Australia's tail wags to secure narrow first innings lead

An unlikely rearguard stand between skipper Pat Cummins and Ashes novice Todd Murphy carried Australia to a welcome, if narrow, first innings lead of 12 runs at The Oval after their top-order batting initially stalled and then folded.

After a run out controversy reprieved Steve Smith with England on the verge of banking a lead in excess of 50, the ninth-wicket pair put on 49 from 68 balls with Murphy sending speedster Mark Wood into the crowd with three sweetly-struck pull shots.

While Australia's 295 further underscores how evenly matched the teams have been across an Ashes campaign fought largely on a razor's edge, it provided a significant boost to Pat Cummins (last out on the stroke of stumps for 36) and his team who seemed set to concede a hefty lead midway through another wildly fluctuating day.

Murphy's 34 off 39 deliveries provided a graphic contrast to the overtly cautious and ultimately underwhelming effort of Australia's batting specialists with six wickets falling either side of lunch for the addition of 94 runs.

At the height of that carnage having resumed after lunch 2-115 after an eye-glazing morning session, they lost 3-36 in 53 balls as Stuart Broad became the first England bowler to claim 150 Ashes wickets and threatened to once again tear through his favourite target.

Australia's hopes of securing their first Ashes series win on England's patch since 2001 now rest on their bowlers' capacity to restrict England's free-scoring batters from running riot and hoping the batters might find sufficient runs and chase down whatever target is set.

Once again, the moment at which fortunes fundamentally shifted was one that seems destined to be hotly debated with opinions divided on whether England were denied a key wicket by a line-ball call.

Australia were 7-194 and still 89 runs in deficit when Smith clipped the ball through mid-wicket and immediately scampered off for two, clearly unaware of the fielding prowess of substitute George Ealham on the field for spinner Moeen Ali, who remains stricken with a groin injury.

By the time Ealham – 21-year-old son of former England allrounder, Mark Ealham – had sprinted from the boundary then gathered and threw in a single motion, Smith realised he was in dire strife and dived for his ground as keeper Jonny Bairstow broke the stumps.

Smith seemed resigned to having run himself out and stalked disconsolately towards the dressing room, only to stop as replays indicated Bairstow might have knocked off a bail with his arm before the second came loose in legal fashion.

After several minutes of forensic study by third umpire Nitin Menon from India, Smith was adjudged to be safely home by the time the ball was brought in contact with the stumps, and he  continued his innings with the touch paper on another controversy surely lit.

That furore would be raging more severely if he and Cummins had hung around to add more than the 45 runs they ultimately shared after the incident, and if Smith had pushed on to a century rather than the 71 he finished with.

His innings ended uncharacteristically, having endured for more than three and a half hours only to launch a couple of speculative big hits off Chris Woakes.

The first of those landed just out of reach of mid-off running back towards the boundary, while the second several balls later landed in Bairstow's gloves as he likewise sprinted in the direction of deep third.

Australia were still 44 runs in deficit at that stage, and few would have foreseen the game's course over the final phase given events from earlier in the day.

The two hours between lunch and tea when Australia surrendered 6-71 in 24 overs might yet be assessed their worst batting session of the series, surpassing the 6-23 they lost at the back end of the first innings at Headingley.

That's because, unlike that frantic final session on day one of third Test when Australia were confronted by a lively pitch and a fresh foe in Mark Wood, today they crumbled on a day-two surface in perhaps the most conducive conditions of this Test.

The sun that stayed hidden for much of the morning session as not out pair Usman Khawaja and Marnus Labuschagne made painfully slow progress began to peek through shortly before the break, by which time Labuschagne's agony had ended.

That seemed likely to herald a switch in circumstances when Smith struck consecutive boundaries down the ground off James Anderson, the first of which meant he had scored more from the first 17 deliveries he faced than Labuschagne could find from 59 balls earlier in the day.

But not even the sight of sunshine could prevent the collapse that set in with Broad's first over after lunch.

Having switched to the Vauxhall end, Broad began around the wicket at Khawaja and, with his fifth ball, had the obdurate opener so palpably lbw the bowler launched into his now infamous 'celebrappeal' that doesn't include turning around to gauge the umpire's verdict.

