England were bowled out for 67 in their first innings of the third Ashes Test at Headingley in August 2019. It remains one of the lowest totals in modern English Test cricket, and it should have settled the match.
The chase
Set 359, England were 286 for nine when Jack Leach joined Ben Stokes. What followed was not a partnership in any conventional sense. Leach faced 17 balls and scored one run. Stokes scored 74 of the last 76, finishing 135 not out with eight sixes, and England won by one wicket to level the series.
Why it still reads strangely
Because almost nothing about it was repeatable. Stokes went 73 balls without scoring at one point in the innings, then hit a phase of ball-striking that no model of Test batting accounts for. Australia had a review left when Leach was struck on the pad on 358; they had used it two balls earlier on a caught-behind appeal that was not out.
Series are usually decided by the accumulation of small advantages. This one turned on an afternoon that refused to behave that way, which is why it is still argued about seven years later.
