Australia 295 (Haddin 94, Johnson 64, Broad 6-81) and 65/0 (Rogers 15*, Warner 45) lead England 136 all out (Johnson 4-61) by 224 runs

What the f...??

Are you Pakistan in disguise? The last eight wickets fell for 54 runs. The middle 5 fell for 7 runs in less than 8 overs, the middle 6 for 9 in less than 10. England started batting before lunch, and when the last wicket fell there were still 25 overs left in the day.

There was an overwhelming smorgasbord of depressing statistics generated during England’s ludicrous collapse. I’m not going to try and provide any context, or indeed any further analysis at all, I’m simply going to list them in the order I scribbled them down before my brain imploded at about 8 am. Also there are far too many links to provide you with one for each stat, so you’ll have to trust me I'm afraid.

• There hasn’t been an England opening partnership of more than 50 in the first innings of any of the last fourteen series, going back to January 2012.

• They have only passed 300 twice in the first series of any of the last 9 series, both of which were at home in the summer of 2012. Of the remaining seven, only two even passed 200.

• Given this paucity of runs, it will come as no surprise that they haven’t won the first Test of a series away from home since they toured Bangladesh way back in March 2010, which incidentally saw the debuts of Steven Finn and Michael Carberry and the captaincy debut of Alastair Cook.

• Perhaps most alarmingly, they haven’t passed 400 in any innings at all since January 2012. In that time, against the best bowling attacks (those belonging to Australia, Pakistan and South Africa) Alastair Cook has averaged 28, Jonathan Trott 30 and Kevin Pietersen, despite two magnificent hundreds, 32. Their career averages are 47, 49.9 and 48 respectively.

• Continuing on the Cook/Trott/Pietersen malaise theme, in the last five completed Tests and the first innings of this one Cook has averaged 26 with a highest score of 62, Trott 27 with a high of 59 and Pietersen 36, which without the aforementioned 113 would have been 27.5.

Basically, Ian Bell deserves a knighthood, the key to every city in England and his own weight in platinum.

Good ball, bad shot
Strap in, everyone, it’s going to be a long and ugly ride.

Ryan Harris, c Prior b Broad 9, 282-9: An attempted leave, but it was on him too quickly. A well-deserved sixth wicket for He Who Must Not Be Named (although the similarities between he and Ralph Fiennes very much end there).

Brad Haddin, run out (Carberry/Prior) 94, 245 all out: Michael Carberry might not get many twos run to him from now on, although Prior deserves a lot of credit for a super take. Haddin’s approach to batting with the tail was a little confused, alternately slogging wildly and taking singles seemingly at random, and in truth he never had a hope of making his ground.  

Lyon’s defensive technique should probably have earned him more trust than Haddin showed him, but this was a fine knock which rescued Australia from embarrassment. Incidentally Haddin became only the third man in Ashes history to be run out in the 90s, after Tom Hayward at the turn of the 20th century and more recently a certain Sky employee and former Future England Captain.

Before the tour, England would have viewed bowling Australia out for less than 300 at the Gabba after losing the toss as a potential high point of the series. As it turned out, they were right, but not in the way they or anyone else expected.

Alastair Cook, c Haddin b Harris 13, 28-1: The only normal dismissal of the innings. Harris used the crease well throughout his first spell and eventually found the perfect line to Cook, and not for the first time – since his 148 at Adelaide in 2010, Cook’s record against Harris has been dire (73 runs at 14.6 to be precise). It may have just held its line a little which helped.

Jonathan Trott, c Haddin b Johnson 10, 55-2: Talk about jumpy. Much like Michael Clarke, he has to find a method to deal with the barrage of bouncers he is sure to receive or risk becoming an irrelevance for the rest of the series. And Trott doesn’t even have a dodgy back he can blame. It shouldn’t be possible to give the keeper a catch down leg from outside off, but Trott managed it. Just like yesterday, a wicket in the over before lunch proved pivotal.

