Bairstow-led England show guts on bruising day

It says much about England's Vodafone Ashes campaign that after their two bravest individual efforts of the series to date and with all the good fortune that previously avoided them shoe-horned into a single day, they remain in a tough spot in the fourth Test.

On the back of heroic knocks from injured warriors Ben Stokes (side strain) and Jonny Bairstow (damaged thumb), England fought back from a dire 4-36 at lunch today to finish 7-258 with Bairstow unbeaten on 103 having his reached his ton in the day's final over.

However, the tourists remain 158 runs in arrears on a difficult batting pitch with the forecast for up to 20mm of rain in Sydney tomorrow afternoon looming as their best hope of avoiding a 0-4 series scoreline heading to next week's final Test in Hobart.

Australia's ascendancy might have been far more pronounced had they not squandered several chances in their least tidy fielding display of the summer, and had Stokes innings ended on 16 when bowled by Cameron Green not offering a shot but the bails remained somehow unmoved.

That moment, which left most onlookers stunned and Stokes giggling in disbelief, would have reduced England to 5-57 in pursuit of Australia's 9(dec)-416 but instead it heralded a rare wicketless session and then Bairstow's century, the first by an England batter on this tour.

It was a triumph for the right-hander who was overlooked for both keeping duties and a batting berth at the start of the series, but since replacing Ollie Pope in Melbourne last week has appeared as accomplished as any of the England batters against Australia's dominant attack.

The tourists' cause was further aided by injury to Australia's new pace-bowling destroyer Scott Boland, who claimed 2-0 in the morning session but lost his footing in delivering the final ball before tea and crashed heavily to the pitch, landing with all his body weight on his right arm.

Boland was taken for scans during the final session, but was cleared of injury and returned to the field late in the day.

By that stage, Bairstow was within one belligerent strike of his seventh Test century and his second in Australia making him the only member of England's squad to have posted multiple hundreds in their Ashes rival's backyard.

It seemed the sometimes wicketkeeper might be forced to retire hurt on 60 when he a steeply rising ball from Pat Cummins struck him so violently on the right thumb it bent the digit sharply back off the bat handle.

But not only did the 32-year-old continue batting after some medical treatment, he launched a savage counter-attack that yielded sixes from the bowling of Nathan Lyon and Cameron Green in the ensuing overs.

In doing so, Bairstow threatened to outdo Stokes with whom he shared a 128-run fifth-wicket partnership and who teammate Stuart Broad had asserted last night was "one of the toughest blokes I've ever met, the toughest cricketer I've ever met".

Stokes was in more immediate and obvious pain throughout his two-and-a-half-hour stay at the crease due to the side strain he suffered while bowling yesterday, which was further compounded by a couple of body blows he also took from an SCG exhibiting increasingly erratic bounce.

Stokes grimaced with each swing of his bat and took 16 deliveries to score his first run, but lived up to Broad's billing by clubbing three consecutive boundaries off Mitchell Starc and joining with Bairstow in targetting Lyon.

Australia's record-breaking spinner saw his first 7.5 overs go for 51 runs before he slid a quicker arm ball past Stokes's bat and the England all-rounder essentially gave himself out when struck on the back pad in front of his stumps at which point he started walking off without looking up.

It seems unlikely Stokes will bowl again in this match, and his availability for the final Test remains in doubt along with Bairstow and current keeper Jos Buttler who copped a blow to his left index finger yesterday, with third-string gloveman Ollie Pope honing his skills during play today.

Australia's keeper Alex Carey experienced his own issue today when he grassed a chance off opener Haseeb Hameed which did not prove costly, but with a touch catch put down at short-leg by Marcus Harris and a sharp return catch turfed by Cummins it added up to the hosts' most profligate day of the series.

However, those missed opportunities were heavily overshadowed by the remarkable moment had Stokes had his stumps shaken but not stirred.

It was the first ball of Green's second spell, and although he hadn't quite worked up his usual 140kph head of steam, he might still have reasonably expected the bail to fall given the ball deflected appreciably and carried on the full to Carey standing at least 15m back.

Not only did the wicket remain intact, the much-replayed incident also sounded the death knell for one of the game's more overworked cliches - 'there's only two types of leaves ...'.

