England captain Joe Root and number 3 Dawid Malan stabilized the visitors and took them over 100 runs for the loss of two wickets at the end of Day 3 at Gabba. In the process, the talismanic right hander became the highest run-scorer for England in a calendar year surpassing Micheal Vaughan longstanding record.
Root has been in tremendous form over the last year and has now scored 1482 runs to break Vaughan's record of 19 years.
However, things did not come easy for England on Day 3 at the Gabba. After getting on the wrong end of an Australian assault for the most part of the morning session, England were able to bowl them out but not before Australia posted a mammoth first innings total of 425 runs.
Coming into bat in the second innings, England once again had an unceremonious start to the innings with Rory Burns looking very fidgety against Mitchell Starc. He was given out on a pair, but the Decision Review System came to his rescue and he survived an embarrassing figure on the first Test of the tour.
However, he could not survive for long as an absolute peach from captain Pat Cummins kissed a part of his gloves and went to the keeper’s hand.
Once again struggling at 23-1 in 9 overs, England avoided another downfall with opener Haseeb Hameed and Malan anchoring down and seeing the innings through to the 21st over of the game. However, another trickle down to the keeper, this time against Starc called the time on Hameed’s batting in this Test match.
Since then, England have added 56 runs and at the time of writing are batting at 11-7 with Root (34 off 56) and Malan (37 off 99) at the crease a few overs into the final session