Ashes: Mitchell Marsh ton, Mark Wood’s five-for leaves Leeds Test even after Day 1

Two comeback men, languishing in the shadows of legends and greats, shone brightly on a grimy, supersonic day when every action and reaction unfolded frenetically, at Leeds.
Mark Wood, cameo appearances punctuating his 28-match career in the Branderson era, showed the havoc sheer pace could wreak; Mitchell Marsh, living forever in the shade of his brother Shaun and father Geoff and carrying the burden of his surname, blered to a run-a-ball 118 of brutal intensity and classical stroke-play to sketch the outlines of what could be another thriller of twing fortunes. Without Marsh, Australia would not have mustered 263; without Wood, England could not have limited their foes to this total.
The pace of the day was relentless, a blur of boundaries and a whiz of flying stumps, which continued till stumps, as England thundered to 68 for 3 in 19 overs. Wood set the tone, as he bounded in, and cranked up dizzying pace. His first spell, wherein he clocked 94 mph on average in four blood-curdling overs and knocked over the stumps of series top-scorer Usman Khawaja, was the fastest in the game’s hory since they began recording speed. Wood was not just thrillingly fast, but staggeringly accurate as well, the ball snaking away after landing in the corridor. It was swing, apart from speed, that beat Khawaja’s forward thrust, the late, subtle inward swing, feathering the inside edge before battering the stumps.

in the side. with FIVE wickets!
Take a bow, Mark Wood 👏
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 #ENGvAUS 🇦🇺 | @IGcom pic.twitter.com/nyb0Sibi1G
— England Cricket (@englandcricket) July 6, 2023
It was the only wicket Wood bargained in his new-ball crack. But pace, allied with precision and aggression, strikes dread, infests panic among batsmen, and produces indiscretion and indecision. His peers reaped the benefits of the climate of fear it had conjured. The commendable Chris Woakes and inspired Stuart Broad broke the backbone of Australia’s batting line-up. Woakes produced Marnus Labuschagne’s edge with movement off the seam from a hard length; Broad had Steve Smith with an in-ducker, the movement minimalic but adequate. Both Smith and Labuschagne looked unsettled, and had to put the blame on Wood, who offered a vital dimension that England had lacked at Lord’s and Birmingham. He showed the difference unadulterated pace could make, the energy it produces.
At 85 for 4, calamity hung sinerly like the clouds over the stadium. Enter the man who would bring them light, an unlikely giver of light too. Few would have expected Mitchell Marsh to feature at Headingley, perhaps to feature at all in the series, given the investment in Cameron Green, arguably the most promising all-rounder in the world. Marsh was a back-up, no longer the bright young prospect he once was but trudging the dreary middle phase of an uneventful career, clutching onto the last straws of prospering in whites.
But fortune, often, knocks when one least expects. An injury to Green, catching apart he has been middling, made way for Marsh’s first Test in four years. The last one, mind you, had produced seven wickets. But a series of injuries and a subsequent dip in form, before the white-ball revival, stalled his progress in Test cricket. But knocks like these could furnish him a less fickle spot in the team.
Splendid was his clarity of approach. His plan was simple — he would leave or defend the good-length balls; he would cut or pull the short or hard-length balls; he would murder anything remotely full. But for a dropped catch, his plans worked gloriously. He threw portents of an epic knock unfolding with a splendid cover-drive at the stroke of lunch, but then how often he, as well as his brother Shaun, has flattered to deceive.
Revival and redemption
The real stamp of intent arrived immediately after lunch, when he flayed Woakes over mid-on for a six, before muscling him down the ground. He began to pick one bowler after the other. Next was Broad’s turn to be inflicted with the fury of Marsh’s redemption song. He lashed a cut that sped to the fence beyond backward point like a flash of lightning, before he crunched him through the covers. Broad grimaced, the crowd quietened like a library and one could sense the grip on the game loosening in England’s clutches.

Back with a bang! #Ashes pic.twitter.com/ORrxjIPZlq
— cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) July 6, 2023
Enter Woods, England’s redeemer. An epic contest brewed. A merchant of pace against an annihilator of pace, bred in the wild west of Australia. He left the first ball; the second he climbed into a pull; one so emphatic that it felt like a collective slap in the face of England’s bowlers and the crowd that jeered and booed them. Wood soon set the short-ball trap on the leg-side with two men behind square. Marsh did not guess the bowler’s intentions; he was certain what they would be. He cracked a shoulder-high bouncer to the upper tiers.
Wood would revert to fuller lengths at crushing pace, but Marsh eked out a pair of driven boundaries to rip the morale. He didn’t spare Ollie Robinson either, before the bowler walked back injured. Moeen Ali was merely an invitation for him to cut loose, which he did and brought up his hundred in 102 balls.
In between the hits to the fence, he showed the robustness of his technique, the fluidity of his feet movement, the smoothness of his transfer of weight. Marsh is no longer a plonk-your front-foot-and-trust-your-luck imposter. He still has the tendency to play with hard hands when driving and defending, the edge that Joe Root fluffed showed the weakness, but he glossed over it with better judgment. He would not swish at anything outside off-stump, but those that he knew were among his percentage shots. Marsh reduced the shot-savvy Travis Head to a mere passenger in their 155-run alliance at breakneck pace.
But at the sniff of tea, Woakes snared Marsh with a short ball which he inside-edged onto the thigh, and subsequently ballooning in the air.
Two overs after break, after the unsung Woakes had consumed the dangerous Head, Stokes knew who he should trust the tail-blasting duties. Wood it was, and he detonated the last four batsmen, two of them bowled and one leg before the wicket in 16 balls of unrestrained pace and purpose. It was a jaw-dropping collapse — Australia lost six wickets for 23 runs.
Then, that is what pace does. It was the theme of the day -the bowler that bowled the fastest and the batsman that batted the quickest stole the thunder, emerging from the shadows.