Cummins and co come up short as hapless Australia disappear from view | Geoff Lemon

Pat Cummins has endured two of his worst days as Australia captain, with the tourists left hoping for weekend rain

You can start with pure numbers. Once in Test history has a team made a bigger score at a faster rate. In a world of obscure stats that one offers clarity. In Manchester on Friday, England made 592 runs at 5.49 an over. The team to better this mark was England again, pretty much the same team, eight months earlier, with 657 runs at 6.50 against Pakistan. That time it had been a calculated plan to create a chance to win on the flattest track imaginable in Rawalpindi. This time was about using an opportunity that gradually took form as Australia disappeared.

It will be crowned as the pinnacle achievement of the Bazball era. Ashes on the line, ascendancy required, ruthlessly taken. It’s an interesting quirk then that most of the third day was not truly Bazball style. The third chapter did have Jonny Bairstow looting sixes and fours while farming the strike. That is also the kind of declaration batting you see after one team has ground the other down, like Rishabh Pant and Ravindra Jadeja slaying boundaries around the SCG in 2019, the last time that Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood each went for more than 100 runs in an innings.