PERTH: In a haunting reminder of the hammer blow they dealt England in Perth four years ago, Australia has a hand on the Ashes urn after skipper Steve Smith and reborn all-rounder Mitchell Marsh batted the tourists into the dust with a daunting partnership that has defined the third Magellan Ashes Test.
Having entered day three 200 runs in deficit and with seven wickets in hand, Australia ended it ascendant by 146 and with only one stumble along the way as thunderstorms forecast for tomorrow and Monday loom as a dispirited England’s best hope of escaping a third consecutive defeat.
Even if the rain does come or the tourists’ batting can find the resolve and productivity that Smith and Marsh exhibited in their unbroken 301-run fifth-wicket partnership, the damage done to their morale and manpower on the most one-sided day of the series to date seems destined to wield a broader impact.
As Australia’s stocks boom on the back of Smith’s highest-ever Test total (229*) and Marsh’s maiden century which vindicated his inclusion and ultimately yielded 181*, England looked as bereft of spark as they did answers on a day in which their rivals bulldozed to 1-346 from 90 overs.
In 2013-14, Smith led the way with a century as Australia crushed Alastair Cook’s team at the WACA to pave the way for an eventual 5-0 Ashes whitewash.
The 28-year-old ticking off a raft of individual and collective milestones as he batted throughout the day to surpass his previous benchmark of 205 scored at Lord’s in 2015, the tour to the UK in which Australia relinquished the historic trophy.
Perhaps the most telling of those records that fell today being his hundred that arrived off 138 balls, which the fastest and slowest of his 22 Test tons have come in this campaign after his epic, unbeaten century in the first Test soaked up 261 deliveries.
That rate of enterprise stood as a stark counterpoint to England’s bowling today, the lack of purpose and penetration shown by their seamers compounded by news their most likely bowler in this match – two-Test greenhorn Craig Overton – has been diagnosed with a hairline fracture to his rib.
Shaun Marsh had settled nicely into his innings among familiar surrounds, lifting his score without fuss or flourish from his overnight tally of seven to 20 when he decided that Moeen Ali would be his preferred vehicle to up the tempo.
Consecutive boundaries from the England off-spinner, the second of which came courtesy of a confident shimmy down the pitch and a crisp flick to the mid-wicket fence, suggested that the older Marsh was about to bloom.
But Moeen deftly flighted his next delivery a little wider of off-stump, and it found sufficient turn from the otherwise dormant surface to catch the edge of Marsh’s bat as he lent languidly forward and Joe Root snaffled the offering smartly at slip.
To have plucked a wicket so brazenly against the flow of the game might have led England to hope a collapse similar to their own a day earlier – when they lost 6-35 and their grip on the game – might be about to befall their rivals. Six hours later and they were still waiting for the next shoe to drop.
On a pitch that offered a hint of sideways movement, in conditions that enabled the swing conventionally or reverse, England’s seamers might have fancied their chances of causing the Australia pair occasional concern, if not outright problems.
But on a WACA track that played as flat as England’s on-field spirit, they were fodder.
