Both brought up hard-fought half-centuries and, with dark storm clouds looming, kept the scoreboard ticking over at a fast clip.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in very good position, obviously three down at the end of the end of play,\u201d said Brook. <\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully we can make the most of that going into tomorrow.\u201d <\/p>\n
England came into the game buoyed by a four-wicket win inside two days in the previous test in Melbourne, desperate to keep the momentum going. <\/p>\n
That victory snapped a 15-year winless streak in Australia but came too late to save the series, with the hosts retaining the urn by winning in Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide.<\/p>\n
The day began with a tribute to first responders at the Bondi mass shooting last month that killed 15 people, with huge cheers when hero Ahmed Al Ahmed, who tackled one of the gunmen, appeared. <\/p>\n
Duckett was lively when play started, crunching five boundaries from Mitchell Starc in a quickfire 27 off 24 balls. <\/p>\n
But England\u2019s tormentor-in-chief Mitchell Starc had the last laugh, enticing an outside edge from an angled ball to wicketkeeper Alex Carey at full stretch. <\/p>\n
It was the fifth time Starc has bagged Duckett this series. <\/p>\n
Crawley was next to go, trapped lbw by Michael Neser, with both openers back in the sheds by the first drinks break and the tourists in trouble on 51-2. <\/p>\n
A cautious Bethell took 15 balls to get off the mark and never looked confident. <\/p>\n
He departed after prodding at a moving delivery from Scott Boland that took a faint edge to Carey as England fell to 57-3.<\/p>\n
Root joined Brook at the crease and they began to rebuild.<\/p>\n
They rotated the strike well and punished any loose balls with Root bringing up his 67th half-century, and the 100-partnership, with a single off Webster.<\/p>\n
Only Indian great Sachin Tendulkar, with 68, has scored more test fifties.<\/p>\n
Brook was fortunate to survive on 45 when he slogged Starc and the ball dropped between three chasing fielders. <\/p>\n
But he kept his composure to reach a 15th half-century four balls after Root, cracking Webster through the covers for a boundary. <\/p>\n
AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Both brought up hard-fought half-centuries and, with dark storm clouds looming, kept the scoreboard ticking over at a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[130522,74,130520,806,5272,89,24812,65968,109014,5972,2245,4726,1634,55893,5904,14154,2964,6540,9859,3594,78,2435,111,139,69,5270,6560,67242,8527,45915,213,14446,10809,130519,765,2846,130521,25448,102],"class_list":["post-216107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-154run","tag-after","tag-allpace","tag-as","tag-ashes","tag-attack","tag-australias","tag-brook","tag-centuries","tag-day","tag-early","tag-ends","tag-england","tag-fifth","tag-final","tag-give","tag-half","tag-hand","tag-harry","tag-hit","tag-in","tag-joe","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-one","tag-rain","tag-rainhit","tag-rescue","tag-root","tag-sports","tag-stand","tag-sunday","tag-tamed","tag-test","tag-them","tag-unbroken","tag-upper","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}