1st Test Day 4: Bancroft Stands Firm to Change Course of Series

Day Four began with perhaps Australia a nose in front, with England being seven runs in front but two wickets down. The see-saw was likely to be felt today because by the start of Day Five there was the expectation that one team would be in the dominant winning position. Which is just as it turned out.

• England was unable to put together the century partnership they needed in order to break the Australian bowling apart. 45 between Stoneman and Root and 42 between Moeen and Bairstow were the best, and the breaking of both of those partnerships proved vital at the time. Just extending one partnership to a hundred runs would have put the Australian chase over 200 and a much more difficult proposition.
• Root’s wicket was the vital one, which took from England the rock on which they would have hoped to build their second innings resistance. Only one of Root’s 13 Test centuries have come in the second innings, and his average drops to 40.72 in the second innings. Today was the day England needed him to go on, but a brilliant Hazlewood delivery did for him again. He has been out both innings LBW stuck on the crease in this Test, something to reflect on as we go deeper into the series.
• Moeen Ali again underlined his dangerous ability at six, seemingly cruising to 40 before being stumped off Lyon. The third umpire dismissal took several angles to confirm it was out, but social media and Michael Clarke erupted after the decision, bringing up ludicrous ideas such as there was at least a quarter of a millimeter of boot behind the line, to it being so close that the batsman should get the benefit of the doubt, to the crease having been painted crooked, to the line being too thick. The batsman has to be behind the line, so thickness doesn’t matter, nor if it’s crooked (which it wasn’t), and there was no need for benefit because there was nothing BEHIND the line. Moeen himself returned everything to order in the post-match press conference when he said that if he had been the bowler he would have wanted that given out.

• Starc and Cummins roared at the end of the innings, and the aggressive intent made lighter work of the tail than the first innings. While one suspects that their lines and lengths may change slightly with the pink ball in Adelaide, the blueprint now seems to be in place for England for the rest of the series. Short and fast.
• Nathan Lyon’s three wickets were all left handers, one stumped and two caught by Steve Smith at slip. With no fewer than six of the current England line up left handed batsmen, they are going to see a lot of him bowling at them this summer.
• Cameron Bancroft brought up his first Test half century in finishing on 51 not out overnight. But perhaps the moment that confirmed he is here to stay was when Jimmy Anderson picked up the ball Bancroft had patted back to him, and threw it back at the batsman. Bancroft stood his ground, and it hit him in his right thigh pad, well away from the stumps. Anderson put up his hand in ‘apology’, but Bancroft just stared him down. It perhaps summed up the moment that Australia had taken charge of the Test match – and the series. And – imagine the uproar from the British press if an Australian had done this!
• Why didn’t England stick to the same tactics they used against David Warner in the first innings? It seems strange that, having tied him up and gotten him to play the wrong shot to get out for 26 in the first innings that we would be seeing that same field and bowling to him all summer. But it was all a bit conventional, and once warner got started there was no way to put the genie back in the bottle. At 60 not out overnight, he and Bancroft have already gotten Australia to 0/114 and within 56 of victory. One suspects a trick was missed there.
• The breaking story after play was of the alleged head-butt from Jonny Bairstow on Cameron Bancroft three weeks ago in a bar in Perth, well before Bancroft became a Test candidate. Nothing has come out about it at all until today, which suggests both sides were willing to put it aside. Still, one wonders how England management were supposedly unaware of it until today. Comments in the past few days have now shown all of the Australians knew, and it had been used in comments on the field, and in Nathan Lyon’s case in an interview. How this will affect things in the coming days will be interesting given both the David Warner incident in 2013 and Ben Stokes incident this year.

Barring a cyclone or the greatest comeback in cricket history, Australia will go one up in the series before lunch, and England’s worst case scenario will have been completed. How this affects both teams – and their respective media – will be the most interesting sideline heading into the Adelaide Test on Saturday.