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England put one hand on the Ashes urn

Another batting collapse inspired by a pumped-up Ben Stokes has Australia on the brink of Ashes defeat at Trent Bridge

To borrow from an overused and wrongly attributed cliché, the definition of inanity is to continue playing a shot that is likely to get you out while somehow expecting that it won’t.

In a burst of less than five overs shortly before afternoon tea at the quaintly staid Trent Bridge Cricket Ground today, Australia engaged in an impromptu public demonstration of this theory and – in doing so – proved it correct beyond debate.

Of course, the original aphorism references craziness rather than cricket and his been variously credited to the wisdom of Albert Einstein, Mark Twain and Benjamin Franklin even though there is no evidence either is its author.

Today’s variation of the idiom was performed by Chris Rogers, David Warner, Shaun Marsh and Steve Smith and, upon watching their dismissals across a 21-minute matinee that left Australia staring at the most humiliating act of an embarrassing tour, none will want to be reminded of their roles.

Only a fortuitous combination of bad light, almost as poor slips catching and the inexcusable placement of bowlers’ front feet has saved Australia the humiliation of defeat inside two days.

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Ben Stokes leads England off at stumps // Getty Images

Instead, the final rites will be delivered on a Saturday morning when Nottingham will turn out in force with their heroes requiring three wickets to win while Australia’s batting – of which Adam Voges (48no) is the only specialist remaining – needs a further 90 runs to send England to a second innings.

And while Australia had hardly dragged themselves back into a match that was effectively decided the previous morning when they were bowled out for a below-par T20 score inside a session, they had up until that epoch regained a measure of respect by refusing to succumb meekly to defeat.

READ: Starc's splatters stumps, provides lift

Mitchell Starc had found his most effective spell of the series to rattle the stumps and truncate England’s first innings lead to 331 when Alastair Cook surprisingly declared it closed a few overs shy of lunch.

Australia fast bowler Mitchell Starc has played a lone hand in terms of wicket-taking, the left-armer taking the first six England wickets (restrictions apply)

Openers Rogers and Warner had gone some way to erasing the dark stain left by Thursday morning’s pandemonium by battling their way through Stuart Broad’s second spell of the game and posting their most productive partnership since the verdant, now distant days of Lord’s.

WATCH: Highlights from Warner's innings

So productive that those patrons who had pre-purchased tickets for the weekend suddenly believed they might have some meaningful cricket to view, with the deficit whittled to a mere 220 and all 10 wickets intact.

Australia opener Chris Rogers survived good bowling spells a 'wicket' from a no ball but eventually passed fifty again at Trent Bridge (restrictions apply)

But then things started to happen.

And as Michael Clarke’s men showed so graphically and gruesomely on that wretched morning that of which so many Australians will carry a Kennedy-esque lifelong recall of where they were seated when it unfolded in front of them, they can’t find the handbrake when the wheels start to roll.

Rogers had made the requisite adjustments in the wake of the first Test duck of his career when he pushed too hard at Broad’s third ball of the match, and was playing the ball pretty much under the peak of his new protective batting helmet to become the first in his team to reach 50.

It then seemed the fortune that had rolled so infuriatingly beyond Australia’s reach as England grasped every chance presented, and the clouds closed and parted in concert with the home team’s needs, had finally turned the visitors’ way.

Rogers was caught on the jump by a short ball from Mark Wood that skidded through, caught the shoulder of the opener’s bat raised instinctively in self-defence, and looped into the slips cordon and not even Joe Root’s dodgy back could prevent him from scooping up the offering.

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Rogers had quite the adventure on day two // Getty Images

The excitement at the breakthrough, which had taken longer to achieve than Australia’s entire first innings had endured, was stymied by the insistence that the video referee adjudicate whether Wood had overstepped in delivering his effort ball.

Watch the ball that led to much drama at Trent Bridge

And the quirky quick, whose maiden Test wicket earlier this summer was denied him when a similar review deemed he had no-balled, was robbed of another when forensic scrutiny of his right heel eventually delivered the conclusion it had landed illegally.

Following, as it did, on the pair of chances England’s previously iron-gripped slips fielders had muffed off Warner on 10 (when Cook failed to hold a chance low to his left off Broad) and again on 42 (when Ian Bell’s reflex dive to his right off Ben Stokes was equally fruitless) Australia were riding a wave.

