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In the end, the only tension was whether Brisbane’s rain would descend before Australia could knock off the last 32 runs in the final session, and so whether going 2-0 up in the Ashes would be delayed until the fifth day. It turned out that England’s resistance through the light of the afternoon had only dished up some evening entertainment for home fans, with Travis Head able to put on a brief show in dispatching the pink ball over the fence before he headed back the same way.
And still. Through the longest partnership of the series so far, 221 balls on the hottest day of the second Test, Ben Stokes and Will Jacks made Australia work in the field, something that was perhaps worth doing for the simple fact of proving that it can be done. With Mitchell Starc tiring after leading the line all series, the contest became a grind. What it reflected about Australia’s bowling makeup was instructive.
One such observation is that unfairness has different kinds. Australia’s selectors thought it would be unfair to leave out Brendan Doggett after a Perth debut in which he did what the team asked and picked up a few wickets along the way. He got his second cap here, but also the continued unfairness of having to keep doing what the team asked. Namely, be the short-ball guy.
Doggett has pushed his way into the side by being an opening bowler who pitches the ball up and gets a bit of help from the surface. On getting here, he’s now a first-change bowler whose second and third spells involve whacking the thing halfway down. He’s not especially quick, not especially menacing, and there are a dozen other quicks in the country who could do the same job. The nice line fed to players on receiving a Test cap is to keep on doing the same thing that got them there. Doggett is the one who is not allowed to follow the advice.
After too many overs of this stuff – overs where a quality spinner would have been of assistance, had one been picked – the ability to force change came from another hitherto modest contributor. Michael Neser is not anyone’s idea of the glamour athlete. He’s a guy who rolls up to work looking like Jean Valjean, cropped hair and scruffy beard belonging to the prison-galley era rather than the mayoral sequel. On this day, he did haul Australia bodily through the sewer to clear air.
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Neser is a triumph of modesty. Where Nathan Lyon was spitting chips on live television over being left out for one Test match, Neser has been left out for years. This was his third match in four Australian summers, all of them day-night fixtures, while sitting on the bench through untold numbers of squads and camps and second XIs. He has always been good enough to play, but never good enough to push past the four bigger, taller, flashier quicks. Through this frustration, at least publicly, he has never said a word.
So Neser knows about waiting for things to break his way, and set about doing exactly that on his first outing at his home ground. His singular quality is consistency, honed from a first-class debut in 2010 to his most high-profile moment on Sunday. His pitch map was more laser pointer than scatterplot. He hit the same length, gave no drives, no leg-side width to glance, and decked the ball subtly enough to draw mistakes.
No matter how long Stokes and Jacks batted, Neser was a chance. First he distracted them via a long delay, striking Stokes a painful blow to the box off an inside edge. Soon afterwards came the outside edge from Jacks, allowing Steve Smith to pull off a stunning catch at slip. Then the killing blow, with England 60 in the lead: the sublest movement away from Stokes, the edge, and the wicketkeeper standing up to the stumps for a fine take that might not have carried standing back.
To that point, across eight overs in the day, Neser had conceded 10 singles. Brydon Carse took a two and a three before becoming the bowler’s fifth wicket, taking Smith at slip past Rahul Dravid’s longstanding mark of 210 Test catches, and gaining on Joe Root as the current leader with 213. Given Australia have been taking 20 wickets to England’s 11 or 12 so far, the rest of the series gives Smith a strong chance to go top.
It is a day that Neser has earned and will never forget: five for 42 in an Ashes win. It may also be his final act in Test cricket. Lyon and the regular captain, Pat Cummins, are scheduled to return for Adelaide, with Mitchell Starc and Scott Boland the other picks if fit. Neser may have gone past Doggett as the next reserve if injury strikes again, but fairness to either of them in this regard would mean unfairness to the other. In this position, all a player can do is celebrate the moments they do get, however few, and this long hot afternoon when nobody else could find a way through will always be Neser’s, a career summed up in a day.
