Pat Cummins insists Nathan Lyon and captain Tim Paine have the complete backing of the Australia team, despite the pair’s blunders allowing Ben Stokes to guide England to an astonishing series-squaring win at Headingley on Sunday.
Lyon fumbled a simple chance to run out Jack Leach with England two runs short of victory, while Paine’s poor use of DRS continued, meaning Australia had no opportunity to review when the off-spinner thought he had Stokes lbw in the closing minutes of the match.
There is no love lost between the England team and Lyon, who enjoys a sledge and delivered an extraordinary pre-series rant in 2017/18 in which he said he wanted to “end careers”.
Pace bowler Cummins said of the Lyon run-out chance: “I probably didn’t help him out with the throw there - it could have been a bit better - but you just want to win so desperately and the emotion gets to everyone slightly differently.
"Gaz (Lyon) wears his heart on his sleeve, so we’ve got to get around him, but I think the next ball he bowled after that was three reds (on Hawkeye for the LBW shout against Stokes), so on another day he’s the matchwinner.
“It’s that fine a line. If you lived and died by a win and a loss, you’d be out of this business pretty quickly.”
With regards to his skipper Paine, Cummins said: “He’s been brilliant. He walked into the changing room and said, ‘It’s 1-1, it’s all good’. There are two matches to go.
"Bowlers, him as a captain, we all make decisions and you reflect on what you could have done differently. When you look at it, a couple of catches, maybe a run out.
"When a batsman [Stokes] comes out like that, you have to just say well done.”
England were given a further boost by the news that James Anderson is playing for Lancashire Seconds against their Durham counterparts at Chester Boughton Hall from Tuesday.
England’s all-time leading wicket-taker suffered his second calf injury of the season just four overs into the first Test, but looks likely to return - probably in place of Chris Woakes - for the fourth Test at Old Trafford, his home ground, which starts on Wednesday week.
Australia have a warm-up match of their own, against Derbyshire, from Thursday.
Paceman Mitchell Starc is set to play in that and could be unleashed for the first time in the series at Old Trafford, while Steve Smith will play both those games after suffering concussion in the second Test at Lord’s.
Starc could come in for James Pattinson, reuniting the pace attack that combined to beat England 4-0 in 2017/18: Starc, Cummins and Josh Hazlewood.
Cummins, the world’s No1-ranked bowler, believes he can play in all five Ashes Tests, having also played all 10 of Australia’s World Cup matches earlier this summer.
And despite Stokes’s heroics, he believes Australia’s attack still holds the upper hand.
“We bowled really well, and we’ve got really good plans and processes to all of them (England’s batsmen),” he said.
“Stokes obviously had a day out on Sunday but we saw (on the third day) they batted for 70 overs and we kept them to two runs an over. We always felt we were in the game.”