Khawaja wasn't convinced it was quite cut and dried, but his eventual decision to appeal meant Australia lost not only a wicket but the first of their three reviews.

With the sold-out Oval crowd exhorting him on, Broad then had Australia's number five Travis Head at sixes and sevens from the outset and it came as no surprise when he grazed the left-hander's outside edge and Bairstow hurled the ball skywards before launching a double-first pump.

Mitchell Marsh offered a brief but much-needed counter-offensive, clubbing Broad over his head for a monstrous six which prompted England skipper Ben Stokes to give his 37-year-old seamer a spell.

However, it was Broad's long-time new-ball partner Anderson – who turns 41 on Sunday – who extracted revenge when Marsh's defensive push with a tentatively angled bat dragged on to leg stump.

By that stage, Australia had faced even more overs than England lasted in their innings a day earlier but had produced barely half their opponents' tally of runs over the same time frame.

Alex Carey survived an England review for lbw after aiming an unsuccessful sweep at Root but, having then launched the part-time spinner over midwicket for six, he slapped the full, wide offering floated down next ball into the hands of Stokes at mid-off.

While Carey has resolutely claimed the controversy that erupted at Lord's has not overtly affected him, his batting average on this tour (including the World Test Championship Final) prior to that stumping incident was 48.6, but in four innings since it's dropped below 11.

And when Mitchell Starc became the latest in a long line of Australia batters to hole out trying to hook Wood – a roll call that now notedly excludes Murphy – the visitors were 7-185 and facing a first-innings deficit close to 100.

To have ended up in the position they did belied events of the first two sessions, though they also neatly fitted Australia's day one narrative of missed opportunities.

Conditions that greeted players upon resumption in south London this were near identical to those of the opening morning – brooding low cloud, a hint of rain in the air and all the hallmarks of what is euphemistically known as 'a bowling day'.

But even allowing for those contingencies, nobody could have foreseen the gross disparity between ball and bat that was allowed to play out over the ensuing hours.

England undoubtedly bowled well in circumstances that suited them, but their cause was helped immeasurably by an Australia batting approach that seemed hellbent on waiting until the sun broke through before looking to advance the score.

Which, on evidence tendered by the past month of British 'summer', might conceivably not have come until next June.

Regardless of the rationale, the inability of incumbent pair Khawaja and Labuschagne to rotate strike or even threaten the occasional single – let alone look to punish the glaringly rare loose ball – played into the hands of their rivals.

It was 23 balls into the day before the first runs were scored, and they came courtesy of byes when Wood whistled a ball past Bairstow that swung violently to leg after flew past Labuschagne's left hip.

The day's maiden score off the bat came next over when Khawaja feathered a glance off Anderson that raced fine to the fence, but any suggestion the tone of the morning was about to change proved sadly misplaced.

The days first hour yielded just 21 from 14 overs of which eight were maidens, a remarkable return given Australia managed just three maidens on the same pitch in very similar conditions throughout England's first innings on Thursday.

By that stage, Khawaja had batted almost three hours for his 34 while Labuschagne's productivity was even more painstaking, having added five to his overnight score off 43 balls at a rate that would soon drop below 10 runs per 100 deliveries faced.

Australia's preparedness to play passive cricket meant no damage was inflicted by either side until shortly before lunch, by which stage the batting team's only positive had been passing the follow-on mark (84).

However, the morning's more definitive talking point came when Labuschagne was worked over by Wood amid the gathering gloom and – after the intervention of Broad who, for some reason, switched the bails around on the striker's end stumps – ultimately nicked off.

Stuck on the crease and hurriedly jamming down on a delivery angled in but holding its line, Labuschagne might have initially felt he'd been reprieved when Bairstow stubbornly refused to make any movement to his right as the catch came his way.

It was only an instinctively belated action from Root that prevented England's only genuine chance for the session being squandered in the manner Australia had done so regularly on day one, and flung out a left claw into which the ball securely lodged.

The vehemence of England's celebration was part recognition of Root's stunning grab, but also reflected the reality that – after almost two hours spent treading water – Australia had advanced their score by just 30 runs and were therefore no closer to the safety of shore.

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