The last 10 minutes of play yesterday may just have been the moments when any lingering hope England may have had of saving the Test - and with it the Ashes - disappeared. Set an unreachable target of 443 to win or, more realistically, to survive a minimum of 140 overs on a wearing pitch offering turn and a semblance of bounce, the chances did not look good.

Although the wickets of both openers were lost inside the first 14 overs Nasser Hussain and Mark Ramprakash, two who have consistently shown the technique and heart to take on the Australian attack, were putting things in perspective with a third-wicket stand of 89 and the prospect of taking the partnership into the final day, just as they had stayed together into the third morning.

But Colin Miller's off-spin confirmed the day overwhelmingly as Australia's. He had already removed Mike Atherton with a seamer that dollied to silly point from the leading edge as the batsman turned the blade a fraction early and now, with the sanctity of the dressing-room enticingly close for Hussain, he struck again. Going round the wicket - as offspinners used to do but seem reluctant to try these days - he floated a delivery that pitched on the line of the stumps and turned into Hussain, beating his backward defensive jab and striking the pad in front.

Steve Bucknor, the West Indian umpire, offers the most lingering death in the game, but even he was satisfied almost immediately that the criteria had all been met.

Hussain had made 41 in 133 minutes, darting down the pitch to the off-spinner and hitting him over the top until Mark Taylor decided to discourage him with a wide long-on. Thereafter he waited for the short ball to force off the back foot.

MacGill, who bamboozled Hussain so often in the first innings with the wrong'un but could not get his wicket, was played with more authority, Hussain abandoning his habit of squaring up in forward defence through swinging his back leg round to the off in an arc - like a mariner plotting a course on a chart with a pair of compasses - in favour of a more side-on approach, and he looked the better for it.

Even the occasional shooter from the seamers, the sort of ball that Hussain above all the other England batsmen seems to get with unfair frequency, sneaked by the off stump. Miller's was a fine piece of old fashioned off-spin bowling.

It brought to the crease Dean Headley, the nightwatchman on a king pair, who prodded at three balls before poking the next, via pad and glove, to Mark Waugh perched at silly point. Commentators from Australia have come unstuck in predicting the future before the past has been perused in England, but at 122 for four and with a day to go, the game looked up.

Miller had taken three of the wickets at a cost of 36. Mark Butcher was the other, caught at the wicket off Damien Fleming after cutting at a ball too close to his body for comfort and underedging.

Ramprakash - inevitably, it seems - was still there on 43 having batted a few minutes longer than Hussain and has Alec Stewart for company, although the England captain, demoting himself to five initially but because of the late wicket to six, had yet to face a ball. A lesson, perhaps, is being slowly and painfully acknowledged: for the sake of his sanity, longevity and the side, he has to bat down the order for the remainder of the series.

Until Taylor's declaration at 278 for five, 40 minutes into the afternoon session, the Australians, sparky without quite breaking into a gallop, had done much as they pleased, although Darren Gough bowled well with a ball well past its sell-by date to pick up the wickets of Ricky Ponting and earlier that of Michael Slater with a vicious inswinging yorker.

Not, though, before Slater had reached 103, the 10th century of his Test career and the sixth against England. Some 41/2 hours at the crease brought him a six and eight fours, two of them from Gough's opening deliveries of the day. Justin Langer also completed a diligent half-century to go with his massive unbeaten century, and there was 51 not out in only 83 balls from Mark Waugh. Taylor, mindful of the damage done to Waugh's confidence by the revelations of the past week, had delayed his declaration.

Although he has been playing in a winning side, Ponting's fourth low score of the series, following 21 in Brisbane, 11 in Perth, five in the first innings here and now 10 in the second, means his place must be in jeopardy for Melbourne.