How the internet reacted to Australia winning the first Ashes Test

The Ashes opened with a tremendous bang, as Mitchell Starc and Travis Head put Bazball to the sword and steered Australia into a 1-0 series lead. 

Here's how the internet reacted.

Day one

The most anticipated Ashes series in recent memory saw Australia limping in without two of its front-line bowlers, blooding two debutants, and losing the toss.

Former England spinner Monty Panesar, working as a commentator somewhere or other, said in the days leading up that the England team should bring up Sandpaper-Gate, perhaps to match Australia's 'moral victory' banter with something equally tired and annoying. 

Aussie captain Steve Smith then dedicated a portion of his pre-match press conference responding to that piece of punditry provocation in probably the most Steve Smith-esque way imaginable, ridiculing Panesar's obscure but hilariously terrible performance on quiz show Mastermind, a typically unorthodox response to the bowler.

But although this bluster hung lazily in the air as the teams walked out onto Perth Stadium, it was soon blasted into oblivion by the searing pace bowling of Mitchell Starc. 

Two frontline quicks out, but one still steaming in with a hard ball and a slingshot left arm. Starc dismissed Crawley for a duck in the opening over. Duckett, lbw, followed not long after.

England were wobbling, but their great steadier was here to right things, Joe Root. Oh, no, he wasn't; Starc got him for a duck too.

Cameron Green chipped in with a wicket before lunch, but it was back to the Starc show after the break, as he bowled Stokes with a hugely satisfying clatter of stumps.

Brendan Doggett got the important wicket — his first at Test level — of Harry Brook, who had charged to an aggressive half-century, and the following over Starc got his fifth wicket, drawing an edge from Atkinson that flew to Smith at slip.

Brydon Carse gifted Doggett a second, holing out in the deep after being hit square on the grill, and Starc got his sixth as Jamie Smith smashed a shorter ball straight down the neck of Green almost identically.

Mark Wood was Starc's seventh, the next ball, and it ended the innings.

This was a masterpiece, delivered without his comrades, Cummins and Hazlewood. He took 7-58, and down the other end, the other bowlers took three wickets for 100-odd runs. He was the lone sabre, flashing lethally and piercing through the England batting line-up over and over.

England's innings was, largely, a series of batters swinging unwisely, having a jolly good time, and being bowled out for a meagre 172 on a wicket they chose to bat on first.

And the mayhem continued: Usman Khawaja was off the field for treatment on his back for too long and couldn't open as normal, so Marnus Labuschagne walked out with debutant Jake Weatherald, who was promptly dismissed for a duck by Jofra Archer.

This game was like Benny Hill on fast-forward.

It took four-and-a-half overs for Australia to score a run, and there was a huge cheer when Smith scurried across for a quick single.

And from there, Smith and Labuschagne managed to wrestle the tempo of the game down to a crawl, scoring slightly more than one run an over until the tea break. 

This was very much in Australia's interests; England want to draw opponents into mayhem exchanges. Australia needed to catch its breath.

But that breath was soon snatched away again, as Labuschagne was unable to corral a rising ball, and elbowed it onto his stumps. Smith nicked off shortly after, Khawaja came and went for 2, victim of a vicious bouncing delivery, and Australia was 4-31. 

Each batter that followed, even those with decent starts like Cam Green and Alex Carey, all meekly exited, with Ben Stokes taking five wickets.

At stumps, Nathan Lyon and Brendan Doggett were dodging Archer bouncers and Australia was 9-123. 

Day one. 19 wickets fell. Bowling masterclasses, batting disaster classes.

Day two

The next morning, Lyon and Doggett dug in for 40 minutes but eventually England wrapped up the Australian tail with a lead of 40 runs.

Starc, on a hat-trick first ball, forced a leave from Crawley, an affront to Bazball.

He then dismissed him for another duck, caught and bowled with a superhuman catch, jagging his body to the left during his follow-through, snatching the ball out of the air and barely managing to keep it from touching the ground as he fell — saving us all from a repeat of the grounded catch controversy from the last Ashes series.

With Australian appetites whetted for more carnage, it wasn't forthcoming, as Duckett and Pope absorbed Starc's blows and jabs, and got to work clipping runs off the other bowlers, pushing their lead toward triple figures. 

What followed was a stretch of play where wickets were not falling like autumn leaves, something more akin to the traditional rhythm of Test cricket, and something of a novelty.

Then Scott Boland finally arrived. Having been quite clearly targeted by the English batters and thrashed around the ground on day one after bowling some wayward stuff, he took three quick wickets, including the key one of Harry Brook for a duck.

Then Starc got Root dragging on for 8, four wickets had suddenly fallen in three overs, and the mad carousel wound up again, horns parping, whistles tweeting.

"What is happening?" Jason Gillespie said on the ABC Sport broadcast.

Khawaja dropped Jamie Smith on nought, the carousel stalled slightly, but a few overs later Starc got Ben Stokes for 2. 

The momentum in this match had somehow swung back to the hosts.

A DRS review for caught behind that took an age, a forensic replaying of a Smith hook that he feathered to Carey, led to the third umpire overturning a not-out call on the field — an agonising experience for England fans that left them without their last recognised batter.

The top of the English tail was wagging, though, as Australia pursued a short-ball strategy with fielders littered around the onside. The batters were, by and large, getting on top of the short deliveries or thickly edging them and finding boundaries. This tactic caused consternation as a feature of the last Ashes, and didn't seem particularly effective here.

Of course, these balls did eventually get Carse and Archer out, but what was the cost in runs?

Khawaja had limped off during the English second innings, stiff as a board and clearly in pain; news had broken before play began on day two that he had played in and won a local golf tournament in the days before the first Test, but that wasn't the reason he was suffering back spasms.

So, whoever was to walk out with Jake Weatherald, they'd be tasked with beginning a chase of 205 to win.

Travis Head walked out to open. He survived the first over of Archer, and there wasn't a fourth straight innings to begin with a wicket before a run was scored.

The crowd's voice swelled, hefty and hearty, as Jake Weatherald got off the mark, avoiding the dreaded pair, in the fifth over. 

Head and Weatherald both, cautiously, carefully, got to double figures, which, considering the nature of this match, was an imperious display of world-class batting.

And then Travball began. Head began striking purely, finding the boundary along the ground and through the air with ease, and with a variety of shots played with a cheerful breeziness that was utterly refreshing. He raced to a half-century.

Weatherald was also playing well, although perhaps a little too comfortably, as a miscued shot to the legside ballooned up for an easy catch. He departed for 23.

Marnus Labuschagne entered and also seemed infected by the Travball energy, playing much more freely than in the first innings.

Head hit four boundaries from a single Ben Stokes over, a sneering message sent to the English captain and destroyer-in-chief with the ball.

A Head century, something that seemed unthinkable with the batting that had come before, was actually inevitable. And it was the equal-third fastest Aussie Test ton ever.

And, in turn, so was the Australian victory, gleefully cantered to. 

Australia won this match with a stress-free chase on the evening of the second day, without Cummins and Hazlewood, and with a stricken Usman Khawaja. This may have been England's best chance to win a Test, and they squandered it with that second-innings collapse. 

A pink ball Test in Brisbane awaits, and what kind of rare chaos are we in store for there?