Kevin Pietersen, c Bailey b Harris 18, 82-3: Pietersen got massive amounts of stick for this shot, and it certainly looked dreadful and will have made his defenders and detractors alike tear their hair out, but at least he got out trying to score runs, which is more than can be said for his colleagues. Most of the criticism aimed at him for ‘starting the collapse’ was a product of faulty hindsight. Bailey took the most Australian of low catches, which is more than Siddle managed when Pietersen chipped one back to him on 8. Not that it made a blind bit of difference.

Michael Carberry, c Watson b Johnson 40, 87-4: Mitchell Johnson is not readily associated with tactical masterstrokes, but this was close. As soon as he went round the wicket Carberry looked all at sea, and the end was mercifully quick. Carberry’s innings was England’s in microcosm: reasonably settled in the first session, utterly strokeless and bereft of ideas afterwards. His statistics were alarming: pre-lunch he scored 31 off 54, post-lunch a funereal 9 off 59. Come back Nick Compton, all is forgiven?

Ian Bell, c Smith b Lyon 5, 87-5: I am a big Nathan Lyon fan, but I doubt he’s been on a hat-trick since he was about 14. He had bowled pretty well since his somewhat delayed introduction, so much so that Clarke felt comfortable enough to put David Warner in at the silliest of silly points. What Bell tried to do with this one from round the wicket was a mystery, it wasn’t threatening the stumps and all he succeeded in doing was gift-wrap a catch for Smith.

Matt Prior, c Smith b Lyon 0, 87-6: Bell’s wicket was daft, this was utterly brainless. Lyon bowled the exact same ball, Prior played the exact same shot but even worse. It was a good catch from Smith, and a bizarre original not-out call by the umpire exacerbated by Lyon not appealing, but the prevailing feeling as Prior recorded his third golden duck of the year was of anger and bewilderment. And in the Channel 9 box, presumably hysterical laughter. Prior now averages 16 from his last 11 innnings.

Broad survived the hat-trick ball. This meant we didn’t have to dig out stats about batsmen being in multiple hat-tricks. This was about as good as it got for England.

Joe Root, c Smith b Johnson 2, 89-7: Seriously, what was he thinking? He has been officially barred from Yorkshire and Len Hutton spun so fast in his grave that he is now embedded in Earth’s core. This was the most leaden-footed of drives to a totally innocuous delivery, and Smith gleefully pouched his third catch in nine balls.

Graeme Swann, c Bailey b Johnson 0, 91-8: This was an even limper waft than Bell’s or Prior’s, Bailey could have caught it with his feet it was that easy, and then it turned out it was a no-ball. The final element of farce to augment this tragi-comedy of an innings.

England avoided the follow-on...8 wickets down in the 43rd over.

Chris Tremlett, c Lyon b Harris 9, 110-9: Tremlett had been thoroughly roughed up by Johnson, who was so fired up that he even managed to bounce one over his head – an event that should be physically impossible and has presumably caused a gaping rift in the fabric of space-time. He had nowhere to go in the face of this beauty from Harris, and got so little on it that Lyon had to fling himself forward and clutch it just above the ground.

The Broad/Tremlett partnership, a mammoth 19 runs in 23 balls, was practically Sangakarra and Jayawardene by the shambolic standards of this display.

Stuart Broad, c Rogers b Siddle 32, 136 all out: Another short one, a top-edged pull, a good catch in the deep. He had to try something, because Anderson was not likely to survive long against the rampant Johnson, and as he was the only England batsmen to play any shots at all in the second or third sessions he is utterly blameless.

And then to finish off, Rogers and particularly Warner reminded everyone that this was a road at the Gabba in the bright sunshine. The incipiently hirsute bar-room pugilist took the handbrake off, ripped it from its moorings and threw it into a nearby hedge, braining a passing wombat in the process.

My fingers hurt. Frankly, my brain hurts. Goodbye.

PS: I'm well aware you may well end up reading this after close of play on day 3. Sorry, but I do need to sleep at some point.

PPS: I'm well aware I should have written more about Mitchell Johnson, but this review is already approaching 1,500 words. So: well bowled, Mitch.