England cling on after Headingley heroics... Ashes win would be at the very top of Test pantheon

You can't have an Ashes series as packed full of nonsense on field and off as this one and then take it to Headingley without expecting insanity.

Four years ago, after Headingley, the Ashes were well and truly alive because of one cricketer. This time it took several to keep England clinging on.

Harry Brook, Mark Wood and Chris Woakes combined for 123 runs in this year's chase; Stokes made an unbeaten 135 four years ago. But the similarities go further. It got slightly forgotten in the absurdity of that run-chase that England's target was only vaguely reachable because of Stokes' absurd and Herculean efforts with the ball in the third innings to restrict Australia. He bowled 24.2 overs and took 3-56 to keep England in the game. Here, Wood and Woakes combined to bowl over half the overs in Australia's second innings to do likewise, taking combined figures of 5-134.

It hammers home the absurdity of Stokes' performance four years ago that it took these two fine cricketers having perhaps their best games for England and a precociously talented young gun to do the same here, Stokes this time reduced to nervous doodling on the balcony having been strangled down the legside for just 13 as England's chase appeared to be losing its way.

For Woakes, back in the side for the first time of the Bazball era, it all felt very on brand that he should be so excellent with ball in both innings and then so crucial in getting the chase over the line yet find the post-match attention fixated on another. He also won't care, which is equally on brand.

It's also kind of fair enough, because Mark Wood had a Test match straight out of a comic book. Not even Stokes himself can point to an Ashes Test - or any Test - where he has had such a vitally important influence over all four innings.

Wood's efforts with the ball, as the series finally got a pitch to match everything else it has served up, were magnificent. Josh Tongue is a worthy and promising cricketer with a very decent future, but seeing him talked up as the point of difference while bowling at 85mph at Lord's was grating at the time and made to look truly absurd here as Wood dominated the first and last sessions of the opening day with sustained pace the like of which the sport has hardly ever seen before. Certainly not in this country.

And Australia didn't like it. He blasted out the previously immovable Usman Khawaja and obliterated the Australian tail.

In between came what was perhaps the game's most extraordinary contribution of all. We'll come to that later.

Wood wasn't done there, though, maintaining his pace despite longer spells and once again ensuring the dangerous Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins could do little to extend the lead alongside Travis Head.

Yet his interventions with the bat were perhaps just as important and perhaps even more dramatic.

When he came to the middle at 142/7 in England's first innings, the match and the Ashes were sliding away. He slapped his first three balls to or over the boundary, made an eight-ball 24 that sparked Ben Stokes into God mode and allowed 95 runs to be added for those final few wickets to restrict Australia's lead to just 26.

And England weren't quite home in the second innings when he got out there, either. Twenty-one can look like a lot of runs with three wickets in hand and your last specialist batter dismissed. Sixteen runs from eight balls later, not so much.

It really is an absurd introduction to a series at such a point. Seven wickets, some of the fastest bowling ever witnessed, and 40 runs for once out from 16 balls in a low-scoring match.

Which brings us to the other primary nonsense. With Cameron Green injured, Ashes specialist Mitchell Marsh came in and helped himself to a run-a-ball hundred of fearsome power and baffling serenity given all that surrounded it.

Brook came close-ish on the final day, but in truth no other batter played an innings like it across four days of incessant action. Stokes' first-innings 80 and Travis Head's 77 on day three were both in their way exceptional but both born in crisis. They started crashing boundaries around only when it became their only and last-gasp choice.

Marsh just did it from the get go. He was playing on a different pitch, but then this is just standard Ashes fare. In this series, it could even pass for routine. There's so much craziness going on but this really wasn't. Every Ashes series seems to feature the moment where Marsh is introduced from nowhere, scores a century and takes some wickets and then, at series' end, just quietly disappears for another two years.

He now averages 50 with the bat and 23 with the ball against England. All three of his Test hundreds and his only five-fer have come in the Ashes. Against everyone else in a stop-start career that now spans nine years he averages a shade under 21 with the bat and over 46.5 with the ball.

There aren't many players with such absurdly lopsided records around.

England have one, though. Woakes now boasts a Test batting average at home of 35.5 and a bowling average under 23. Away from home those numbers shrink and balloon respectively to 22 and 52.

It is frankly a disgrace that England have never truly learned this most obvious of lessons about a man who is now 34 years old and after a decade showing these precise results, for good and bad, on a very consistent basis has still only played six more home Tests than away ones.

Only a fool would predict what might happen next in this series - who among us can truthfully say they had "Australia's wicketkeeper falsely named in a £30 Leeds barber cut-and-run controversy amplified by a knight of the realm" on their Ashes Bingo Card - but both teams now have awkward decisions to make at Old Trafford.

Historically it's a venue only marginally less silly than Headingley and can hopefully be relied on to produce another pitch as good as the one across the Pennines.

England have made their decision behind the stumps and will stick with Jonny Bairstow. It's the wrong call, but they're clearly going to be enormously stubborn about it. There may be further tweaks to the bowling line-up. James Anderson will feel rightly aggrieved to have missed out on by far the most helpful deck of the summer and inevitably comes back into the conversation.

More importantly, England must decide who bats three. Promoting Moeen Ali in the run-chase failed on its own terms after he made just five in 15 balls before being cleaned up by Starc, but worked magnificently in another as Brook made a match-winning contribution having been restored to his number-five role after a skittish first-innings effort.

Moeen as spinner/sacrificial three might be the best overall solution for the rest of the series even if it is uncomfortably bitty. A glaringly obvious solution is to try and cure Joe Root of his triskaphobia.

If Stokes is now unable to contribute with the ball, held together as he is by string and sticking plaster and sheer bloody-minded vibes, he would be another option. He possesses the technique and ticker for the task, but it's asking a lot given the captaincy exertions as does take away from his unique genius when batting with the tail.

Australia have decisions of their own, arguably more difficult ones despite the scoreline. David Warner's twin failures to Stuart Broad - that's 17 dismissals now - sharpen the spotlight on his future, while Marsh's contribution raises questions about what happens if Cameron Green is fit again.

For Warner, being left out here and replaced by presumably Marcus Harris would surely represent the end of his Test career. Green and Marsh could potentially play together in a rejigged top six but it's hard to see who would miss out. Marnus Labuschagne has looked miserably out of form, but leaving him out and moving Steve Smith and Travis Head around would be a big call. Marsh to three? That really would be ballsy.

Todd Murphy is another quandary for Australia. Losing Nathan Lyon has hit them unbelievably hard and the simple fact is that if Cummins isn't going to throw him the ball in a tight fourth-innings run-chase then there is little point him being there.

He's a very capable bowler with a future, but is obviously no Lyon. For all the talk of how he held his nerve in the face of Stokes' onslaught in the first innings he really did little more than give up 20 or 30 precious runs while waiting for a batter injured in at least 15 different ways to miscue one.

Lots to be decided then in what is a merciful and necessary week off before the nonsense resumes. A 3-2 win from 2-0 down remains just about on and would surely seal this series' place at the very top of the Test pantheon. Arguably, that would be true even without a haircut controversy.

Logically, then, we should expect a thumping Australia win to kill the mood stone dead. Again, the antecedents from four years ago are there.

But logic and this series parted company sometime in the morning session on day one at Edgbaston and have shown no interest in any reconciliation.

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