Marsh shows the knack of making things happen

Among the more celebrated facts of Ashes history is that Ian Botham gained his first wicket against Australia with a long hop that Greg Chappell dragged onto the stumps. It was the first ball of a spell at Trent Bridge, at a time when England needed to interrupt the flow of things. Botham went on to collect five wickets as England won the Test, and has been a source of more or less constant irritation to Australians ever since.

On the third day at Lord's, Australia had a similar need for something to happen. Ben Stokes and Alastair Cook had each set themselves at the crease with something like concrete, determined to foil Australian efforts at dislodging them. The pitch was docile, the ball swinging only gently. Michael Clarke's front rank of bowlers had failed to create a chance, let alone a wicket.

Now it would be presumptuous in the extreme to suggest that Mitchell Marsh is destined for the sort of career Botham went on to enjoy. But in the moments that he persuaded first Stokes and then Cook to drag balls onto their stumps for 87 and 96 respectively, there would doubtless have been a look of recognition pass across the face of the selection chairman Rod Marsh, who was one of Botham's victims that late July day in 1977.

Quite apart from some useful overs to ease the burden on the full-time pacemen, the overs of an allrounder are invariably valued more if they carry the whiff of the unexpected, or the threat of surprise. Something that had gone missing from Shane Watson's oeuvre in recent times were the regular wickets that broke partnerships or stopped others from forming. By claiming two wickets in his first Ashes innings, Marsh actually matched the total number of wickets Watson has taken against England in England in nine Tests.

Watson's bowling had been skilful, swinging and most of all tidy - his economy rate only seldom bled above three an over, and he was adept at bowling maidens to a ring field. But a tally of 13 wickets from his past 18 matches showed that he had become a purveyor of overs that soaked up time more so than batsmen, the trio of five-wicket hauls he took between June 2010 and November 2011 a distant memory.

Marsh's first Australian tour happened to be the same trip to South Africa where Watson claimed his last major haul. He put in a few eye-catching displays during the limited overs portion of the trip, and looked comfortable in international company. Since then he has loomed as the man to ultimately take Watson's mantle, albeit with a fair few hiccups along the way.

Disciplinary problems were never far away from Western Australia during his early years playing for the state, and a reputation for instigating off-field hijinks, while also not taking the best care of himself, followed Marsh around the country. In South Africa in 2012 he was summarily punished for an overlong celebration of his 21st birthday, a verdict with which he disagreed vehemently. During the 2013 Champions Trophy, Marsh was one of the players out with David Warner when the opener took his infamous swing at Joe Root.

In many ways, this mischievous streak is out of step with professional sport in the 21st century, and certainly Marsh has fallen afoul of some of the more "high performance-oriented" regimes in place around Australian cricket, whether it be the WA set-up Mickey Arthur left behind or the former Centre of Excellence in Brisbane where he was sent home for turning up to a training intake in a less than fit state.

But in a state side managed by Justin Langer and Adam Voges or a national team mentored jovially but also intently by Darren Lehmann, Marsh's sense for the dramatic or the different has been rather more encouraged. His personality is an outgoing one, far more so than that of his older brother Shaun, and there is a confidence to his bearing that suggests he wants to be the man for key occasions. As one member of the tour party has stated about his tendency towards the outlandish, "He's a beauty."

As a batsman, Marsh loves nothing more than to give the ball a resounding thump, as seen during a pair of rollicking centuries in warm-up matches against Kent and Essex. In earlier days his ambitions had occasionally outstripped his aptitude, and this is the major reason why his first-class average still hovers somewhere around 30 rather than being higher. He will, in time, be capable of substantial innings for his country, as he showed when compiling a meritorious double hundred for Australia A against India A last winter.

At the bowling crease, Marsh has gone through several phases already. A previously mixed action has been made more front-on as a way of avoiding further back injuries, while strength work on his legs has been geared at warding off further soft tissue problems. In his earlier days on the fresher pitches then prepared for the Sheffield Shield, Marsh was a considerable threat. But he has had to learn to prosper on flatter surfaces in Tests - two wicketless outings against Pakistan in Dubai and Abu Dhabi provided some preparation for the Lord's track.

So it was that he came to the fore on the third day, delivering eight overs of tidy seam up at a tick above medium pace and goading both Stokes and Cook into error. As Marsh put it, "I just want to contribute to the team in any way I can, and to get those two wickets it was great for my confidence but at the same time it was a really important time for the team. The attack we've got I'm certainly not going to come out and try to blast blokes out, but wherever the skipper needs me I just want to be there for him and bowl whenever."

Botham was watching from the commentary box as Marsh made his breakthroughs, and while he would have winced at the blows these struck against his beloved England, he would have appreciated the allrounder's knack of chiming in. He would also have laughed heartily at Marsh's parting words to the press pack after speaking to them as Australia's player of the day: "Hopefully I'm back in here talking to you blokes tomorrow night!"