England is right on top of Australia after day one of the third Ashes Test despite another resilient innings from Marnus Labuschagne at Headingley.

Having top-scored in the second innings of the drawn Lord's Test after a late call-up as Steve Smith's concussion substitution, Labuschagne backed it up with 74 gritty first-innings runs in Leeds before Australia was all out for 179 in the last over of the day.

Labuschagne's runs were scored in the face of brilliant bowling by Jofra Archer (6-45) and Stuart Broad (2-32) in England's troublesome cloudy conditions.

"I didn't do too much differently from Lord's," said Archer of a place where he took five wickets on debut.

"It was a bit bowler friendly today, at times it did go flat and the ball stopped swinging, but it started again.

"I'll more than take 6-45 but I can be tidier in the future," he added.

"It's been really good so far, from the moment I've put the badge on, it's been the happiest days of cricket so far and hopefully plenty more ahead."

The start of play was pushed back by over an hour due to showers, delaying the confirmation that opener Cameron Bancroft had been dropped for Marcus Harris and James Pattinson was coming back into the XI for Peter Siddle.

When play eventually got underway, England's newest hero, Archer, opened the bowling with Broad, who looked the more dangerous of the pair early, regularly beating the bat of David Warner.

But it was Archer who made the biggest impact of the opening exchanges when, in his second over, he found Harris's outside edge and Jonny Bairstow completed the dismissal.

Jofra Archer struck late on day one at Headingley. ( AP: Jon Super )

Harris would have been even more disappointed when he turned around to see the rest of the players following him off the field, as the rain become too heavy for play and the ground staff ran the covers on.

The teams spent 90 minutes off the field, but England's bowlers picked up right where they left off, as Broad found Usman Khawaja's outside edge in the fifth over after the resumption, and Australia's first drop nicked through to Bairstow for the fifth straight time in the series.

That brought to the crease Labuschagne, and he went about making his pitch for a more long-term role after an impressive half-century to save the second Test at Lord's.

Labuschagne and Warner ground their way through the next half-hour before rain forced the teams off the field again, this time for an hour.

They came back out and played cricket for 15 minutes, until the umpires called for the light meter and sent the players off again, for a half-hour break.

When they eventually returned for the final session, Warner looked a new man, no doubt aided by the removal of Broad from the attack, and Labuschagne joined him in scoring freely off Chris Woakes and Ben Stokes.

David Warner and Marnus Labuschagne rebuilt Australia's innings from a precarious position. ( AP: Jon Super )

Warner soon made his way past 50 — his first half-century since the second Test of that infamous series in South Africa last year — and right when his team needed it.

But his innings wouldn't last much longer — Archer managed to extract a bit of extra pace and found Warner trapped on the crease, finally edging at the sort of delivery he had played and missed at so many times earlier in the day.

"It's disappointing it happened like that but they won the toss, bowled and had the conditions in their favour," Warner said.

"They were patient and our top order got out to good balls.

"It was very challenging in that first half hour. I probably played and missed 35 times but that happens and a little bit of luck comes into it. You just have to work out how to survive."

His dismissal would be the start of a purple patch for England.

Travis Head came to the crease and never looked comfortable, playing and missing at all six of his faced deliveries, the last of which was a delightful Broad ball that took the top of the off stump on the way through.

Matthew Wade's stay was even shorter, but admittedly more unfortunately — the second ball he faced, from Archer, hit Wade on the thigh pad, ricocheted back onto his glove and then trickled back to hit the leg stump and dislodged the bail.

Having lost 3-3 to plummet to 5-139, captain Tim Paine joined Labuschagne, who had reached a second straight half-century two balls before Wade's exit, for another rebuild.

As he did at Lord's, when he copped an Archer bouncer to the grill off his second ball, Labuschagne put his body on the line, getting shaken up by a Broad delivery that caught him flush in the crotch, sending him sprawling to the turf.

Marnus Labuschagne copped a nasty one in the nether regions from Stuart Broad. ( Reuters: Andrew Boyers )

He shook it off, but he would have been feeling sick again when he saw England successfully overturn an LBW ruling against Paine, with ball tracking showing enough of the ball clipping the leg stump to give Chris Woakes his first wicket of the day.

Pattinson lasted eight balls before nicking Archer to Joe Root at first slip, and Pat Cummins became the third duck of the game when he was given out caught behind to an Archer out-swinger.

He reviewed immediately and, despite inconclusive replays and the snickometer showing spikes before and after the ball reached the bat, third umpire Kumar Dharmasena had no choice but to stick with the on-field decision, giving Archer his first five-wicket haul in just his second Test.

Stokes then removed Labuschagne with a thigh-high full toss into his pads, before Archer had Nathan Lyon LBW in the last over of the day to nab his sixth.

Look back at how day one unfolded in our live blog.