Dave Tickner's verdict on day five of the third Ashes Test at the WACA.
Perth Five-fer: Day five
The Thrashes
A brutal, devastating defeat for England who now have an enormous job on to somehow rally themselves for the two holiday Tests and avoid a third whitewash in four Australia tours.
It’s now hard to see them doing so, although Mitchell Starc’s heel injury might help a tiny bit.
The hardest truth for England is that they have had the best of the conditions in all three Tests and ultimately come up woefully short every time. They’ve won the toss three times out of three. They got important first use of the pitch in Brisbane and here, while never having to bat serious time under the lights at Adelaide.
Australia have been better than England in all departments, but the cornerstone of that has been the bowling.
Australia’s bowlers are quicker than England’s, we all know that now and we knew it before the series started.
But pace on its own is nothing. England were (nearly) always able to handle Mitchell Johnson until he harnassed that pace with control and late movement.
That is what England have faced again here. Australia’s bowlers weren’t just quicker, they also got more out of the pitches than England’s. And Nathan Lyon, of course, outbowled Moeen Ali to a truly embarrassing degree, topping it off here by dismissing his nominal spin rival for the fifth time in six innings.
Australia’s batting has been superior to England’s, but the task facing them has been demonstrably easier than that facing the tourists’ batsmen.
It was the bowlers wot won it.
History repeating
Test cricket has been knocking around for close to 150 years now. This was the 2288th Test match in the format’s long and storied history.
In all that time, and in all those games, six times a team has contrived to score 400 in the first innings and then lose the match by an innings. Three of those six times have been by England in the space of their last five away Test matches.
For Mumbai and Chennai 2016, read Perth 2017.
It’s the Mumbai Test that really provides the blueprint for what we’ve just seen.
A promising maiden century leads England to what must surely be a competitive score.
An all-time great puts that in perspective with a flawless double-century assisted by an unlikely centurion in the middle-order to propel the score beyond 600.
A tired England swiftly lose top-order wickets and, despite a couple of fluent middle-order half-centuries, never really look like getting themselves out of trouble before the tale obligingly and inevitably goes over in a heap. England lose by an innings and 36/41 runs.
It’s just a shame that it was in Chennai where groundstaff had to use charcoals to try and dry the pitch, or this really would have been perfect.
WACA send-off
In the end, the WACA got the Ashes send-off it deserved: England humiliated, Australia winning by miles and regaining the urn in the process.
But for the longest time it looked like this might be a day of ignominy for a great old value.
Now obviously Australia, and Perth in particular, has less rain than England. But it is still ridiculous how poor the pitch coverings are around this country. The soggy hessians and tarps the groundstaff used to try and keep out a forecast storm would shame a mid-sized English club.
The sight of five members of the groundstaff trying to dry out the pitch with leaf-blowers was a ludicrous one.
This was still taking place five minutes before the resumption and was an embarrassing spectacle.
Australia were deserved winners of this Test. It was lucky for the groundstaff that the team won so very convincingly, because there’s little doubt the pitch was demonstrably different on the final day.
There is a very strong argument that there should not have been any play today, a fact reinforced by Jonny Bairstow being instantly dismissed by a grubber that landed right in one of the wet patches the WACA staff had been attempting to remedy.
Had this Test been close, we would be looking at a genuine scandal. Even so, we have certainly not heard the last of it. England can have no complaints about their defeat, but they certainly can about the farcical conditions in which it concluded.
Reward at last
Josh Hazlewood finally got the rewards he’s deserved in this series today, picking up a thoroughly deserved five-wicket haul as his fast-forward impression of Glenn McGrath finally reaped the rewards that had been threatened all series long.
It would help his skipper if he learnt the lbw law, but that’s nit-picking. He barely bowls a bad ball, seems to target the top of off-stump with laser-guided precision and does it all at 88mph.
It only remains for Pat Cummins to get his just rewards with the ball over the final two Tests.
Out of the Ashes...
Now is very much not the time to be taking positives for England. But as in 2013/14 when Ben Stokes’ emergence allowed the tiniest shard of light to penetrate the darkness.
This time it’s Dawid Malan. There have been too many false dawns for batsmen coming into this England side for anyone to be certain that they’ve got one for the long haul, but the signs are good.
The 194 runs Malan made in this Test was the most ever by an England batsmen at Perth, and he is only the fourth England player to pass 50 in both innings of an Ashes Test.
James Vince’s second-innings half-century here also means Malan is likely to be allowed to continue at number five for the last two Tests rather than having to jump up to three as would have been possible had Vince been replaced for Melbourne.
The really exciting thing about Malan is the way his game has grown and improved as the series has gone on. His arrival into the England team is similar to Mark Stoneman’s, getting his chance relatively late in the piece.
Stoneman too has performed well, but while his flaws have been increasingly exposed as the series has progressed Malan has overcome his.
Malan showed promise and fight in the first two Tests of the series, but was too easily tied down. Here he rarely allowed the bowlers to settle in against him. He used his feet well against Nathan Lyon, while against the quick men he looked both more secure in defence and assured in attack.
To learn and improve during a series this tough is a hugely encouraging sign.
