The Ashes Chronicles

First Test Day 2 Perth

Figured I’d give you sometime to digest all the other England bashing for no other reason than I’m also still trying to process the result.

At lunch on day two (Friday night at 11:20 p.m. where I live) I decided I’d probably watch till tea then go to bed. I had no desire to spend my time watching England methodically bat Australia out of the match and I knew that’s exactly what they were going to do.

I’ve seen it happen to this team a few times and it’s not enjoyable. Worse yet, after a day and a session of play, it was clear to me no one in the Australian bowling attack was going to take a wicket unless his name was Mitchell Starc.

Mr. First Over Wicket did it again by the way. Just the 25th time.

You reading this scored as many runs in that match as Zak Crawley, who Starc dismissed in the first over of the innings again. Go look at that caught and bowled. It’s breathtakingly good.

When the teams broke for lunch, it was still the only good thing to happen from an Aussie perspective. England, who started their innings with a 40 run lead, walked off the field at 59/1, effectively 99/1 and I felt deflated.

Yes it was the third innings of the match and typically that means difficult conditions but it was lunch on day two. Any test cricket lover will tell you, afternoon of day two is usually the best time to bat.

So, facing the prospect of this very destructive line up having the best conditions and facing what had basically been a one man attack, I was very ready to miss the last session.

I also had work on Saturday morning.

Luckily, England had a better idea.

Quick tangent. The three most common words you will encounter when Australian cricket pitches are discussed are “pace and bounce.” It’s all anyone ever says. The next thing you hear is “don’t try to drive a ball outside your off stump early in your innings.” Pretty simple stuff right?

Ben Duckett got a good ball from Scott Boland and Steve Smith took a very good catch to dismiss the opener. Nothing the English left hander could’ve done about that.

Boland had seemingly remembered during the first session he is a good bowler and looked infinitely more threatening than day one. Duckett’s dismissal was Boland’s return to consistency finally paying off.

I suppose in a way, so was Ollie Pope’s. Boland beat the outside edge of Pope’s bat numerous times as he rediscovered his metronomic best but a miss is as good as a mile they say.

Happily Pope decided he shouldn’t go unrewarded, so he tried to drive a ball that pitched outside his off stump and wicketkeeper Carey gladly accepted his offering. Like his namesake, Pope’s just a really generous guy.

Not nearly as generous however, as Harry Brook. Three balls later, the England vice-captain did very same thing, giving Boland his third wicket in 11 balls and dragging England back from the precipice of dominance into a real fight.

Re-enter a certain Mr. Starc.

Having already captured Crawley’s wicket a second time, Starc set his sights on getting Ben Stokes out in back to back innings. And he would do just that. But not before Joe Root decided he too wanted to join the parties of the being dismissed by Starc twice and losing his wicket to a silly drive outside off stump, just two balls after Brook.

Before Boland got Duckett, England were effectively 105/1. When Root fell, they were 116/5, and when Stokes edged Starc to Smith at second slip, England were 128/6.

Suddenly Australia were right back in the game and I lost all plans of sleeping before tea.

Jamie Smith followed, somewhat controversially for no good reason, shortly after Stokes and England were collapsing beautifully. Which meant all the Aussies had to do was clean up the tail then chase down what was a meager total compared to expectations merely minutes before.

So obviously they did what has become their calling card over the years. Out went the fielders and here came the bouncers.

Second slight tangent. I hate when Australia does this. Everyone in the world knows it’s coming. Watching Stuart Broad and Mark Wood whack sixes during the last Ashes simply because the Australians must bounce tailenders drove me nuts. And it annoyed me to no end again.

Bryden Carse and Gus Atkinson added 50 runs to the score in 35 balls before the former was dismissed and I was laying in bed, groaning every time one of them smashed a short ball they knew was coming.

To be fair to the hosts, England only scored 10 more runs after that before their meltdown finally came to an end, but jeez that was frustrating.

The good news was Australia only had to score 205 to win. I was amazed. I was so wrong about what would happen and thrilled about it… until I thought about Smith batting.

Yeah, I wasn’t going to sleep tonight.

If Smith was in I had to watch it, because if I woke up and he was out I would be crushed. Also, I had no idea who was going to open with Jake Weatherald because once again due to his back Usman Khawaja was definitely not starting the fourth innings.

So when I saw Travis Head walking out with Weatherald after tea I thought “this could go one of two ways.”

It went spectacularly.

Just to remind you, to this point the most runs anyone had scored in this match was Harry Brook’s first innings 52, where he also faced the most balls of anyone with 61. Like I said, a very fast half century.

Head got to 50 in 36 balls. Lightning.

He scored three runs off his first 14 balls, then blitzed England. Australia’s opening pair scored 50 in 57 balls and by the time Weatherald was dismissed for 23, they had scored 75 runs in only 69 balls. Still not fast enough.

When Head faced his 69th delivery, he scored his 100th run. The joint third fastest by an Australian in test cricket and second fastest Ashes century.

His 50 run partnership with Marnus Labuschagne took just 45 balls, and they only needed 40 more deliveries to make it a 100 run partnership.

When Head was finally dismissed, the partnership was 117 runs strong from only 92 balls.

The really ridiculous part is Head scored 123 runs and only faced 83 delivers.

The southpaw walked off the field with his team needed only 13 runs to secure a remarkable victory. Labuschagne smashed two more boundaries to secure his half century and Smith hit the winning run, completing the insane four hour turn around.

1-0 Australia.

It also meant I could finally go to bed, still in utter disbelief at what I’d just witness.

It was 5 a.m.