Australia slump to 2-1 series deficit

Australia teams of the present and the recent past often speak about forging their own history, penning a chapter of their own words in the long and voluminous history of cricket.

Now that they are trailing 2-1 in a five Test Ashes series and coming to grips with one of the most efficacious if not emphatic defeats of this generation, they are left with no choice but to boldly go where no Ashes touring party has gone before.

That doesn’t mean they’ll be using the two days suddenly rendered spare in the schedule by the eight-wicket defeat inside eight sessions they suffered at Edgbaston recuperating with a few rounds of bingo at a Butlins beachside holiday camp at Bognor Regis.

Rather they will need to become the first Australia team in almost 80 years – and the only one to achieve the feat on British soil – to turn a 1-2 Ashes deficit into an urn-winning campaign.

While a drawn series would be sufficient to retain the Ashes, captain Michael Clarke reiterated at game's end that his team is aiming to come out winners – and the pace at which this campaign has been unfolding means a non weather-influenced no-result is about as likely as a day five lunch.

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Ian Bell and Joe Root embrace after clinching victory // Getty Images

The size of the task facing Clarke's side, not taking into account the manner and speed with which they were outplayed across two and a bit days in Birmingham, can be gauged by looking at the line-up of the most recent group to overturn such a deficit in the Australia summer of 1936-37.

It was littered with names that endure in Ashes folklore – Fingleton, McCabe, Oldfield, O’Reilly and Fleetwood-Smith – and captained by a bloke named Bradman who piled on 810 runs at an average of 90 (three centuries, two of them double-hundreds) in the five Tests that saw Australia come from 2-0 down to win the last three matches.

Australia’s skipper in the current series – Michael Clarke – has not yet reached a century (in aggregate, not just a single innings) and is averaging 18.80 three Tests into series that swung England’s way at Cardiff, back to Australia at Lord’s and now has the home team back on top.

In fact, only two of Australia’s batsmen have scored more across three Tests than the 270 Bradman managed in the second dig of the third match of that summer – more than Clarke’s team managed in either of their ventures to the crease in Edgbaston.

It’s not to suggest that Clarke carries the sole responsibility for lifting his team from its current shellshocked state nor that their current predicament can be laid at his once dancing feet.

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Michael Clarke ponders Australia's Ashes deficit // Getty Images

Rather it is to spell out in bold print the scope of the challenge that awaits them unless a player or three in the current XI can produce the sorts of effort that will ensure they earn a place alongside Bradman, Bob Massie, Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff as instant Ashes legends.

The defeat that arrived just before tea today was surprising not so much because it followed less than a fortnight after Australia’s 405-run win at Lord’s, but rather that it took so long to finalise given England’s superiority across the first six sessions.

To be skittled for 136 in less than 37 overs on the opening day might have been explainable because of the grass on the pitch and the clouds in the sky, but their batting effort yesterday cost them the game and potentially the series.

While the Australia tail more than doubled that second innings total, England were left with a fourth innings chase of 121 and the luxury of around 250 overs, bright sunshine and a pitch that had flattened out to be the best of the series for batting.

They duly romped to their deserved win for the loss of two wickets, with Ian Bell – a player who responded to the gauntlet thrown down to him to elevate himself to number three despite suffering a poor run of form – underpinning the pursuit with a sparkling, unbeaten 65.

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Bell acknowledges the crowd after posting another half-century // Getty Images

For 43 minutes this morning, Australians who dared flock to the ground or flick on their televisions and wirelesses on a chill winter’s evening were daring to dream.

But when the last of the tourists’ legitimate batsmen Peter Nevill fell after a fighting but ultimately futile 59 that had spanned more than three hours, 80 minutes longer than the aggregate time five of the specialist batters ahead of him had managed to hang around yesterday.

WATCH: Highlights of Nevill's half-century

Nevill’s inaugural Test half-century was meritorious for the value he clearly placed on his wicket, and the industrious manner in which he altered his instinctive game to drag Australia if not back into a match that had slipped from their grasp a day earlier, but at least beyond its mid point.

But such is the challenge for any player at international level, the England brainstrust had come up with a plan to remove the 29-year-old just three innings into his Test career.

After he cashed in on some initial waywardness from Steve Finn and Stuart Broad in the day’s first 10 minutes, the attack was changed to target Nevill’s hip in the belief he was getting so smartly across his crease that he was a candidate for a leg-side catch.

