Australia edge towards victory

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The home team’s mission to snatch back the terracotta urn was effectively completed in a brutal first hour of the fourth day at the WACA Ground, but the final paperwork was delayed by some belated middle-order defiance from England pair Ian Bell and Ben Stokes.

However, the equation that faces England heading into the final day of the third Commonwealth Bank Ashes Test is not so much daunting as preposterous.

To save the match, the bottom half of their already discredited batting order must survive 90 overs on a pitch that has come to resemble a relief map of the Ganges delta.

Those same unfortunate souls need to compile a further 253 runs to win it.

Even a fully-functioning Test batting line-up would refuse to take up that challenge.

And this fight was officially called shortly after tea when Kevin Pietersen added to his summer’s burgeoning lowlights reel and was dismissed for 45, with England more than 380 in arrears and considerably more in disarray.

Having batted for around an-hour-and-a-half, which seems to be his Test threshold these days, Pietersen tried to belt Nathan Lyon beyond the long-on fence for the second time in as many overs and perished to yet another outfield catch.

While it did nothing to reinforce England’s tired mantra of fighting it out to the end, it provided plenty of fodder for those who like to debate Pietersen’s appetite for Test cricket.

If yesterday saw the wheels finally come adrift from the England bandwagon as many of their former greats and current press corps adjudged, then this morning saw the dinged-up chassis come to rest in a fetid roadside ditch.

Under vicious and relentless assault from Shane Watson repeatedly and George Bailey briefly, the tourists were beyond humiliated.

They were ritually and remorselessly mocked, and made on numerous occasions within an extraordinary 78 minutes of batting brutality to resemble those pantomime clowns that proliferate the UK’s cultural landscape at this time of year.

England were repeatedly mugged and had 134 runs stolen from the 17 overs they delivered.

Watson was the ringleader in this larceny, bludgeoning 74 from just 42 balls including seven blows that scorched to the boundary and five that comfortably cleared it.

The savagery he inflicted on England’s shell-shocked off-spinner Graeme Swann represented another element of Australia’s clinical pre-series planning.

Their ambition to take down England’s strike bowlers has proved ruthlessly effective to the point where it’s debatable how quickly they can regroup and rehabilitate for the final two Tests.

Swann’s four overs this morning cost 41 runs as Watson motored to his fourth Test century and the first he has managed on home soil in almost four years.

England’s premier spinner now has just seven wickets at a grim average of 80 as the Australian batsmen repeatedly take the long handle to him at every opportunity.

England’s other main strike weapon, James Anderson, fared even worse in the morning‘s carnage and only had himself to blame, having failed to grasp a lofted chance offered by Bailey an over before the Australian declaration arrived.

Bailey celebrated by belting 28 from Anderson’s ultimate over to equal the record – set by West Indian legend Brian Lara against South African spinner Robin Peterson a decade ago – for the most runs conceded by a bowler in an over of Test cricket.

Anderson’s series return of seven wickets at 58.42 stands as a huge victory for Australia’s batting plans.

It also means that between them, Anderson and Swann have only equalled the scalps claimed by England’s best bowler, Stuart Broad, whose participation in the remainder of the series depends on his capacity to recover from the serious bruising he suffered to his right foot.

While scans revealed no fracture, Broad was luckily spared the embarrassment of having to bowl today and will be closely monitored in the lead-up to Boxing Day in Melbourne.

What’s unlikely to recover in the interceding days is England’s dented morale, after run-outs were missed, more catches dropped and even one that was taken – Tim Bresnan’s brilliant snare off Watson when he was on 90 – carried him over the boundary rope and showed as six runs in the scorebook.

The story of the Ashes series to date was then succinctly captured by the first ball of England’s notional pursuit of more than 500 for victory. Or around 160 overs for an equally unlikely draw.

Having watched, with mounting disillusionment, the Australians treat his world-class attack with a disdain normally dished out to teenage net bowlers, England captain Alastair Cook came to the crease knowing that surviving, if not prospering, was far from impossible.

It just needed someone, perhaps the skipper in his 100th Test, to craft a double hundred, even allowing for the fact no England batsman had managed to crack that mark as a series aggregate by the time their team’s second innings began.

He then received a ball that shattered that belief as well as rattled his stumps, when Ryan Harris landed his opening delivery in such a spot that Cook played from the crease and was therefore unable to counter the slight movement off the pitch that took it narrowly past bat’s edge and tickled the off bail.

While a golden globe is not the way Cook hoped to crown his milestone Test, it was emblematic of his campaign thus far.

And even for a game often described as one of inches, this tiny margin of error revealed a gulf between the team’s respective fortunes and capabilities that now gapes wider than the cavernous cracks running the length of the WACA pitch.