Ashes 2017-18, 3rd Test, Day 5 Review: Australia regain the urn with a thumping win

After the overnight and the early morning rain threatened to save England from a series-deciding defeat at the WACA, play eventually got underway after lunch on day 5 and it didn’t take Australia a lot of time to wrap up the visitors as the Poms were bundled out for 218 and suffered an innings defeat to lose the urn.

The day started with much drama as water leaked under the covers overnight and worsened the condition of the pitch leaving numerous soft patches on it. The umpires didn’t find it in a “reasonable” state for the play to start which caused further delay in action even after the rain stopped.

However, the ground-staff put on a mammoth effort and used leaf blowers and all those equipment to make sure the pitch was in a condition to get a go-ahead from the umpires. They managed to get it fit for play to resume at 1 pm local time and once they were on the field, the Aussie got into their act straightaway.

Jonny Bairstow was cleaned up by Josh Hazlewood, while Moeen Ali became Nathan Lyon‘s victim for the 5th time in the series. Dawid Malan was the lone warrior in the middle-order once again as the left-hander scored a gritty half-century, but was nicked off soon by Hazlewood who was at the top of his game right from the first ball of the day.

The tail-enders were never going to be able to resist against the thunderbolts the Australian pacers fired in and the game was done and dusted even before tea with Hazlewood finishing with a five-for, while Lyon and Cummins chipping in with a couple each and Mitchell Starc had just one but a memorable success.

When England look back, it will give them a feeling that they probably lost the edge on the second day when they were in a position to bat Australia out of the game but suffered a massive collapse. It was always a first innings game as the WACA pitch has the history of deteriorating quickly with massive cracks coming into play on Day 4 and 5 making batting incredibly difficult.

A first innings score of 550 would have put England well and truly in the driver’s seat and would have almost taken an Australian victory out of the equation, but it wasn’t to be. Australia, however, didn’t make the same mistake and batted big with the captain Steve Smith himself leading from the front and playing a marathon knock of 239 powering the hosts past the score of 650 to make sure England had no coming back in contention.

The second innings was always going to be a struggle for the visitors, however, their fans would have expected a fight especially from the likes of Alastair Cook and Joe Root who have a fair bit of experience playing the longest format of the game in different conditions.

However, the experienced duo disappointed again as they perished on identical score of 14. Apart from James Vince and Dawid Malan, there was no application and resilience whatsoever from anybody paving the way for a humiliating loss.

Going to the MCG for the Boxing Day Test match, the visitors have a lot to ponder over now as they would be desperate to avoid a white-wash which is definitely on the cards.

Brief Scores:

Ist Innings-

England: 403 all out in 115.1 overs (Dawid Malan 140, Jonny Bairstow 119, Mitchell Starc 91/4)

Australia: 662/9 dec. (Steve Smith 239, Mitchell Marsh 181, James Anderson 116/4)

IInd Innings-

England: 218 all out in 72.5 overs (James Vince 55, Dawid Malan 54, Josh Hazlewood 48/5)

Man of the Match: Steve Smith