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Nevill celebrates his maiden Test fifty // Getty Images

It looked to have worked shortly after Nevill acknowledged the spirited applause for his 50, but the fact England had squandered their DRS reviews on the second day meant they did not have the opportunity to query the not out decision that would have showed the ball had brushed the batsman’s glove.

But it paid off in the next over, and Nevill’s unashamed decision to review the decision that ultimately confirmed he had made contact with the inside edge of his bat was a move of someone trying everything at his disposal to stave off defeat.

And therefore probably not deserving of the boos that followed him back to the pavilion.

The hour of resistance then fashioned by Mitchell Starc (58), Josh Hazlewood (11) and Nathan Lyon (12no) was both uplifting and depressing for Australia’s players and fans.

WATCH: Starc posts fifth Test half-century

Elevating because it characterised a doggedness than had been so dispiritingly absent in the batting over the first two days that for a while on Thursday afternoon it seemed the Test would not see a third.

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Mitchell Starc celebrates his fifty // Getty Images

Sobering because the lack of discomfort shown by Australia’s number nine, ten and eleven underscored not only how wasteful the batsmen above them had been in forfeiting the opportunity to be out there in such ideal batting conditions.

But also – even allowing for the fact England were a bowler shy because of the side strain suffered by James Anderson that seems destined to keep him out of the rest of the series – it highlighted how straightforward strokeplay could be with the bright sun and true pitch providing no favours for bowlers.

Quick Single: Anderson ruled out of fourth Test

As became apparent when England, having survived two largely unthreatening overs prior to a lunch break that a large portion of the packed crowd clearly spent oiling their singing voice, blazed a trail to victory in the hour that followed.

Not that it was a smooth motorway ride.

There were a couple of moments where detour and self-doubt arose in much the manner as any UK tourist finds when they opt to travel via the A-roads.

Alastair Cook could scarcely blame his bat-nav when it failed to negotiate one of the few fast, full deliveries that Starc landed on target in his opening spell.

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Cook is clean bowled by a Starc outswinger // Getty Images

Given it was the first ball he had faced from Starc in his team’s innings, it revived memories of the similar gem he copped first-up from Ryan Harris in the Perth Test of England’s forgettable Australia tour of 18 months ago.

This one pitched off stump, convinced Cook to stay on the crease in the belief the left-armer’s natural angle would push it into him only to see it curl oh-so-slightly away and crash the top of said peg.

But the remainder of Starc’s four-over opening salvo was littered with more raspberries than peaches as Ian Bell - egged on by his euphoric home town fans celebrating the unique happenstance of Midlands sun intersecting with a thumping Ashes win – decided this had become a T20 fixture.

Bell thrashed at anything wide, and dabbed at the ones pitched up in the apparent hope of collecting the 110 runs needed upon his arrival at the crease in the minimum number of strokes.

He should have been on his way for 20 (off just 11 balls) when he ran a ball from Starc off the face of his bat at shin height to the right of second slip, but Clarke spilled the chance despite getting both hands to it in what was a thumbnail sketch of his wretched Test.

WATCH: Clarke puts down a catch at second slip

Hazlewood, removed from the attack after a poor first over prior to lunch, then returned to pin Adam Lyth with the first ball of his new spell which will ensure England’s selectors have one other potential replacement to make when they consider their squad for next week’s fourth Test.

But these were but footnotes of mild interest in a script that had been writ, proof-read and sent off to the printers almost 24 hours before the winning runs were struck by England’s best batsman Joe Root, who clipped Mitchell Marsh to the square leg fence and then leapt as he punched the air.

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Lyth trudges off after another low score // Getty Images

A moment that triggered celebrations among the crowd to lift a further notch, satisfied smiles to be exchanged among a buoyant England and seven days of soul searching to begin for the Australians.

The next instalment of this impossible-to-predict, even-more-difficult-to-look-away soap opera will be played before a packed house at Trent Bridge starting Thursday.

Australia: David Warner, Chris Rogers, Steve Smith, Michael Clarke (c), Adam Voges, Mitchell Marsh, Peter Nevill, Mitchell Johnson, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Nathan Lyon

England: Alastair Cook (c), Adam Lyth, Ian Bell, Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler, Moeen Ali, Stuart Broad, Steve Finn, James Anderson

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