Alongside the 'good leave' and 'bad leave' as per that hackneyed truism, there is now the 'I don't be-leave' as exemplified by Stokes who visibly laughed and slapped a hand to his helmeted head when a replay was shown on the SCG's giant video screen.

The secret to such sorcery was essentially revealed when David Warner tapped curiously at the offending peg while Stokes's review of umpire Paul Reiffel's 'out' the decision – presumably for lbw, given no shot was played – was underway, only for it to stand resolutely still despite the buffeting.

A clue as to how heftily the wickets had been driven into the turf had been provided in the day's fifth over when Starc slammed a delivery at even greater velocity flush into the middle stump of Haseeb Hameed, who was also ostensibly not playing a recognisable stroke.

While the bails at that moment exploded into the air like Sydney's new year fireworks, the stump itself rocked back barely 10 degrees showing far greater defiance and resilience than England's miserably out of form opener who must surely be rested from the final Test for his own wellbeing.

Hameed's series return of 71 runs from seven innings (average 10.14) makes him the least successful visiting opener to play a Test series in Australia with a minimum of five knocks since England's Geoff Cook managed just 54 (average 9.0) in three Tests of the 1982-83 Ashes.

Although to be fair to Cook, he was dropped after his first pair of failures in Brisbane but reinstated for the final two Tests after his Chris Tavare proved even more abject against the relentless pace of Rodney Hogg, Geoff Lawson, Carl Rackemann, Terry Alderman and Dennis Lillee.

And in the wake of his Ashes disaster, Cook never again represented England in Tests.

Not that Hameed can be the fall guy for another England top-order capitulation that saw them crash to 4-36 at the end of today's delayed opening session, with three of those wickets falling on the lunch score.

Either side of that interval, Australia sent down almost 12 consecutive overs from which not a run was scored – only marginally fewer than the 17 maidens England could produce in total during their only innings on a bowler-friendly pitch at the MCG last week.

But that period was scarcely devoid of action given it cost England the wickets of their most competent and productive batters as well as Zak Crawley whose series return of 35 runs from three innings (average 11.66) does not see him qualify for either of the aforementioned categories.

Yet it was his removal – bowled through the gate offering a similarly airy forward push to his opening partner's – that paved the way for the dismissal of England's series leading runs scorer Root (0) and their next-best Dawid Malan (3).

Only recently deposed as the world's top-ranked batter, Root has been claimed in his past two innings by Test rookie Boland whose first four overs today yielded 2-0 after his extraordinary 6-7 on the frantic final morning at the MCG.

While the Melbourne breakthrough came when England's skipper nicked off trying to defend, today's was brought about by Root's repeated weakness outside off stump in Australia where he tries to punch balls backward of point only to be undone by additional bounce.

It took a stunning snare from Steve Smith, plucking the ball out of the low overhead cloud as it fizzed above his head, but Root returned a disconsolate figure to the England rooms with a duck against his name and an ever-greater burden on his shoulders.

That only weighed heavier in the next over, the last before the lunch break, when Green further punctuated the sequence of dot balls with Malan's wicket.

It was canny captaincy from Cummins who, in the previous over, had stationed a catcher at leg slip with Boland opting to operate around the wicket to the clearly inconvenienced Stokes.

When Green took up the same line of attack to fellow left-hander Malan, and immediately softened him up with a couple of stinging blows to the gloves off deliveries that leapt from outside off stump, it was seemingly inevitable Malan would tuck one around the corner in self-preservation.

That was where Usman Khawaja was lurking, completing another neat catch to help balance the ledger or earlier fielding lapses and leave England needing some innings of rare skill and courage to resurrect their position and get them back in the game.

Vodafone Men's Ashes

Squads

Australia: Pat Cummins (c), Steve Smith (vc), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Marcus Harris, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Nic Maddinson, Michael Neser, Jhye Richardson, Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Swepson, David Warner

England: Joe Root (c), James Anderson, Jonathan Bairstow, Dom Bess, Stuart Broad, Rory Burns, Jos Buttler, Zak Crawley, Haseeb Hameed, Dan Lawrence, Jack Leach, Dawid Malan, Craig Overton, Ollie Pope, Ollie Robinson, Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood

Schedule

First Test: Australia won by nine wickets

Second Test: Australia won by 275 runs

Third Test: Australia won by an innings and 14 runs

Fourth Test: January 5-9, SCG

Fifth Test: January 14-18, Blundstone Arena

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