Emperor of Adelaide becomes Australia's new enforcer

If Travis Head's spectacular stand-in effort as opener in Perth didn't end Australia's long search for a dynamic new opener in the wake of David Warner's retirement, then surely today's Adelaide epic did.

Inside four entertaining hours on day three of the third Ashes Test, Head both demoralised a briefly reinvigorated England and added a new string to his attacking bow during his magnificent 142no: that of third-innings enforcer.

It is a role that Warner – and Matthew Hayden before him – turned into an art form.

England had owned the first session. After Thursday's pronouncements regarding the flatlining of Bazball, Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer instead turned their hands capably to the scrap, narrowing the first-innings margin to 85.

And when Jake Weatherald exited for a single before lunch, there was suddenly a feeling that this Test had life in it yet.

Which is where Head was decisive.

Flash your mind back a dozen years to the 2013-14 Ashes. Australia bat first in the opening three Tests and hold a healthy lead over England heading into the back half of each contest. In Warner, they have the ultimate front-runner; a fast-scoring confidence cricketer who likes nothing more than burying an opponent under a mountain of runs.

In three third-innings knocks, Warner goes 124, 83no, 112 – each time putting his side in a thoroughly dominant position from which they are not headed.

Until now, Head's role in Baggy Green had been altogether different. Another diminutive and aggressive leftie, he had instead been charged with scoring counter-punching middle-order runs. All eight of the Test hundreds he has scored from number five have been posted in the first half of a match.

Often he has been the man to lift Australia in their hour of need: for five of those eight centuries, he came to the middle with the score between 3-12 and 3-76.

And with much discussion around the challenging nature of pitches nowadays, and life in the top-order being tougher than ever, the theory – which quickly seemed to become the prevailing one – was that Test teams should be listing their best counter-attacking batter at five; allowing their top three to grind hard against the new ball, then letting their dasher dash. Think Head, Harry Brook, and Rishabh Pant.

All that went out the window in Perth. Head's remarkable 123 from 83 balls in an otherwise low-scoring contest either made a mockery of the theory, or left the 31-year-old in his own time and space as some kind of mind-bending outlier.

Australia's selectors were spared from making the hard call to drop Usman Khawaja in Brisbane when the veteran batter was injured, before ostensibly doing so in Adelaide. Khawaja was of course spared the axe when Steve Smith withdrew due to illness, but it said everything that even then, Head stayed up top.

It was a decision that was comprehensively vindicated today (even if Khawaja's own strong showings might have muddied the selection waters in a different way).

Head went to lunch on five from six balls, but was the dominant figure in the middle session, scoring 63 from 88 balls to inexorably move Australia into the box seat. Throughout, he survived short-ball attacks, and stacked fields on both off-side and on. None of it made a difference.

"They've been way too short to Travis Head," said Justin Langer on Seven. "Poor planning, and poor execution." 

On 99, he gave a life, but was spilled in the gully by Brook. Moments later, the applause he received – from the front row of the Adelaide Oval, right back to the nosebleed section – for a fourth hundred in as many Tests on his home patch gave rise to the growing theory that the moustachioed magician is Adelaide's most popular cult hero since the emergence of Hilltop Hoods.

Head filled the Warner role in India back in 2023 when the latter was injured, and in two third-innings efforts during that tour he scored 43 and 90. But this Ashes Test is just his second as Australia's full-time opener, and already he has shown he is readymade for the role.

The enforcer, foot-on-the-throat role seems especially well suited. Warner scored seven hundreds in the third innings of Tests, at a strike-rate of 79.40. Every time he was building on a first-innings lead. Every time Australia won the match.

And before Warner, there was Hayden. Another dominant left-handed opener, he scored 10 centuries in the third innings of a Test – more than any other Australian – at a strike-rate of 62.74. Seven times he was building on a first-innings lead, and only once (thanks to a world record chase) were Australia beaten.

Head's third-innings hundred count now stands at one. But for the new Aussie enforcer, that is unlikely to be where it ends.

2025-26 NRMA Insurance Men's Ashes

First Test: Australia won by eight wickets

Second Test: Australia won by eight wickets

Third Test: December 17-21: Adelaide Oval, 10:30am AEDT

Fourth Test: December 26-30: MCG, Melbourne, 10:30am AEDT

Fifth Test: January 4-8: SCG, Sydney, 10:30am AEDT

Australia squad (third Test only): Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Brendan Doggett, Cameron Green, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Michael Neser, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Jake Weatherald, Beau Webster

England squad: Ben Stokes (c), Harry Brook (vc), Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson, Shoaib Bashir, Jacob Bethell, Brydon Carse, Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Matthew Fisher, Will Jacks, Ollie Pope, Matthew Potts, Joe Root, Jamie Smith (wk), Josh Tongue