Travis Head brings thunder after the rain to set up another Ashes nailbiter | Ashes 2023

England’s situation became clear after the skies above Headingley eventually did likewise, towards the end of a miserable Yorkshire Saturday: they must score another 224 to win this game and keep the series alive, with all 10 second-innings wickets in hand, and though further rain is forecast over the remaining two days they should have plenty of time to do it.

That their target is so great was largely down to Travis Head, who copied the Ben Stokes template of batting with the tail almost to the letter in adding 59 runs, six fours and three sixes to his overnight score of 18. When he was last man out, caught at deep midwicket after finally misjudging a pull, Australia’s score stood on 224, their lead at 250.

And so it was that two and a quarter hours after play began with Australia 116 for four, England’s run chase commenced. They faced five overs, Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett attempting to set the tone and Australia determined to derail them.

They came close on a couple of occasions, Duckett edging Mitchell Starc twice – one dropped just short of the slips, the other sailed over them – but the breakthrough did not come, and runs did. By stumps England had scored 27, Crawley with a calm nine and Duckett a more nervous 18.

After nearly six hours in which patience was tested and batters were not, the players had finally emerged at 4.45pm. Chris Woakes bowled a single over, two runs were scored, and they were promptly forced off again. On balance, this was probably Australia’s mini-session.

But this shower was brief and 15 minutes later the floodlights illuminated Stuart Broad, standing at the end of his run-up. Australia feel their batters have had to face the worst of the conditions across the 13 days played in the series so far, but while that may be true as a generalisation it was also Australia who enjoyed the very finest period for bowling. It came on the third afternoon at Edgbaston, when 3.4 overs were squeezed in under dark, thick clouds between rain showers and England went from 26 without loss to 28 for two, a brief period of complete cricketing chaos. Here, in similar circumstances and at a similar stage of the game, England had the ball in hand.

They chose not to crowd the cordon, testing Head’s supposed weakness against bouncers and letting a couple of slips saunter in when Mitchell Marsh was on strike – not that the first-innings centurion looked bothered. In that first over after the re-resumption he hit Broad down the ground for four, in the next he pushed Woakes past cover for four more, timing impeccable. The caution the pair showed when first brought together on Friday was cast off, and having leaked just eight runs in bowling 10 overs the previous day, Mark Wood’s first two of this one went for 20.

As on the previous day, while Wood bowled from the Kirkstall Lane End it was the bowler running up the hill from the other side who took the key wickets. In the third over of the day, a couple of deliveries after that second boundary, Marsh tried to leave one from Woakes and failed, a little extra bounce seeing the ball clip the underside of his glove on its way through to Jonny Bairstow. He had added just 11 to his overnight 17.

Alex Carey was greeted with the kind of derision the crowd had previously reserved for the appearance of the covers, a legacy of Lord’s, but provided few opportunities for further jeering in a 14-ball cameo which ended when he, too, misjudged the bounce of a Woakes delivery, which thumped the underside of a glove and deflected into the stumps.

England hoped that Wood might whip through the tail and he certainly made a start. It took a wonderful catch from Harry Brook to dismiss Starc, running backwards from short leg and timing his dive perfectly. He was not helped by briefly pausing his sprint in the assumption that Bairstow would take the catch instead, but the wicketkeeper, who would have had a clear view of the ball’s trajectory and the added benefits of being unencumbered by a helmet and assisted by two big gloves, was worryingly leaden-footed. It looked from Bairstow like an expression of zero confidence through the medium of interpretative dance, the dance in question involving remaining completely stationary; had Brook not held the catch it would have been Bairstow’s drop.

Conditions gradually improved, and shortly before seven the sun finally emerged from under its duvet. Now it was Head with the devilry. England continued to feed him a diet of short balls, and Head piled his plate high. For a while he tried to keep the ball down and then he gave up trying, upgrading from peppering the rope to salting the stands. Without his effort England’s target might have been trivial but, on the ground where they romped to 296 for three to beat New Zealand last summer, Stokes’s side will fancy their chances.