This is the WACA's last Test match, and if not for construction delays at the new ground over the river and near the casino, it would not have taken place here at all. The WACA has a personality, fast and loose, like no other cricket ground in the world; as a farewell gesture, it reminded the game of what it is throwing away.

Winning his third toss of the series, Joe Root might have wished he hadn't won the second. It was unthinkable, after Adelaide, for him to send Australia in. So in Perth, where the team batting first customarily struggles to cope with the unfamiliar bounce and pace, where first use is seldom a clear advantage, Root had no choice but to send his own men in.

But if England were to stage a counter-offensive in the series, this had to be the time and, damn the risk, the place. Australia also started with racing hearts over the prospect of a wicket to suit their speed merchants.

The WACA comes with two warnings, however: reapply sunscreen regularly and don't get carried away by the bounce. Accordingly, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood set out bowling very full, good enough to dismiss Alastair Cook, hangdog in his 150th, but they crossed the fine line and over-pitched to Mark Stoneman, who clipped four boundaries before the patrons had found their places in the sun.

In the sixth over, Hazlewood got one to leap at Stoneman, whereupon things got very interesting. Stoneman dropped a hand off his bat and fended blindly at the ball, his best Stuart Broad impression. This pitch was in party mood. You only live once, and the Australians had had enough of their trademark bowling discipline. There was fun to be had here.

But for whom? Stoneman and James Vince had more than their share of sketchy moments, but the airy slices flew to safety and the scoreboard kept rolling. Australia were generating constant excitement but it was England's total forging ahead. This is the flipside of the WACA: every opportunity for the fast bowlers is also one for the batsmen. Again and again the Englishmen found the boundary, piercing the covers or deflecting past the redundant fine leg. When Starc dropped too short, Tim Paine gave up byes because he was not 10 feet tall. Nathan Lyon gained no assistance, finding himself instead a target for England's aggression, and soon the Australian leadership were showing signs of concern, if not panic.

In his second spell, Hazlewood returned to his strength. Patience must have been hard to find with all this zing and pop, but even in the fabled mid-1970s, Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson had to bide their time between wickets. Look at the scorecards: those tough old English roosters resisted thunderbolts for hours. It was time for Australia to respond. Hazlewood, dropping back to more sensible lengths, probed Vince into error, and after lunch he did the same to Stoneman, only to see a butter-fingered first slip Mitchell Marsh, brought into the team to bat and bowl, make a meal of the one skill he had, to that point, been called upon to execute.

Then Hazlewood lost it again, taking out his frustrations on Stoneman, aiming repeatedly at his face and hitting him once. Stoneman has been both tough and attractive through this series, and he made some ground on the most unlikely of achievements - a top score at Perth while demonstrating a complete inadequacy against the short ball - before Starc had him caught off the glove. There was some bad luck in the third umpire's decision, but on this day Stoneman had used up his share.

A mid-afternoon crisis for England, Joe Root falling just before Stoneman, was flipped over by a fluent partnership between Malan and Jonny Bairstow that may be a turning point not only of the day but the series. Malan had been a little like England so far: competitive but not decisive. On Thursday he fulfilled his promise, cover-driving the Australian bowlers into oblivion. His maiden century was the first by an Englishman here since Ben Stokes' in the corresponding match four years ago, and it was a gem of control and elegance, pleasing to the eye while digging his team out of trouble. The change of fortune for England, while Australia's bowlers wilted, was perhaps a sign that the wicket was settling. But it still has plenty of that distinctive WACA action in store.

Meanwhile, on the far side of Gloucester Park, the future home of big cricket in Perth loomed like the mothership of the fun police. Someone has decided that new stadiums are the solution to everything. Let's hope it is not the solution to this wild excess of entertaining cricket.