Australia v England Test, Day Three Report Card

Featuring insectoid lifestyles, battles of the sexes and thrillingly close innings victories

Insectoid Lifestyles
Grade: D-

Beth Mooney was on strike for the first over of the day, facing up to Sophie Ecclestone, needing just two runs for her century. Instead, she played and missed, contemplated suicidal singles and otherwise made the gathering of those milestone-securing runs seem positively Sisyphean.

Why not simply edge it to a fielder, who'll drop it, and get the runs that way, you might be asking. Alas, this seemed to be a common sense solution belonging to perhaps a bygone era (ie, yesterday).

For, suddenly, the England women had abandoned their go-to tactic of refusing to hang on to a single catch that came their way. Let’s mix it up and see what happens was their new way of thinking.

And so, shortly after Mooney brought up her century, making her the first Australian woman to score hundreds in each of the three forms of international cricket, the Australians immediately suffered a batting collapse.

(The three men who’ve completed the Test, ODI and T20 International hundred triple are Shane Watson, Glenn Maxwell and David Warner. Who among us wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall at a casual cafe get-together of that trio plus Mooney? Well, maybe not a fly on the wall - let’s not sacrifice our integral humanity in favour of some Goldblumian insectoid lifestyle merely to indulge in some eavesdropping of four ton-diverse Australian cricketers, no matter how comically mismatched they might be. That way lies madness.

Sorry, what was I talking about?

Oh, yes. The England women started taking their catches, and despite the magnificent Australian trolling of sending in Ellyse Perry at ten, Australia were all out for 440. The final collapse was 5 for 9, like some kind of Bizarro-Dolly Parton song.

Battles of the Sexes
Grade: B

Meanwhile, over in Sri Lanka, the Australian men had inflicted an equally catchy reversed-pop-single-and-major-motion-picture collapse on Sri Lanka, and enforced the follow-on.

Now, we had a proper match-up for both these Australian sides. Forget England. Forget Sri Lanka. No, the real contest was over which of the two Australian sides would complete their innings victory first.