Rain halts England's charge towards fourth Test victory as James Anderson ball-tampering claims sour day four

Australia 327 & 103-2, England 491: Tourists still lead by 61 runs but Australian media accuse England bowler James Anderson of ball-tampering

Spike the souvenir supplements. Cancel the open-top bus parade. Put James Vince’s MBE back in its decorative case. England’s march to victory at the MCG will have to wait – for now at least. As the thunder clapped and the rain roared in to curtail day four of the fourth Test, England’s fears of whitewash were supplanted by fears of washout.

Australia remained 61 behind when stumps were prematurely drawn, with eight wickets remaining. Realistically, though, just one would do for England. Their path to winning this match rests on how soon they can break the partnership between David Warner and Steve Smith, who resisted for 22 overs on a sticky and increasingly stodgy surface, their risk-free resilience impeding both England’s seam attack and their own dwindling chances of victory.

The prospect of an unlikely Australian triumph faintly presented itself at the start of play, particularly after they had taken just one ball to end the England innings, James Anderson fending to short leg. But they would have needed to score at a fair lick in order to do so: instead, as England discovered some early reverse swing, making it move as early as the 15th over, Warner and Smith settled in for the long haul.

Meanwhile, Alastair Cook was left stranded on 244 not out, carrying his bat for the first time in his Test career: a monument of an innings, the sort of which only a very few cricketers are capable, one that could probably have carried on indefinitely had his team-mates been good enough to stay with him. Cook has scored 13 per cent of all the Test double-centuries made this decade: five out of 38. And even if his consistency is no longer what it was, here again he proved that few can match his thirst for the gargantuan.

Alastair Cook was left stranded on 244 after batting for the entire England innings. (Getty)

Australia began to whittle down their deficit of 164 comfortably enough. But under overcast skies, England were beginning to make the ball talk, and on 15 overs Chris Woakes found just enough to nip one through the gate of Cameron Bancroft, bowling him off bat and pad – 51-1. Usman Khawaja took an immediate liking to Moeen Ali, belting him for six to get off the mark, but soon afterwards James Anderson tailed one away and tickled his outside edge – 65-2.

The Australians began to cry foul play. Channel Nine’s pictures appeared to show Anderson running his thumbnail across the quarter-seam, the crack running at right angles to main stitching. Mitchell Johnson observed on Twitter that England were getting the ball to reverse remarkably early. “Certainly, getting a thumbnail into the ball is against the rules,” former Australian batsman Mike Hussey said. “There might be a little bit of ‘please explain’ there for Jimmy Anderson.”

James Anderson and Joe Root spent the most time looking after the ball (Getty)

We saw something like this last year, when South African captain Faf du Plessis was fined after a cacophonous media campaign centring on whether he had used minty saliva to alter the condition of the ball. Law 42.3 here is unambiguous in the detail, if not in the enforcement. Wandering fingers and mysterious substances invariably find their way onto cricket balls at every level of the game, in every country in the world. Anderson may yet have a case to answer. Still, this bore all the hallmarks of a classic Australian tease: a controversy stirred and fuelled not by umpires or administrators, but by television. Not a whinge, of course. Only the Poms do that.

Australian media accused James Anderson of ball tampering during the fourth day of the fourth Test (Getty)

In any case, England’s hopes of getting the ball reversing pretty much ended when the drizzle came at 2pm, dampening the outfield and then the ball, and then again an hour later, forcing them off for good. Which may not necessarily be fatal for England’s chances: the fact that Australia are now playing solely for a draw may subtly alter the mental dynamics of the game. They will probably need to bat well into the final session to be assured of safety. The forecast is good.

And yet there are echoes here of the 2013 series in England, in which Australia’s two most promising winning positions, at Old Trafford and The Oval, went begging due to the weather. England ended up winning that series 3-0 instead of 3-2, which perhaps lulled them into a false sense of superiority going into the return series Down Under, and of course we all know what happened next. That’s the thing about this strange, strange game: sometimes, the score isn’t everything.