Hoggard was the star bowler for England on Sunday

Seamer Hoggard took all four wickets as Australia closed on 312-5, 239 behind.

"It's been a long, hard day on an unresponsive wicket and to get four wickets is satisfying," he said.

"We got accused of scoring slowly but we proved if you put the ball in the right areas it's tough to score out there and every bowler did that."

Hoggard's return of 4-76 would have been even better had Ashley Giles held on to a chance off Ricky Ponting early in his innings.

We've got to put in a professional performance, get five reasonably quick wickets and re-asses it Matthew Hoggard

The Aussie skipper went on to score 142 but the Yorkshire star refused to criticise his team-mate.

"You don't mean to drop catches and if catches didn't go down in cricket it would be a boring old game," the paceman said.

With the Adelaide Oval pitch flat, a draw remains the most likely result, although Australia still need 40 to avoid the follow-on after England declared on 551-6 on Saturday.

606: DEBATE To be fair to Gilo, I don't expect Monty would have done any better with that dropped catch SE 606: Have your say

Hoggard believes a good start to day four could swing the pendulum in England's favour.

"We've got five wickets to get and they are hard to come by on a wicket like that," he added.