KEY POINTS:
The last vestiges of England's shaky selection policy came back to bite their battered and beset team as the Ashes slipped increasingly through their fingers last night.
Australia declared on 527 for five, a lead of 557 with two days remaining at the WACA. England were 19 for
one in reply.
But, although England were a shade unlucky, their selection howlers continued to mar their performance. First, it was the selection of medium-quick bowler James Anderson and trundling spinner Ashley Giles which drew the brunt of criticism as England lost the first two tests with a potential match-winner, left-arm spinner Monty Panesar, warming the bench.
The other, less-heard criticism concerned wicketkeeper Geraint Jones. Another kept in the side because of his supposedly superior batting - as was Giles - Jones is regarded as a better bat but a lesser wicketkeeper than Chris Read. The only hitch is that Jones' scores in the Ashes read: 19, 33, 1, 10 and 0 so far.
He held a catch to dismiss Australian skipper Ricky Ponting for 75 off Steve Harmison yesterday but missed a possible stumping chance of Michael Clarke off Panesar. Given that England had a long, hot day in the outfield, striving manfully to take wickets to prevent Australia's batsman from pumping up their slender first innings lead, even a possible stumping chance assumed cataclysmic proportions.
So too did Jones' inability to glove a skied shot from the dangerous Michael Hussey, who scored his first century of the series - a valuable but flawed 103.
To be fair to the England keeper, he had a lot of ground to cover to square leg and shot off after the ball like a startled rabbit. Cricket convention is that fielders leave such chances to the 'keeper - and Kevin Pietersen did just that when he might have been in a better position to claim it. England heads went down again when a lunging Jones failed to take the chance.
Coach Duncan Fletcher has taken most of the criticism for England's selections, rightly or wrongly, and he will not have watched Jones - a co-selector on this tour - with any joy.
It will not have helped that England bowled rather better than the scoreboard revealed, with Clarke (135 not out) and Hussey finally snared by Panesar after reaching his century with a full-blooded slash off Harmison, taking Australia to a position where they can surely not lose this test.
It all started far more promisingly when England opened up with their 'big guns' yesterday. They needed to part the two Australian batsmen who threatened to sew up the Ashes then and there - Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden.
Harmison bowled the first over and was followed by that well-known destroyer of Australian batting, Pietersen, who bowled the next with his part-time off-spin. Twelve runs came from Pietersen's first over.
As a declaration of war, it was like throwing cream doughnuts at the enemy.
But it worked. Harmison produced a fast delivery which ran away just enough to tickle the edge of Ponting's bat and the world's best batsman was back in the pavilion before he could cream Pietersen further.
Wisely, Flintoff then replaced Pietersen with Matthew Hoggard as he sought to limit the damage of the Australians' 170-run lead with eight wickets left.
If the wicket of Ponting was a triumph for Flintoff the captain, whose field placings and rotation of his bowlers have generally worked well, this has nonetheless been a poor performance by England's prize all-rounder. He hasn't achieved much with either bat or ball.
Before yesterday's play started, he had scored 69 runs in four completed innings at an average of 17.25 and taken seven wickets (four in the first test) at 42.14. A year ago, at the Ashes battle in England, he scored 402 runs at an average of 40.20 and took 24 wickets at 27.29.
While cricketers like Flintoff cannot be judged on statistics alone, they are given to match-winning, series-winning and praise-winning performances which explode in the faces of the opposition; a bomb-blast of a cricketer.
But Flintoff has been a dud, an unexploded bomb, in this series, even if he has been impeded by his ankle injury. The critics who were derided for suggesting that his talent might not stand up to the added weight of the captaincy now begin to look rather more prophetic.
Meanwhile, one of the best cricketers of the series so far, Hussey, was enduring his most uncomfortable time at bat - although that didn't stop him scoring runs.
Maybe nothing can - but an outside edge just failed to carry to second slip, he survived a close bat-pad appeal off Monty Panesar on 15, was speared by a Flintoff scorcher and was hit on the helmet by Harmison. But he still managed to blaze away through the off side with sizzling drives.
He made 50 with the skied shot that Jones just failed to haul in and it was not one of Hussey's finest knocks.
Andrew Strauss, stationed at slip, dropped a sharp chance off Hoggard when Hussey was 81 - and Hoggard's scream of frustration pretty much summed up England's day.
Hayden had continued his battle to find top form and manoeuvred his way to 92 after surviving a close shout for lbw against Harmison and a clip that flew wide of midwicket.
However, he tried to cut a delivery from Panesar that cramped him for room and Paul Collingwood behaved like a goalkeeper to knock the chance up at slip and grab the rebound.
It was Panesar's deserved reward for a controlled spell where he probed away. He almost had Clarke stumped in that final over before lunch, but snared Andrew Symonds for two, caught by Collingwood at first slip.
But by then the Australian juggernaut was gathering pace as Clarke and Adam Gilchrist piled on the runs - and England's misery.
Scoreboard after day three:
Australia 1st innings 244
England 1st innings 215
Australia 2nd Innings
J Langer b Hoggard 0
M Hayden c Collingwood b Panesar 92
R Ponting c Jones b Harmison 75
M Hussey c Jones b Panesar 103
M Clarke not out 135
A Symonds c Collingwood b Panesar 2
A Gilchrist not out 102
Extras (15lb 2w 1nb) 18
Total: 527 for 5 (dec)
Bowling: M Hoggard 20-4-85-1, A Flintoff 19-2-76-0, S Harmison 24-3-116-1, M Panesar 34-3-145-3, S Mahmood 10-0-59-0 (2w 1nb), K Pietersen 5-1-31-0.
England 2nd Innings
A Strauss lbw b Lee 0
A Cook not out 7
I Bell not out 9
Extras (1lb 2nb) 3
Total: 19 for 1
Bowling: B Lee 3-1-5-1 (1nb), G McGrath 3-0-13-0 (1nb)
