Only two days in and already this series has contained enough drama, twists and turns for HBO to have commissioned it for a box set. If Wednesday brought mayhem under gloomy skies as the bowlers ran riot, the second sunlit day provided a cricket story of a kind unmatched as long as Test cricket has been played.
Barely 24 hours previously Ashton Agar, a teenager not even included among Australian pen portraits in the match programme, found himself a celebrated Australian.
A few minutes before midday Agar was the last man walking to the crease with his side having lost five wickets for nine runs in 32 balls to a rampant Jimmy Anderson and Graeme Swann. At 117 for nine they were facing not just a considerable first-innings deficit but defeat in the first Test.
Highest tail-end Test score
Two hours and 14 minutes later he pulled a Stuart Broad bouncer to deep midwicket to be caught by Swann and thus deny himself, by two paltry runs, an Ashes hundred, in his debut innings and batting at number 11. It is the highest score by a Test tail-end Charlie.
Agar did it in the company of Phil Hughes who played an intelligent, understated sidekick to the younger man’s ebullience, they obliterated by a dozen runs the previous record of 151 for the last wicket.
Agar drove and pulled. He belted Swann for six and then did it again for a second to go with a dozen fours.
There was a late-cut to bring the scores level so delicate he might have been patting a baby’s head. He even flamingoed the magnificent Anderson through midwicket in a manner that would have brought a smile to the lips of its master, Kevin Pietersen.
And as Swann took his tumbling catch, there was not a person in the ground who would have begrudged him a hundred. Agar just grinned endearingly.
The pair had transformed the match. They left England not with the lead they expected but 65 runs behind and by such things are sagging spirits lifted.
In mid-afternoon, in the afterglow, their Australian counterparts, so errant with the new ball in the first innings, came at England hard.
Joe Root was given out caught behind for five, having feathered Mitchell Starc down the leg side, and next ball Jonathan Trott, with one full and swinging in, was caught in front.
Thunderous vehemence
Starc and his compatriots roared their appeal with thunderous vehemence but Aleem Dar was unmoved. Trott indicated firmly to Alastair Cook he had managed the thinnest of edges. But Michael Clarke called for a review and, to general amazement and Dar's evident chagrin, the third umpire, Marais Erasmus, overturned the decision.
It took Cook (37 not out) and Pietersen (35 not out) to bat England through the final session without further mishap, adding 69 for the third wicket so they will resume on 80 for two, a lead of 15.
To win the match England might need another 240: to be comfortable 300 more. It will be no easy task for, while the pitch does promise to become awkward, the game has moved at an alarming rate so that there is two days' wear only. Australia still hold the upper hand.
Guardian Service
