Australia battled grimly to 184 for two at tea on the first day of the final Test against England at The Oval on Thursday as they bid for a consolation victory to end the Ashes series.
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Moeen Ali (8) and Mark Wood (8) were at the crease when play ended, with the hosts still needing 175 runs to avoid the follow-on.
England captain Alastair Cook was the first wicket to fall when he was bowled by a attractive offspinning delivery by Lyon.
Otherwise, with England eight wickets down and 374 runs behind, there were few positives to pick out from the mess, apart from the obvious one that they have already won the series and so in a sense the result does not matter all that much.
Australian skipper Michael Clarke, who will hang his boots after the conclusion of this Test match, was given a guard-of-honour by the English side when he walked into bat.
Australia’s Steve Smith celebrates his century.
Finn insisted it was not “an attitude thing”, that England’s preparation had been fine, only their “execution wasn’t as good as we would have liked it to be”.
England staged a mini fightback in the morning session of Day 2, taking four wickets and reducing Australia to 376-7 from their overnight 278-3.
With Australia seemingly set for a lead of more than 350 and rain forecast for Sunday, Clarke may consider changing the habit of a lifetime by enforcing the follow-on and raising the prospect of a three-day win.
It was not until the fourth-wicket stand was worth 146 that England had something to celebrate, Voges undone by seam movement from Stokes which pinned him lbw despite his recourse to DRS.
Jonny Bairstow committed the second faulty Yorkshire pull of the evening, off the returning Mitchell Johnson, and Jos Buttler was bowled through the gate driving at Lyon.
Smith had 92, and appeared to be on his way to the very next ball after flailing an edge behind off Finn.
“We’re disappointed we can’t win the series but Michael said before the Test he wanted a lot of fight and character from us”, he said.
“We bowled fantastically with the new ball [Stuart Broad and Mark Wood] to start with, so if we can bowl anything like that [this morning] we can hopefully take three of four wickets with the new ball”, said Stokes.
Here he was back to his belligerent best, cutting and pulling regular boundaries against an England attack struggling to find consistent lines.
The right-hander fell for 143 after lunch, having put an incredibly high price on his wicket for 394 minutes before playing on to Steve Finn.
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Finn’s muted celebrations of his 100th Test scalp hinted something was amiss and replays confirmed he clearly overstepped. It lifted him level with Dan Vettori to the most 50-plus scores made from No. 9 or lower in the order, with six. “It was part of my game plan to wait for balls to hit”.
