Ashes Test: 15 wickets tumbles on third day, England sets Australia a target of 412

If the English bowlers dominated the first hour of the morning, their Australian counterparts did so throughout the rest of the day.

Australia resumed their batting at 264/5 and it took only 10 deliveries for the English bowlers to pick up the first wicket of the day, thereby setting the tone for the rest of the day. Watson was trapped LBW by Broad and soon afterwards the Aussie batting collapsed, providing little resistance to a lively English attack. Australia could only score 308 in 84.5 overs.

Already England’s leading wicket taker at the Test level, James Anderson (406) picked up 3 wickets in the first innings to go past Curtly Ambrose on the list of most wicket takers in Test cricket. Stuart Broad, Mark Wood and Moeen Ali all picked up 2 wickets each while Ben Stokes picked up a wicket.

The English batsmen failed to emulate their first innings success as they were bowled out for 289. The Australian bowlers came back strongly after a poor outing in the first innings to give their team 2 days to bat and win the Test match.

Ian Bell and Joe Root scored identical runs of identical deliveries (60 off 89), Ben Stokes played a brisk knock of 42 (59 balls) and Adam Lyth scored 37. The crowd was in for some entertainment when English lower order batsman Mark Wood swung his willow to score a quick fire 32 off just 18 deliveries.

Nathan Lyon picked up four wickets for 75 runs and Johnson, Hazlewood and Starc shared the remaining wickets among them equally to end England’s second innings.

Australia will now have to score 412 runs to win this Test match with two days or 180 overs left in the game to take a series lead of 1-0.