Clarke, Warner tons put England on the back foot
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After spending three months trying to convince critics that the last Ashes series was much closer than it looked, Michael Clarke’s Australian squad did everything they could to ram home the point against England in Brisbane yesterday.
Resuming at 65-0 and with a 224-run lead, Australia got centuries from Clarke (113) and David Warner (124) to lift its total to 401-7 before declaring with a 560-run lead, leaving England’s top order an hour to survive on day three.
Warner upped the ante after play by saying the England batsmen “look like they’ve got scared eyes”.
Pacemen Ryan Harris and Mitchell Johnson, aided by a cooling breeze and gloomy, gathering clouds, dismissed opener Michael Carberry (0) and No. 3 Jonathan Trott (9) to have England reeling at 10-2.
Alastair Cook (11) and Kevin Pietersen (3) combined to help England reach stumps at 24-2, but it could’ve been much worse.
Pietersen, in his 100th test and keen to get off strike against Johnson, took off for a quick single and almost had Cook run out with the total at 10.
There were shades of the first innings, when England lost six wickets for nine runs in 58 balls before eventually being skittled for 136, until Cook took control with some composed play in the last half hour of a day that certainly belonged to Australia.
Harris had almost instant success in England’s second innings when Carberry played a ball onto his stumps with the total at one. Trott played an irresponsible shot to pull a ball from Johnson directly to Nathan Lyon.
“We’ll take the third wicket tomorrow morning and hopefully we take the rest after that,” Warner said. “Our bowlers are bowling fast at the moment. England are on the back foot. The way that (Trott) got out was pretty poor and weak. Obviously there’s a weakness there and we’re on top of it at the moment.”
Clarke and Warner both started the series under pressure, and both responded emphatically in the second innings at the Gabba, where Australia hasn’t lost a test in 25 years.
Clarke was out just before tea after scoring his 25th test century and after sharing partnerships of 158 with Warner and 52 with George Bailey (34).
England has won the last three Ashes series and certainly isn’t out of contention at the Gabba, although history is against Cook’s team.
The biggest successful fourth-innings chase at the Gabba was Australia’s 236-7 against the West Indies in 1951. And the West Indies’ 418-7 against Australia in 2003 is the highest fourth-innings to win in more than 130 years of test cricket.
In the corresponding test of the 2010 Ashes series, England scored 517-1 declared after giving up a first-innings lead in the drawn first test. Cook scored an unbeaten 235 in that innings, which set England on course to win the urn on Australian soil for the first time in 24 years.
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