It took until late on Saturday afternoon for the skies above Headingley to become clear, and within a couple of hours England’s situation had done likewise: they must score another 224 runs – precisely Australia’s second-innings total – to win this game and keep the series alive, with 10 wickets in hand and plenty of time to do it.
Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett kickstarted the run chase in the five overs they faced before the close, scoring 27 without loss – only once in this series has England’s opening partnership contributed more. This has been a series of plot twists and momentum shifts, but by the end it seemed to have settled in England’s corner.
“To finish the day none down is really positive for us,” Chris Woakes said. “There’s a full day ahead of us tomorrow, we know what we’ve got to get, but the scores in this game haven’t been high so you don’t just walk into it thinking it’s going to be a doddle. Australia will think they’re 10 wickets away from winning an Ashes series, so it’s a big day for both teams.”
That England’s target is so great was largely down to Travis Head, who copied the Ben Stokes template of batting with the tail almost to the letter in adding 59 runs, six fours and three sixes to his overnight tally of 18, initially keeping the ball low but eventually shifting from peppering the boundary to salting the stands. When he was last man out, caught at deep midwicket after finally misjudging a pull, Australia’s score stood on 224, their lead at 250.
“I feel this whole series has ebbed and flowed,” Head said. “We just wanted to bat as well as we could and get to a total. I think we got to a total. We’ve been in similar positions where we’ve had our backs against the wall, and as much as there’s pressure in our dressing room it’s in their dressing room as well. It’s a huge day for the series tomorrow.”
For nearly six hours this was a huge day only for the ground staff and the bartenders, as rain sporadically fell, patience was tested and batters were not. When the players eventually emerged Woakes bowled a single over, two runs were scored, and they were promptly forced off again. But this shower was brief and 15 minutes later the floodlights illuminated Stuart Broad, standing at the end of his run-up.
Australia feel their batters have had to face the worst of the conditions across the series, but while that may be true it was also they who enjoyed the very finest period for bowling. It came on the third afternoon at Edgbaston, when 3.4 overs were squeezed in between rain showers under dark clouds and England went from 26 without loss to 28 for two, a brief outbreak of complete cricketing chaos. Here, in similar circumstances and at a similar stage of the game, England had the ball in hand. If they were to stay in the series, the moment had to be seized.
Despite Head’s performance they will consider that challenge met. At some point, however, they may consider changing the recipe when they come to bowl to him, because he is finding the diet of short balls increasingly tasty. “If I take one thing from England it’s going to be a pull shot,” he joked.
From the start he and Mitchell Marsh cast off the caution they showed on Friday, and having leaked just eight runs in bowling 10 overs the previous day Mark Wood’s first two of this one went for 20. But as on Friday while Wood toiled from the Kirkstall Lane End it was the bowler running up the hill who took the key wickets. Marsh tried to leave one from Woakes and failed, a little extra bounce seeing the ball clip the underside of his glove on its way through to Jonny Bairstow, and Alex Carey provided the crowd with only a brief opportunity to hone their jeering skills before he, too, misjudged the bounce of a Woakes delivery, deflecting it into the stumps.
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England hoped Wood might whip through the tail and he made a start by dealing with Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins. It took a wonderful catch from Harry Brook, running backwards from short leg, to dismiss Starc, an effort not helped by briefly pausing his sprint in the assumption that Bairstow would be coming to his aid. But the wicketkeeper, who would have had a clear view of the ball’s trajectory and the added benefits of being unencumbered by a helmet and assisted by two big gloves, was worryingly leaden-footed. Had the catch gone down it would have been Bairstow’s drop. Broad meanwhile bowled excellently, with the wickets of Todd Murphy and Head his reward.
Conditions gradually improved, to the extent that the start of England’s run chase was positively sun-kissed. It was occasionally fortune-blessed as well, and Duckett edged Starc twice – one dropped just short of slips, the other sailed over them.
“I think if we were given this opportunity at the end of the first innings, I think we would’ve taken it,” Woakes said, but there may be a few twists yet.