But in the over after he was reprieved, Rogers was dumped when all the graft and concentration he had channelled into his 107-minute innings deserted him as he replicated the shot that had almost cost him his wicket and Root (along with Stokes’s front foot) made sure he did.

The left-hander was understandably dirty on himself for pushing at the sort of delivery he had been previously so disciplined in leaving, but if there was a lesson to be learned from his indiscretion it went unlearned.

Warner had already chanced his arm with England's close catchers, and – having played his most authoritative stroke of the match by pulling Steven Finn beyond the fence at backward square leg – knew of England’s plan to attack his body with some short  bowling.

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Warner hits out during his half century // Getty Images

It had proved successful at Edgbaston a week earlier when, cramped for room on that favoured shot, Warner’s attempt to tug rather than punish the ball into the leg side produced a skied catch.

So with two fielders out on the leg side boundary to dissuade him from the full-blooded version, Warner decided to re-employ the short-arm model and should have learned quickly that it was fraught with risk.

The first one he tried ballooned off the coffee table-sized edge of his tailor-made bat and over the slips cordon for four.

The next caught even more of that woody surface and flew, without Warner’s lodgement of a pre-ordained flight plan, over the rope at fine leg.

Which meant when he aimed up once more in the over that followed that bountiful mishap, and bunted a simple catch to mid-on, he was assured that every bowling attack from now on will employ the same method of attack and bank on more mishits landing with fielders than in the crowd.

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Broad takes the catch to dismiss Warner // Getty Images

Marsh replaced him with all the surety and conviction of an elderly pedestrian contemplating a route across a 16-lane highway, and with Stokes bending the ball away from the left-hander with an angle that was obtuse and execution that was acute, the slips cordon warmed their hands in expectation.

For the entire six balls that he faced Marsh looked likely to get out, the only variable being the bowler’s name and the bloke in the cordon who accepted the chance.

READ: British, Aussie press lash Aussies

With two runs to follow his first innings duck, Marsh became the third batsman in as many at the wicket to fall in the manner that had been so clearly telegraphed, pushing half forward with an urgency born of uncertainty as Stokes and Root answered the above question in that order.

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Marsh made two runs for the Test after his call-up // Getty Images

And so with three wickets in 13 balls in their pockets and Australia’s predisposition for collapsing fresh in their memories, England set their sights on Smith using a plan so blatant that even an Australia batsman could have nutted it out.

Bowl full and wide of off stump, coax the number one Test batsman to flash his habitual square drive that he walks into from outside leg stump and hope that the catchers at point and at gully could reach the chance.

It almost worked first ball, when Smith brazenly teed off at Broad and the ball flew fast, high and just out of reach of Stokes who had scarcely settled into his position square of the wicket.

Within an over, and in the one that preceded the tea break where refuge and a chance to reset resided, it succeeded in what could only be viewed as a self-inflicted wound discharged by conceit and a refusal to recognise the game’s parlous situation.

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Smith failed to have a meaningful impact // Getty Images

As his skipper had so clearly articulated the previous evening when asked to explain his own extravagant demise, “you live by the sword, you die by the sword”.

READ: Clarke's summation of own dismissal

And Australia were once again bleeding profusely.

Clarke, Adam Voges and Peter Nevill applied some emergency first aid in a final session that was as gloomy as it was foregone.

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An away Ashes series win will elude Clarke again // Getty Images

But then the captain went in sad fashion to sadly predictable plans – a nasty short pitched ball that he narrowly ducked, leaden feet and indecision bringing him his first and only boundary as he bottom-edged an attempted leave, and then an aimed off-drive that deflected instead slip.

Clarke is dismissed after a juggled slips effort

Where Cook dropped the chance, only to knock it intuitively into the hands of Bell.

The luck, the game, the series and the Ashes were now as surely England’s as was another Australian wicket in a carbon copy to what had been already seen but flagrantly disregarded.

Nevill shoulders arms and is out lbw // Getty Images

Nevill duly delivered despite batting more than hour for 17 hard fought runs when – for the third time in his past four Test innings – he was caught in two minds as to whether or play or leave, and was so clearly lbw his call for a review was symbolic of a team that is bereft of all but hope.

That supply will be almost certainly snuffed out tomorrow, when England claim the Ashes on the back of consecutive three-day Test victories.

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Darren Lehmann watches on at Trent Bridge // Getty Images

A victory that will prove as emphatic for the home team as it has utterly blindsided the tourists.

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