Uphill battle for Australia with massive chase on the cards

Australia will need to defy history – both recent and ancient – if they are to reverse the trend of this Ashes campaign and realise their long-stated ambition to win a series against England on their rivals' home turf after a 22-year wait.

Following another day of rollicking English batting dominance, the home team are favourites to tie the five-match series 2-2 courtesy of a breezy 110-run partnership between Joe Root (91) and Jonny Bairstow (78) that carried them to 9-389 at stumps on day three, holding a lead of 377.

Australia can point to the four wickets they picked up in the day's final hour, mainly thanks to another lionhearted burst from Mitchell Starc (4-94) as evidence of a belated fightback.

But in reality, those batters fell to extravagant shots as England looked to land a knockout blow ahead of their final push with the ball tomorrow.

Their current lead is significantly superior to the most runs ever scored to win a Test at The Oval, which was the 263 England scored in the 1902 Ashes encounter where Australia squandered a hefty first-innings advantage by being bowled out for 121 in their second.

With two days of the ultimate Test remaining, even if Australia snaffled the remaining wicket upon resumption, or – as seems more likely – England declare overnight, the visitors will need to survive around 180 overs to draw the match and maintain the current 2-1 series scoreline.

That would also require a feat rarely seen, with only team previously facing more than 900 balls to salvage a game at the ground being India in 1979 when a double-hundred by Sunil Gavaskar saw them get to within nine runs of a victory target off 150.5 overs before time beat them.

Given the ease with which England's top-order compiled runs on a suddenly benign Oval pitch today, it's not unreasonable to assume if Australia faced 150 overs they would be on track for an historic win.

But the recent run of the series, whereby England held out for a narrow win at Headingley before totally dominating the next Test at Old Trafford that ended a stalemate because of two days unrelenting rain, would make that outcome as unlikely as it might seem unfair.

Australia's best hope of avoiding defeat might again be Britain's miserable summer, with rain forecast for London tomorrow afternoon although nothing like the big wet that enveloped Manchester the previous weekend.

From the moment opener Zak Crawley re-enacted the opening act of the series by crashing a boundary off the innings' first ball, England have bookended their campaign with the sort of relentless runs-scoring that is their trademark.

Today's session breakdown was hauntingly similar to day one at Edgbaston where England were 3-124 at lunch (1-130 today) then 5-240 at tea (compared to 4-265) before Stokes audaciously and – as it transpired – short-sightedly declared the innings closed on 8-393 half an hour before stumps.

But whereas Australia's bowlers were able to wrest back some measure of control in the series opener by claiming regular wickets, they proved much tougher to come by on a pitch playing truer than any previous stage of the match and with bowlers clearly wilting under the past two months' workload.

The fact Australia's most energetic bowler was off-spinner Todd Murphy (3-110) proved instructive, given the 22-year-old was playing just his second Test of the two-month tour while seamers Pat Cummins (six), Starc and Josh Hazlewood (both five) must be foot weary.

It was Murphy's removal of Stokes midway through the afternoon session that heralded Australia's most successful period of the day, the skipper's miscue to mid-on followed by Harry Brook's edge to the keeper off Hazlewood in the next over.

But that proved a fleeting moment of success, as Root and Bairstow made merry until Root squandered the chance of a second century of the series (after his unbeaten 118 at Edgbaston) by dragging a full ball from Murphy from wide outside off back on to his stumps.

It was the former captain's only false shot of his 106-ball stay that yielded some signature ramps over slip, a reverse ramp for six off Mitchell Marsh and an orthodox clip through mid-wicket off Hazlewood that could be considered his best shot of the series.

The final indignity for Australia was surely injured England all-rounder Moeen Ali walking slowly to the crease at the fall of Root's wicket, clearly hobbled by the groin strain suffered on day one, and then helping himself to 29 off 38 balls before being caught on the boundary.

That return included a top-edged hook off Starc that landed beyond the outstretched fingers of Hazlewood diving full-length to his right at deep fine leg, a moment that brought the crowd immediately behind to the edge of delirium.

But it seems unlikely Moeen will be able to bowl again in the game given the severity of injury, which means the fourth-innings spinner's role will fall to Root who will have noted the ball that dismissed him kept a touch low as well as turning appreciably.

