Instead, he lined up another expansive cover drive, only for Starc’s three-quarter-seam ball to deck in off the seam, take his inside edge and deflect onto his stumps. He doubled over his bat handle as Starc wheeled away, and the brief sense of relative calm had transformed into utter chaos. “Three identical strokes, pretty much the same length, same line, same result,” Michael Vaughan lamented on Fox’s commentary. Soon enough – and despite some unapologetic swiping from Gus Atkinson and Brydon Carse – Australia had run through the lower order, and Travis Head’s innings for the ages left England in the dirt. “I’m a little bit shell-shocked,” Ben Stokes reflected. “It’s a tough one, as we felt we were in control.”
