The Ashes Daily: England's Ashes hopes hanging by a thread after Australia's bowlers deliver masterclass. 

0:00One start that is from Crawley. Chris Wokes nails it for four. The Ashes alive and Test cricket alive. Ice in his veins.

0:09Nasser Hussain:Pat Cummins has led his team to a famous victory.

0:17Nasser Hussain:England's captain Ben Stokes. Well he is there. England have hope. Put the beer away, put the champagne on ice. 24 years of pain in Australia. Finally, they're beaten at home by England. Well, end of day two here in Adelaide. It has been a stifling hot day, 40 degrees plus, and the crowd wearily take themselves back over the bridge and into the city. Michael, we were there 24 hours ago, and we said today, and maybe tomorrow, was a day for England's top eight to deliver. They've certainly not done that on what is still a very good Adelaide pitch. Absolutely. First of all, it was an outstanding bowling performance from Australia today.

1:01Nasser Hussain:I know we'll get into the nitty-gritty of that. But England's top order, as you say, crumbled again either side of lunch. They lost three quick wickets then route just after lunch. and then it was left to Stokes really to be his defiant best but it was defiant and defensive as he had to be more than four hours of sweat and toil and we've all been there. I was looking at him for that last drinks break tonight and he's on one knee taking water on board, towel on his head to try and cool him down. He's got cramp because of the heat of the day and he's trying to do it alone with not much support. So it's the kind of path that a few England captains have trodden down the years here in Australia.

1:50Nasser Hussain:He arrived here in the country saying he wanted to join the select band of Ashes winning captains. That's looking increasingly further away. Not just the batting, which we will come on to. Mustn't forget how they went with the ball up front today. I mean, they were not very good, short and wide. And it led to that fallout between Stokes and Archer. Archer, as Ath said yesterday, was by far the pick of the bowlers. Five wickets, deserved it today. You know, shut up a few of the critics of him in Brisbane. But there was that moment where he bowled a short wide one and he got cut by Stark. And Stokes refused to change the field.

2:27And then he bowled straight. And there was that heated moment where Stokes basically said, I'm not setting a field for bad bowling. Bowl at the stumps, that's where I want you to do it. I think that was a good moment for Stokes to lay down to his whole bowling attack. We've not bowled well in this whole series.

2:44Nasser Hussain:Do you think, first of all, it was odd that Tong didn't get the nod over Kars at the start of the day? I mean, you know, the mop or whatever his nickname is, Rabbit Pie the mop, you know, the guy who cleans up the tail, who had been better than Kars yesterday. So I thought that was curious. And then obviously the moment, which, you know, captains always have those moments. don't they? But it was very visible right at the start of the day because England needed to take those two quick wickets, but they came out very lacklustre. It must have been what, five boundaries in the first two or three overs?

3:18Nasser Hussain:And, you know, Australia added those useful runs. Archer in the end picked up five, which was a deserved five because he was excellent yesterday and managed to get the last two today. So that's his first five for Intesse, what, for the last six years because of obviously the massive absence with injury. So that was good, but it kind of set the day off on the wrong note and the wrong tone. And then, actually, there were no initial signposts, were there? Because for once they got through Stark's opening spell, but then the pressure told as we got to lunch. Yeah, but they got to 37 for none. Crawley gets a decent delivery.

3:55He may look back and think, I could have left it on length.

3:57Nasser Hussain:I think that was a pretty good ball. Nipped away from him and he nicked it. and then you get Ollie Pope comes in at number three it's just so frustrating on such a good pitch he still looks a bit chaotic he was driving on the up to one that nipped back in nowhere near a drive length his head is falling over to the offside Lion comes on for his first over now they're 37 for one 40 for one what I want from my number three is either to put pressure back on like Ricky Ponting, Viv Richards, David Gower, those number threes, or to be like Jonathan Trott and silence the moment and just ease the dressing room and remind everyone they've got a wicket, but this is still a very good pitch.

