Ben Duckett falls before lunch as Australia progress towards Ashes victory
The tourists were left chasing a world record 435 to avoid going 3-0 down in just 10 days of cricket.
Ben Duckett succumbed to his second ball as England’s batting woes continued to drag them towards abject Ashes defeat in Adelaide.
The bowlers produced their best collective performance since the opening day of the series to snap up Australia’s last six wickets for 38 runs, but that still left them chasing a world record 435 to prevent going 3-0 down in just 10 days of cricket.
Bowling out the hosts for 349 left them with two overs to bat before lunch on the fourth morning and, with grim inevitability, Duckett prodded Pat Cummins haplessly to slip at the start of the second.
For those harbouring hopes of the most unlikely magic trick of the fading Bazball era, it was an instant reality check. They will resume at five for one, hoping to merely to take the game into a fifth day.
Earlier, their pace attack had relocated its mojo, spearheaded by two wickets for Josh Tongue, who finished with four for 70, and two in two balls for Brydon Carse. Ben Stokes picked up one for 26 in a seven-over spell, having been too fatigued to bowl at all on day three, and Jofra Archer finished things off with his sixth of the match.
It was a brief reminder of how England had envisioned things unfolding when they put this attack together but it was hard to escape the feeling that too much damage had already been done.
Australia had started 356 ahead and every run only increased the scale of the ask. Their top chase Down Under, 332, had already been surpassed and their top Ashes chase of 362 – Stokes’ 2019 miracle of Headingley – quickly followed.
England’s biggest ever fourth-innings pursuit, 378 against India in 2022 was next to go, and the West Indies’ world record of 418 also came and went.
Australia were bundled from 311 for four to 349 all out but that only hastened the arrival of England’s increasingly dysfunctional top order.
After Duckett’s latest failure, he now has 97 runs in six innings at an average of 16, Zak Crawley was left to time waste at the end of the session in a slapstick back-and-forth with Cummins. It almost concluded with the Australia captain taking Crawley’s outside edge with the delayed final ball before lunch, leaving the home side chuckling as they left the field in complete control.
