Starc takes six but Root's maiden Australia ton steers England past 300

The world can stop wondering now. Joe Root finally has a Test hundred in Australia. It took him 30 innings to get there, an unusually long wait for a player of his calibre, but it arrived on a day when England, trailing 1-0 in the Ashes, needed clarity and calm more than anything else. Under the Gabba lights on the opening night of the pink-ball Test, Root's unbeaten 135 off 202 balls carried England to 325/9. No team has ever lost a day-night Test after scoring more than 300 in the first innings.

That England did not finish with more on a fairly honest batting surface was down to Mitchell Starc, the veteran seamer who knows his ways with a pink ball and returned figures of 6 for 71. It was his sixth five-wicket haul in day-night Tests. No other bowler has more than two.

While the day belonged to the giants at either end, it was England who quietly took control after winning the toss and choosing to bat. The start was familiar, though. Starc struck in the first over again, drawing Ben Duckett into a poke outside off stump with a length he could neither leave nor fully meet. In his next over, he sent back Ollie Pope for nought with a chop-on. Root walked in at 7 for 2 with the ball nibbling just enough, not quite Perth-like but lively. Starc beat him second ball, squared him up the next, only for the edge to fly through the slips. That, though, was the extent of his discomfort. From there, he settled.

Zak Crawley helped stabilise England further. After bagging a pair at Perth, he found early rhythm against pace and batted the way England have expected him to on these bouncy pitches all these years. In Perth, his booming drives on the rise cost him but here, he played later and straighter. Crawley and Root added 117 for the third wicket and allayed any fears that England are not up for a fight this series.

Michael Neser, picked ahead of Nathan Lyon in a move that surprised many, broke the stand. He looked the only bowler outside Starc who consistently troubled England and his short ball took Crawley's under edge to the keeper.

Harry Brook was briefly the most entertaining element of the evening. He danced down to slash a hard length ball on leg-stump through point and kept charging at the bowlers as is his wont. At one point in time, he was almost stumped by a brilliant Alex Carey while trying to scoop Neser, but the England batter went one shot too far when the lights came on. Starc had him caught in the cordon, with Steven Smith taking the catch and immediately gesturing that he barely saw the ball.

Ben Stokes looked troubled and out of rhythm again, and this time fell to a run-out of his own making, with Josh Inglis undoing him with a stunning throw from cover-point. It was the 13th time a partner of Root had been run out in Tests, the joint-most for any England batter alongside Geoffrey Boycott.

From 176/3, England began to wobble, with Brook and Stokes falling to unforced errors. Jamie Smith was the next to go when Scott Boland produced a ball that nipped through the gate.

Starc returned to clean up Will Jacks, Gus Atkinson and Brydon Carse, and Australia likely expected England to declare nine down and throw a few overs under lights at them. Instead, Root and Jofra Archer kept batting on and perhaps took Australia by surprise, adding 61 off 44 balls in an audacious, unbeaten stand. It pushed England beyond 300 with authority and set a new record for the highest tenth-wicket stand in a day-night Test, surpassing the 59 by Tom Blundell and Blair Tickner in Mount Maunganui in 2023.

Root remained the constant through all of it. In the stand with Crawley, in the late surge with Archer, and in the long hours between when the ball nipped under lights and when it didn't. He abandoned the fiddly dabs to third man, drove through the arc, worked the ball into gaps on the leg side and, unlike Perth, kept England from handing over the advantage they had worked so hard to build.

Brief Scores: England 325/9 (Root 135*, Crawley 76, Archer 32*; Starc 6-71) vs Australia