4:40It strikes me as someone who doesn't do that. Way outside off, chips it to short mid-wicket. Now you're 41 for two on a flat one, and everyone's thinking, did we read this wrong? No, it's still a flat pitch, but we're making it look like it's a bit of a minefield.

4:53Nasser Hussain:I thought it was an agitated innings. He came out, as you say, with no sense of kind of calmness. You know, he looked frenetic. There was that horrible drive to Boland where he was very jerky at the ball. And it didn't come as much of a surprise, you know, when he chipped Lyon to mid-wicket. We should talk about Nathan Lyon before we get on to Ben Duckett's dismissal because obviously he was sore having been left out. The Gabba described it as an absolutely filthy kind of, you know, decision for him. So he probably felt he had a point to prove. Although whether you've got a point to prove with 562 test wickets, I'm not sure.

5:30Nasser Hussain:But it didn't take him long. Third ball. I thought it was good captaincy to bring him on early with a hard ball. And also because of what happened in the last game and here, especially at Adelaide, a ground he knows well. He gets the wicket. He equals McGrath. And then he bowls out. It was a very good ball. I think Duckett will look back on it and think, I could have played it better. But it was a very good delivery. And he goes past McGrath. 563 McGrath 500 of all other batters 63 of you I reckon I've been saving that line so it goes past him McGrath's putting his chair down in the BBC box and whatever I mean it's an incredible story for a finger spinner with a cookbook or a ball playing so much of his cricket in Australia I mean Shane the next on his list Shane was a genius a wrist spinner with just genius and a great cricket brain and everything about Shane here is a finger spinner with a cooker or a ball getting what 565 15 years ago was sat on the roller you know during that ashes test match of 2010 11 cutting the grass if you'd have said 15 years later this kid on the roller is going to have the second most wickets of any australian you'd have been laughed out of town um but he's been outstanding and he i thought was the key component of that attack today because it meant the skill and control that he had meant that Cummins could just operate his faster bowlers in very short bursts.

6:55Nasser Hussain:After that initial bit before lunch where they got the pressure on England's batters, the afternoon session when it was roasting hot, 40 degrees as you say, it was essentially short, sharp spells with Lyon doing a lot of bowling from one end. Just on that Duckett dismissal, I think he made it look a better ball than it was. It was a really good ball because it drifted and from the angle it obviously spun to straighten. but it's the drift that has done Duckett there because as the ball drifts in, he kind of, his bat then, instead of going on a straight play and almost magnetically follows the drift.

7:28Nasser Hussain:And I think if he edges that to slip, I'd say fair enough. I don't think he should have been bowled from that ball. It's also a little bit because of modern DRS. We will get into that as well. Our little genius of thought would have played that with bat and pad together, get past that. You have to play it with your bat and if it does just straighten, and it can go past that bat. It was a pretty decent delivery and now England are a bit of trouble. But you hit the nail on the head there. Lyons doing him a role that Will Jacks couldn't do. It's an unfair comparison. Part-time spinner, batter who bowls a bit of offspin to one of the great offspinners that's ever played the game.

8:04But he can hold up an end and a length and control, rotate the others. There's going to be so much focus. I don't know what you've written about tonight, but there's going to be so much focus on England's batting. What I got from today and a lot of the series is they've been given a masterclass on how to bowl.

8:22Nasser Hussain:There will be focus on batting because inevitably we kind of focus on the England aspect of the day. But, you know, people ought to and will talk about the bowling side of it. You know, they've got 800 plus wickets coming back into the side, Cummins and Lyon. I mean, Cummins was pretty much straight away into his groove, wasn't he? And that brilliant ball to Zach Crawley. But you're absolutely right. Nathan Lyon was key because he just allowed the others to rotate. But how many cut shots did you see today? Hardly see a cut shot. Yesterday, England got cut to ribbons, square the wicket. So their discipline, accuracy, relentlessness of the fast bowlers alongside the skill and variety that Lyon as the off spinner and start left armory.

