NICK FRIEND AND KISHAN VAGHELA AT THE OVAL: Australia passed up chances to dismiss Joe Denly and Jos Buttler in what was a long and heated day three for the visitors
Rarely can a piece of technology have been used so poorly. After Tim Paine was left ruing his misuse of the DRS system at Headingley, when an errant, panic-stricken review came back to bite him and his charges, the Australia captain assured the watching world that he and his side would learn from it.
They suggested that a new plan would be put in place to make use of an apparatus, whose sole raison d’etre centres on righting wrongs.
And then, Joe Denly was hammered on the back pad by Mitchell Marsh. There was such fervent panache to the allrounder’s appeal that the appearance of Marais Erasmus' index finger seemed a foregone conclusion.
Even when the authoritative South African shook his head with that bashful smirk of his, there had been such convinced ferocity in the initial appeal that a review would surely follow.
Australia, of course, would benefit from their new, well-considered use of the technology.
"We're trying our best to come up with a system that's better," Paine said after allowing Ben Stokes to escape at Leeds.
"And we can, I suppose, gather information on what different people are seeing on the field at the time and in that 15 seconds try to make a better decision than what we have been doing, but it's a little bit of trial and error."
When it came to it, however, Paine and Australia blinked again. The ball had thudded into Denly's back knee-roll – a barrier only to his stumps. Quite how an umpire as proficient as Erasmus missed it initially seemed unusual, but not as careless as a team that says it’s learnt. If that is the case, they've been reading the wrong manual.
Lightning often strikes twice, and so it did here when Nathan Lyon struck Jos Buttler's pad, only for Australia to decline the review again after Kumar Dharmasena had shook his head.
Once more, Australia were shown to be poor users of the system, and even Justin Langer could not believe the missed opportunities as he put his head in his hands.
Back to the drawing board again lads.
Australia were undoubtedly lacking a certain vibrancy throughout the day, yet verbal clashes, rather than duels between bat and ball, appeared to be their tactic in rectifying their lack of ebullience.
Matthew Wade's attempt to gee his teammates up went against the grain of the spirit of this series.
The Australian's relentless sledging towards Joe Denly and Joe Root, which although inaudible, was considered extremely unpalatable by Marais Erasmus and both the chatter and consequent retribution took a sizeable chunk out of an already slow start to the day for the visitors.
But laying down the law in his relaxed demeanour, Erasmus ensured there was nothing more than encouragement from the mouth of Wade after his disciplining.
"You can't have it all your own way," the response from Root, held resonance there.
But that wasn't the end of the verbal to-and-fros, with Steve Smith caught on the mic telling Denly after smashing Nathan Lyon down the ground: "It's an easy game when there’s no pressure on, eh?"
England responded in kind with the aggro, with Ben Stokes hurling unsavoury obscenities at David Warner, the retort to which was "ooh yeh, Bristol."
Not the finest moment for either side in disciplinary terms this series.
Mitchell Marsh had Joe Denly trapped lbw but Australia chose not to review
The Ashes retained, England deflated, Australia had the chance to rather rub it all in at The Oval. After winning the toss, that was the obvious intention: run through the home side’s batting, rack up a huge score on the best days for batting, knock over England once more to secure an innings victory.
As a plan, infallible. Except, though, Australia have been a shadow of their best. Catches have gone down with alarming regularity.
Marcus Harris split the webbing of his hand in shelling one straightforward chance at gully on Friday evening, while the normally faultless Steve Smith failed to hold on to a sharper chance to remove Ben Stokes.
That was the eighth chance to go to ground in this match alone. And when Marnus Labuschagne dived over a ball at cover – the kind that would never have slipped through during the clinical displays at Edgbaston or Old Trafford, the wheels on Australia’s Oval experience appeared to be off.
They were recovered late in the day when Smith took a stunner at slip to dismiss Chris Woakes and Labuschagne dived forward spectacularly to get rid of Jos Buttler, and despite their impressive nature, they appeared to come a little too late in the piece.
Nathan Lyon's three wickets were a bright spark in what was a largely dismal day for the Australians, and the intention was clear from the outset.
CricViz highlighted that midway through the afternoon session, 34 per cent of the offspinner's deliveries were going on to hit the stumps, above his series average of 26 per cent.
He eventually got his rewards for his stump-to-stump line with an absolute jaffa to dismiss Ben Stokes.
Rory Burns may have fallen to a wide one, and Joe Root may have been playing well outside off stump when he was caught at slip by Smith, but Lyon's accuracy and willingness to bowl to the batsmen's stumps was a notable feature of his bowling.
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Despite all the blows that he had taken during the day, there were very few deliveries that looked likely to dismiss Joe Denly.
It looked unlikely therefore that Peter Siddle would be the perpetrator of the England opener's demise, but a few skiddy deliveries later the Australian had his man.
Tim Paine had come up to the stumps to stop Denly advancing out of his crease, and it eventually paid dividens as, six away from a maiden Test hundred, the England opener fended one to slip when trapped on the crease.
It was an unfortunate end to an innings with an abundance of Test match batting application and determination, but after a difficult first innings, Siddle finally produced for his captain after a tight couple of preceding overs.
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