was one based on a faulty premise. Because the fact is that Stokes lies all the time about being injured.

I mean, look at the things he does! He’s not injured at all. He can’t possibly be.

Alex Carey’s criminal haircut

Grade: B-

With rain about on the third day and talk turning inexplicably to the criminality or otherwise of Alex Carey’s haircut, pretty much all of Australia headed to bed.

That’s when England pounced, sneaking in a final period of play while we were all asleep – including, seemingly, several members of the Australian team.

Luckily, Head was still awake and, despite wickets tumbling around him, he teamed up with the tail to add 54 for the last two wickets, setting England 251 for victory as he thrashed sixes and boundaries over the heads and in between scattered fielders, before cleverly manipulating the strike at the end of each over to safeguard his numbers 10 and 11.

Not so fun now, is it Ben?

Testing blows

Grade: C+

Chasing 224 on the final day with 10 wickets in hand, the match oscillated back and forth, with Starc, in particular, heroically striking again and again every time England threatened to pull away.

The key blow for Australia seemed to be the nut shot that felled Stokes – followed almost immediately by his dismissal. Yet despite the blow to his nether regions, Stokes somehow managed to crawl desperately back to his crease.

A shame, really. What a test of the Australians it would have been to see if they’d run out a man whose testicles had just been shattered. Is that really the way you want to win a Test?

No, of course not. And so Australia didn’t, losing by three wickets as Woakes and Wood scrambled home for England. Another great Test that sees us heading to Old Trafford with Australia 2-1 up and everything still to play for.

Well, not everything. Just the Ashes, really.