As match-changing moments go, it was as unusual as it was effective: with Australia 91 for one and England struggling to make a breakthrough Stuart Broad strolled to the stumps and flipped the bails around before replacing them in their grooves. Marnus Labuschagne edged the very next delivery, Joe Root took a wonderful catch at slip and a couple of hours later it was 185 for seven. Australia recovered from there to post a total of 295, putting them 12 ahead of England at the halfway stage.
“I’ve heard it’s an Aussie change of luck thing,” Broad explained. “I’ve seen Nathan Lyon do it. We had a few play and misses in the morning session and we needed to make a breakthrough and I thought: ‘I’ll have a little change of the bails.’ It just worked out pretty magically that he nicked the next ball and Rooty took a great catch. I randomly went and celebrated with Uzzy [Usman Khawaja] for some reason. He said: ‘If you touch my bails I’m flipping them straight back.’ So he gave me an immediate warning.”
Lyon has indeed been seen doing it on a couple of occasions, most memorably in the fourth Test of the 2019 Ashes at Old Trafford. With England 163 for two, Joe Root and Rory Burns having put together a 138-run partnership, Root spotted Lyon switching the bails at the non-striker’s end and turned them straight back round again. The trick seemed to work anyway: Burns was out after scoring just two more runs, and Root after three.
Though Australia narrowly outscored England in their first innings they spent nearly twice as many overs doing so, forcing the opposition bowlers – without the injured Moeen Ali – to send down 291 more deliveries than they had bowled on Thursday. “I think they bowled pretty well,” Steve Smith said. “Obviously you want the scoreboard to be ticking over quicker than that but guys are allowed to bowl well. It’s Test cricket, you’re allowed to absorb some pressure that’s applied to you. Once we’d got through that period it would have been good if we’d kicked on, but that’s the way the day went for us.”
Broad described the morning session, when 54 runs were scored in 26 overs, with one wicket falling, as “just an old-school battle of Test match cricket”, adding: “Sometimes as a bowling group if you keep things tight you only need to make a couple of breakthroughs to [create] a bit of pressure and we managed to do that straightaway after lunch.
“That was probably our chance to really develop a bit of a lead in the first innings but this series nothing’s happened easy for either team. It’s ebbed and flowed and whenever you feel like you’re on top the other team fights back. I think that’s what’s made it so interesting.”