9:07Nasser Hussain:They're both fast all day, actually, in these hot conditions. their attack was just head and shoulders above England's yesterday Archer apart who obviously was outstanding and then come T just as Harry Brooks kind of got himself in he played pretty well I thought he played that one expansive cover drive for six but that was you know he'd got himself in 30 odd balls before he played and that's his shot but then just before T not only have the rest of the bowlers bowled really well together Cummins can then call upon Cameron Green, who's fresh. And I thought that was a good ball that Harry Brook got.

9:44It did, right up. And every decision Cummins made was paying off. Line comes on two wickets. He himself straight into the attack, bowling beautifully. Brings Cameron Green first over. Little Jaffa that nipped away. Can I just ask you about England's batting? You said before the game, don't move away on flat pitches what has worked for you. Do you think they did move away? or do you think it was the relentless pressure that Australia applied or do you think England could have gone back? I mean, it's so easy when they are basballing and getting out, we criticise them and when they're trying to be defensive and then they get out, we're criticising them again.

10:22Nasser Hussain:Yeah, I mean, that's a kind of tricky question to answer definitively because you have to know what's inside their heads as they're out in the middle. But I do think the principal consequence was just the pressure that Australia put on them. top-class bowlers giving you nothing to hit. You know, pitch is a goodish, pretty flat pitch, the kind of pitch where England have been very aggressive on in the past. But who was giving them anything to hit, unlike yesterday where England were bowling, you know, a bad ball every over from the other seamers apart from Archie. So I just think it's pressure, pressure, pressure, and in the end that pressure toll.

10:56I go back to what Steve Smith, Steve Smith did that interview before a ball was bowled in the ashes. And he said, just watch out, the last few years, and this is a flat pitch, but the last few years it's been about skill in Australia and not about pace. Do you think England have just read it wrong? They've picked a side obsessed. We've heard what Rob Key has had to say about pace and I'm not interested in bowlers who don't bowl 85 plus mile an hour. Do you think they've been obsessed by pace and not skill?

11:25Nasser Hussain:Well, I think you do need to bowl. I spoke to quite a lot of the bowlers from previous successful test matches here in Australia. And even somebody like Tim Bresnan, who's thought to be a kind of classic English style seamer. You know, I spoke to him. He said, you know, in that series in 2010, we're still bowling with reasonable heat. We're probably around about the 84, 85 miles an hour. So they're not like dobbers. You know what I mean? I think I think you need the combination of accuracy, skill, but you need to bowl with a bit of heat. I don't think you can be a kind of kiss-the-surface English-style seamer and expect to do well here.

12:03Nasser Hussain:So it's that combination. But England haven't been accurate enough or disciplined enough for long enough, and that's been costly for them. And Stokes, the Stokes innings, I mean, in the past, he would have once, they got six down. He had maybe put his foot down, but he was struggling with cramps. I don't think he could have done, so he just sort of dug deep. and once he's made the speech he did before the game where he wants fight and character and dog, he certainly showed that in abundance. Well, he did. He said, you know, keep looking your opponents in the eye. There was a very obvious example of that early on when he got a very nasty blow to the back of the head, actually, from Mitchell Stark.

12:41Nasser Hussain:But he just stood there looking at him when Mitchell Stark was saying, are you all right? Are you all right? He didn't take his helmet off until he'd stared the bowler out. So, yeah, it was a very defiant innings. I think you're right. even if he'd wanted to go change gears at the end of the day, he'd just look cooked in 40 degree heat. So he was determined to be defiant and be there at the end, which he is. And Joffre Archer gave him good support for that final hour or so. So I was just coming down the escalators with a bunch of Aussies, which is not the great thing to do on a day like today.

