It should have been too much. Five Ashes contests, six Test matches, just over seven weeks, right at the tail end of all, a visiting team that was done. The Australians had spent the third day groping around the field like sleepwalkers headed to the fridge who ended up in the laundry closet, and early the next were set 384 to win. England had enjoyed the emotional burnish of Stuart Broad’s retirement announcement, having been given the entire third evening and fourth morning to polish the idol.
Australia played ball, lining up in a guard of honour as he came down the steps to bat with his offsider Jimmy Anderson, the teams putting on a couple of overs to give Broad a chance to hit one final six in a career that has featured 55 of them. That should have been that, Australia waiting to be overwhelmed by the task at hand and the workload preceding it before buckling the Ashes trophy into its own airline seat and bringing it home at 2-2.
Except that after Australia had played ball, Australia played cricket. Usman Khawaja and David Warner faced Broad and company with a caution that grew more decisive. Warner might have dreaded becoming a cause of valedictory celebration for Broad, but instead drove him through cover for four to close the first over. Khawaja stepped into the innings with the same control he showed in the first innings but more readily looking to score, in conditions that were still cloudy but not as dark and difficult as the first time around.
The pair did not become Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett, clouting at five an over through the early exchanges, but their first 10 overs yielded 38. Broad especially looked to be searching for wickets, erring to the leg-side and being picked off to shuttle the batters up and back. Khawaja drove Anderson down the ground for boundaries in consecutive balls.
In the meantime, England bowlers were dropping like it was a heated game of Guess Who? Moeen Ali bowled five overs but was unsurprisingly hampered by his groin injury, slipping in full tosses and leg-stump boundary balls in five overs before Joe Root took over spin duties. Mark Wood did not appear until after lunch, unthinkable if fit, and managed three fierce overs, then left the ground looking more ginger than Ben Stokes. That was just before drinks, at which point rain came down to end the day halfway through.
By then Khawaja and Warner had assembled their best stand of the series. That sequence started well: 29 and 61 at Edgbaston, 73 and 63 at Lord’s, dropping to four and 11 at Headingley, 15 and 32 at Old Trafford, and rebounding with 49 and the current 135 not out at the Oval. Of every Australian partnership in the series it trails only Travis Head and Mitchell Marsh with 155, and still has the chance to go past it.
Khawaja looked to have got his balance right, content to defend for periods but managing to find runs with soft hands past the cordon or remarkable accuracy through gaps when Stokes packed the off side for Anderson with a version of the Yorkshire wall. Warner did what he has done through the series, wrestling with his limitations, battling the desire to chase a wide line outside the off-stump, surviving a well-set field that denied his usual singles, finding other places to score.
At the last, with England’s absences, it was one more battle of the old stagers. Broad and Anderson, Warner and Khawaja – one might have had the farewell montages but all are likely saying their goodbyes to Ashes cricket, and the Australians to this country.
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The stand had started to flourish, taking 13 runs from an over that led to Root being taken from the attack, when the rain came – and at that point Australia would have been the team most wanting to stay out there. That should seem mad. Teams do not make 384 batting last. In 146 years of Test cricket, this is match number 2,515. In seven of those there has been a bigger chase to win.
However, Australia can rest up overnight and look at it again in the morning, walking out with fresh eyes to see the situation as a brand new target, a mid-range one of 249 to win with 10 wickets in hand. Even that is a difficult task, as England found with 254 at Headingley two matches ago. But the possibility, among many, is there.
In a series that has gone one way and then the other, with three close wins and two sessions of holding out for a draw, it would fit to have one last day when a match swings back and forth. Both teams have their chance and the weather is hovering to have its say as well. One more decisive England bowling performance would be a fitting finale. An epic run chase against the odds would be a fitting finale. Or after the frustrations of the Old Trafford washout, either side being saved by rain might just be the funniest of all.
