England’s finest bowling partnership may finally be running out of miracles

There are moments in every Test when you know everything’s in the balance, and the game is about to take a turn one way or the other in this very next stretch of play. Listen, and you can hear it in the crowd, look, and you can see it in the posture of the players. Here at Lord’s it came at 20 to one on Friday afternoon. The match had been slipping from England ever since Ollie Pope was caught out the previous evening, but had run through their fingers with alarming speed on Friday morning, when they lost six wickets for 46 in 15 overs of slapdash batting.

All out, and still the best part of 100 runs behind, England walked out for the third innings knowing this next spell was their last good chance of getting back into the match. The sky was rippled with heavy grey clouds, the wind was up, the floodlights were on and there was just a lick of drizzle in the air. It was a good time to be bowling. The crowd all around knew it too and fell a little quieter, as people shut up and leaned forwards eagerly in their seats, watching, waiting.

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Jimmy Anderson took the new ball with Stuart Broad, of course. It was the 253rd time they had done it, and the 44th here at Lord’s, where, as a pair, they’ve taken 178 Test wickets in the last 15 years. Broad turned 37 last weekend, Anderson will be 41 next month, and you have to wonder whether this was their last dance, and our final chance to watch them work together at the ground. They’ve heard, and read, similar things often enough before, and proved them wrong so often that it’s easy to forget it will still come true one of these days.

Anderson started, to Usman Khawaja, with a maiden from the Nursery End. From the pavilion Broad was bowling around the wicket to David Warner. He beat him with a delivery that broke down the slope, and the crowd roared in encouragement. In the next over, Anderson cut Khawaja in half with a ball that seemed to shape away before it hit the pitch and nipped back in towards him. It flew between Khawaja’s bat and pad, passed just by the stumps. Anderson threw back his head, and ran his hands through his hair. So close. So, so close. Just not close enough.

At the other end, Broad beat Warner once with a delivery that jagged back up the slope at him, and then again with another that cut the other way, Broad wheeled away, one hand raised in an appeal he would never finish. They were only millimetres away from the wicket they needed, but small as the gap was, it still seemed to be beyond them. There was a sense of strain about all this, of bowlers reaching for the breakthrough they needed, and a crowd waiting, wanting, for one of the players to spark into life, and set the game alight.

It didn’t happen. The moment came, and went again, like so many others have for England already in this series. They’ve got so used to someone or other working a miracle for them when they need it, it feels like they’re surprised to find there are times when no one does. Warner and Khawaja pressed on together, 30, 40, 50 runs. There was a gloomy futility about it all, if the England team have treated the last few months of Test cricket like one long weekend, this afternoon felt like the Tuesday after.

Anderson has taken three wickets for 203 in 71 overs so far in this series, and only one of them from Australia’s top six. That was Marnus Labuschagne, who he got with a wide long hop in his second spell here. Broad’s been better, especially in the first Test at Edgbaston, but watching him plug away at 80mph here it still feels like his knack for bullshitting the batsmen is doing a lot of compensating for his waning pace. At Lord’s the two of them have enjoyed the best bowling conditions of the match in both innings, but only taken three for 232 between them.

They’ve been bettered by two old pros up against them. Khawaja and Warner are both 36 (there can’t have been many matches in the history of Test cricket which have pitted four older opening bowlers and batsmen against each other). The contest between the four of them has been enthralling, but, for England, oddly enervating too, Khawaja, playing soft, late, and straight, and Warner, up on his toes, out of his crease, have sapped the life out of the attack in both innings. It’s telling that England’s rookie Josh Tongue, who has just that little bit more pace, dismissed them both in the first innings, and Warner again in the second.

As the afternoon wore on, there was an inescapable sense that something was coming to an end here while the crowd drifted away out back to the bars around by the nursery ground. Maybe it was the match, maybe it was the Ashes, and maybe it was the finest fast bowling partnership England have ever had.