On the fourth morning of the Manchester Ashes Test, it wasn’t clear what the job was. Rain was still falling after coming down all night. The ground was drenched. Four wickets and 162 down in the match, Australia might not have been required to bat again all weekend. They might have got on at lunchtime and had the rest of the day. Or they might have faced what they eventually did, something in between. Marnus Labuschagne, Mitchell Marsh, Cameron Green and Alex Carey were the principal four with that clouded task ahead.
Around 90 minutes after the scheduled start, Labuschagne arrived, appearing between two of the stands on the eastern side of the ground and trekking across the wet grass towards the dressing room. Tiny with distance, hunched against the rain, rugged up in the warmer range of the team training uniform, his officially mandated woollen bobble hat gave him the look of a Santa’s workshop elf. The large cardboard box clasped to his chest might as well have been inscribed with giant letters saying “RUNS”.