Given the 12-run disparity between the respective teams' totals, the series finale was effectively reduced to a glorified ODI and – given they currently hold both men's limited-overs world titles – England could not have been happier.

They began their second innings in precisely the same fashion they had launched their ultimately unsuccessful bid to regain the Ashes, with Crawley lashing Starc's first ball to the cover boundary.

Rather like a celebrity guest hurling the opening pitch at a baseball bash, Crawley then stepped back as if the stage had been suitably set for the real stuff to begin, and his opening partner Ben Duckett duly obliged.

An effortless punch down the ground was followed by an equally sumptuous flick through mid-wicket brought more boundaries and – after just six deliveries from Starc – England were in the lead and on the charge.

With the sun shining and the crowd greeting every ball as a victory in itself, the morning's proceedings could not have painted a glaring contrast between the rival teams' methodologies and mindsets.

Whereas Australia laboured through the first two hours on Friday morning for the addition of 54 runs off 26 overs, England's 50 arrived at the rate of a run a ball and without so much as a false stroke.

The nearest they came to a miscue was the top-edged hook shot Duckett launched at Cummins that brought half-century and yielded the left-hander's seventh boundary from just 31 deliveries faced against the new ball.

After an hour of batting, England were a giddy 0-66 and their supporters even more dizzy with parochial passion as their 54-run lead was heralded as if six times that size.

Not even the removal of Duckett – initially deemed to have missed a ball from Starc that passed perilously close to his outside edge, only for Australia's review to reveal otherwise – could quell the crowd's ardour.

That's because, with regular number three Moeen sidelined with the groin injury and unable to bat in his regular role within 120 minutes of the innings starting, Stokes stepped into the breach and was greeted as a conquering hero with England firming to square the series.

The sight of England's talismanic leader bunting himself up the order emboldened Cummins to deploy Murphy for the first time in the innings, but that did nothing to slow the run flow that remained at the hosts' standard series rate of just above five per over.

It seemed Stokes was intent on lifting it even higher when he hooked a short ball from Hazlewood's first over after lunch and immediately thought he holed out to Starc on the fine leg fence.

But in a telling vignette of the day's proceedings, the ball carried far enough on the prevailing south-easterly breeze which meant the fielder was forced to try and complete the catch while leaning precariously over the rope and, instead, parried it across the line for six.

The growing belief, certainly among the delirious throng, that everything was now flowing in England's favour was briefly checked when Crawley fell in the manner that always seems most likely, edging an airy drive to slip.

But the fact the 73 he scored today (off 76 balls) lifted him past rival opener Usman Khawaja and back to the top of series leading runs scorers highlighted how Australia's bowlers have been unable to exploit the oft-documented shortcomings in the right-hander's technique.

Australia might have added another shortly after when Root (on four) was pinned on the crease by Hazlewood and, after some discussion, the decision was taken to review umpire Joel Wilson's not out call.

When the big screen showed the ball to have missed Root's inside edge and on course to hit the stumps, only to be struck down because the point of impact was so marginally outside off it was decreed 'umpire's call', Hazlewood's frustration was palpable.

It proved a decisive moment in the day, as Root initially joined forces with Stokes for a 73-run stand than an even more fruitful union with his fellow Yorkshireman Bairstow to ensure Australia's quest  for an Ashes series win behind enemy lines assumes mission impossible proportions.

2023 Qantas Ashes Tour of the UK

First Test: Australia won by two wickets

Second Test: Australia won by 43 runs

Third Test: England won by three wickets

Fourth Test: Match drawn

Fifth Test: Thursday July 27-Monday 31, The Oval

Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey (wk), Cameron Green, Marcus Harris, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Josh Inglis (wk), Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Todd Murphy, Michael Neser, Matthew Renshaw, Steve Smith (vc), Mitchell Starc, David Warner

England squad: Ben Stokes (c), Rehan Ahmed, James Anderson, Jonathan Bairstow, Stuart Broad, Harry Brook, Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Dan Lawrence, Jack Leach, Ollie Pope, Matthew Potts, Ollie Robinson, Joe Root, Josh Tongue, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood