Ben Stokes was rooted. Jack Leach was scrambling.
England was in strife — and Australia was going to go 2-0 up in the 2019 Ashes series.
All Nathan Lyon had to do was collect the ball at the nonstriker’s end on day four, dislodge the bails, and Australia would be victorious in one of the Ashes’ most thrilling encounters.
But Lyon, to the horror of an entire nation, fumbled, ultimately allowing Stokes to complete one of the greatest individual matchwinning performances seen in Test cricket.
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Australia went on to retain the Ashes urn but Stokes, arms raised, veins bulging, provided the series’ most enduring image when he hit the winning runs in the third Test at Headingley.
Lyon and the man who threw him the ball that fateful afternoon, Pat Cummins, recalled the drama of the Test in a Fox Theatre one-hour special that airs on Fox Cricket at 7pm (AEDT) Tuesday.
Newly-appointed Test captain Cummins said while viewing a replay that he still finds the moment “hard to watch”.
England needed three runs to win the Test by one wicket when a Stokes reverse sweep was fielded by Cummins at short fine leg.
Leach wanted to scramble through for a single but was sent back by Stokes, leaving him desperately short of his ground at the nonstriker’s end where Cummins threw the ball towards.
“The camera probably doesn’t pick this up but it wasn’t a great throw,” Cummins said on Fox Theatre.
“I remember just picking it up and thinking, ‘okay, just get it down the other end’, and I floated it.
“It bounced up waist high … he still probably should have got it but it would have been a decent pick-up. It wasn’t a perfect throw.”
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Indeed, it wasn’t the ideal throw. Lyon was left with some work to do, shuffling backwards to collect the ball on the bounce before taking it back some distance towards the stumps.
Nonetheless, it was still a regulation chance for a team that has long prided itself on its high standards in the field.
“I got criticised a lot for dropping the run-out, as I probably should have,” Lyon said. “I made a mistake.
“That ball just skidded off the square a little bit quicker than what I expected and hit me in the chest before I knew it, unfortunately.”
Lyon moved towards the stumps as Leach scurried, but the ball was well behind him. Leach was safe.
But the drama didn’t stop there.
“I said to myself, ‘I’ve got a chance here to go from zero to a hero in a matter of 3.5 seconds here’,” Lyon recalled.
“So I just remember standing at the top of my mark and saying, ‘This is your last chance, bowl your best ball here and you’ll get him out’.”
What followed the very next ball was an even crueller moment than the last.
Lyon bowled full and Stokes missed his sweep shot to be struck on the pads in front of the wicket.
He looked gone for all money but the finger of umpire Joel Wilson refused to raise — and Australia had already burnt its final review on an ambitious lbw appeal an over earlier.
Ball-tracking showed that a review would have comfortably seen Wilson’s decision overturned to hand Australia the Test match.
Instead, Leach survived three balls the following over and got off strike, before Stokes struck a boundary off Cummins to seal the remarkable win.
The series was tied at 1-1, and Stokes had just permanently etched his name into Ashes folklore.
Steve Smith — who missed the Headingley Test with a concussion — returned for the fourth Test in Manchester, which Australia won off the back of his double century.
Australia then lost the series finale at the Oval, meaning the series was tied 2-2 but the urn was retained.