13:12Nasser Hussain:But the guy said, the pulse is still beating. And you kind of feel it's beating, but pretty weakly. But it's good that he's there and he showed great defiance. I mean, there were some controversies today, though, again, weren't there? Joe Root, there was that and the Jamie Smith going back to DRS again, which seems to be creating a lot of kind of heat and debate in this game, almost as if there's been a little bit of confidence lost in the system. Complete confidence lost in the system. I think the players have lost confidence. There was one moment with the Jamie Smith, the first Jamie Smith one, where he clearly gloved it right in front of his eye.

13:47And the third umpire was just checking if Khawaja had caught it. Now, that was, it looked like it was probably bump ball. It didn't look like it carried. So, but the whole, I think Stark or someone you could hear on Stunt Mike say the system is broken. The system is rubbish. And he's right, because once you lose faith in the system, then the crowd, viewers, third umpire doesn't know. I said to you last night, once you lose faith in technology, like VAR in football, once that goes, everyone is questioning everything. And you could see that with the next Jamie Smith one, where, again, he's played a pool shot.

14:20And no one knows if it's synced, not synced, and the reaction of Jamie Smith and Ben Stokes themselves.

14:26Nasser Hussain:There are a couple of confusing things there because the umpire didn't actually give it out on the field. And he sent it upstairs to check whether the ball has carried. Now, once he's done that, it's almost as if he's given it out because obviously why would you send it upstairs to be carried, whether it carried if he didn't think he'd hit it. Once it's gone upstairs, obviously the umpire checks everything. He checks the catch and he checks the edge on the basis that it has been given out, even though the umpire hasn't given it out, and then Smith obviously can't review. Anyway, I happen to think there was probably an edge there, but again, it seemed to be the frame difference this time rather than the very big difference that we had yesterday, which is part of the protocol.

15:08I think they need to change because I do think players, fans, viewers have lost faith in the system. Now, whether they can use Ultra Edge, which is a Hawkeye tool, where the hotspot can be reintroduced because that clears things up. It's quite expensive.

15:21Nasser Hussain:Not in 40 degree heat, I'm not sure it does. But it's also very expensive. But I think they've lost faith in the present system. By the way, this is not us whinging. I think across the board, I think Australia have suffered, England have suffered, I think viewers have suffered. So a difficult day. What hope for England? Well, the problem is, as we intimated yesterday when we said it's time for two days of batting for England because you've got to get ahead of the game. We've just seen what Nathan Lyon's done on a second-day pitch. If England trail by 150 and they have a brutal day in the field again, then you're left really chasing the game on the end.

15:59Nasser Hussain:Fifth day, there's a bit of rain forecast, but you have to be unlucky to have a rain to prevent you pushing for a win in Adelaide. But they're going to be so far behind the game with Lyon in the team. That's a long way behind. So it was time to get ahead of the game on first innings. And it looks like they're not going to be able to do that. And that's probably going to cost them. And a couple grip there for Lyon, as in a few just dusted. And with this heat, you'd expect that. It really is, if Australia can bat, I don't know, three sessions, four sessions, you're probably talking about the Ashes drifting away.

16:34Although, you know, the faint hope is the one time England have, or a few times that England have been really successful, is those last innings chases where no one gives them a chance. They seem to be better. But day four at Adelaide.

16:47Nasser Hussain:They seem to be better with a kind of target to aim at. Whether that either focuses the mind or whatever. They seem to be better with a target to aim at. Are they too mentally scrambled to do that? Well, I think this attack, in the end, is probably too good for that. Remains to be seen. Famous last words and all that. But blimey, they've been so good today. You know, variety, stark left arm, brilliant offspin, relentless accuracy from Cummins and Boland, a bit of green to freshen things up. So they've just been relentless and really good. And yeah, excellent attack. It's been a pattern in this series, actually.

17:29England have had a good day, but then can't follow it up on day two. It happened in the last game. It's happened here. and they can't afford another bad day because their ashes hopes are literally hanging by a thread. They're going to need a miracle.

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