Australia favourites after “surreal day at Lords”
Ashes Day 9: Lords Cricket Ground, London.
Ashes Day 9: Lords Cricket Ground, London.
Saturday 1st July 2023
Australia 416 all out and 279 all out
England 325 all out and 114–4 (257 runs to win)
Act One: A Tale of Two Hours
Saturday at Lords in an Ashes Series and the first day of a new month saw England needing a magic trick in the day’s crucial opening session. With Australia starting day 4 with a commanding lead of 221 runs and a current 2nd innings score of 130–2, England needed that magic trick or magical spell of bowling immediately but rather had to wait for the second hour of a session of over two elongated hours, and a session of contrasting fortunes for each team.
The first hour was entirely dominated by the stoic and untroubled batting skills of Usman Khawaja and Steve Smith who had the equivalent of a batting “net” or practice session, and all in front of a packed full house at Lords on a Saturday morning in the Ashes. Whilst Jimmy Anderson and Ollie Robinson bowled a probing, nagging line, it was an easy hour for the Aussie batsmen as Khawaja added 18 runs to his overnight not out total of 58 and Smith caressed 25 carefree runs as they reached the drinks break at the end of the first hour of play unbeaten, their team total to 183–2, and a huge looking lead of 274 runs. For the uninitiated, a batting “net” is similar to a batting practice “cage” in baseball whereby the batsman receives repeated bowling surrounded on all sides by a net as he hones his skills with the willow. This morning, Khawaja and Smith simply took the opportunity to have a high profile batting practice session in front of a full house, adding 53 runs to their team’s total in a first hour of play they made look rather easy indeed.
So easy in fact for England captain Ben Stokes that he immediately changed tack around the drinks break and reverted to drying up the runs and the short pitched bowling tactics that had been the downfall of his team during their 1st innings. The second hour became all England as Josh Tongue bowled 9 straight overs, “bouncing out” the dangerous Steve Smith for 34 and being the wicket in the sandwich of two others as Stuart Broad bowled for the first time today to sprinkle some Ashes fairy dust into proceedings once again. Broad “bounced out” Khawaja, finally, for a well made anchor innings of 77 runs before snagging Travis Head via the medium of yet another short pitched delivery, and a brilliant one-handed catch from Joe Root close in at the treacherous “Bat/Pad” position. Root’s superb reactionary catch dismissed the dangerous Head for just 7 and England’s change in tactics and minor magical spell of bowling had removed 3 Aussie wickets for just 10 runs, however Cameron Green and Alex Carey doggedly saw out the remainder of an hour’s Test Match cricket desperately needed from the home team to purely keep themselves within a run chasing distance of a far away chance at victory.
Green (15 not out) and Carey (10 not out) resume after the Lunch Break with their team on 222–5 with an already imposing lead of 313 runs.
Act Two: “It’s like a scene from M*A*S*H out there!”
With magic clearly in the air, the afternoon session was an almost exact replica of the morning session that came before it and twisting our timeline logic, the session ended with ex England captain Michael “Athers” Atherton exclaiming that the madness before him on the field was reminiscent of a casualty scene from an epochal 60’s and 70’s US Television sitcom and Vietnam War drama, with the session beginning with ex Australian captain Mark “Tubby” Taylor describing the opening hour of play as a “stalemate”, a “holding pattern” and frankly, “dull”.
Why is easily explained:
The first hour of the session once more belonged to an Australian team who although not scoring heavily (Cameron Green and Alex Carey only added a further 17 runs in the hour) but they had stretched their team’s lead to 330 runs and perhaps more importantly, still remained not out at the wicket having taken an hour of playing time from the match and massively frustrating a tiring roster of England bowlers in the process. It was in short, dull, and the match as a whole was treading water ahead of either an Australian assault for extra match winning runs or an England fightback. The latter arrived in spades as England ripped out the final 5 wickets to fall for the cost of just 40 additional runs but the “surreal day at Lords” as so brilliantly described by ex England captain Nasser Hussain at the end of the day’s play was only just beginning.
Continuing the employment of the “Bodyline” theory of packing the leg side field and bowling short pitched balls time and time again, Ben Stokes’ charges tempted Cameron Green into hooking into the gleeful hands of Ben Duckett on the boundary before Ollie Robinson’s rising delivery forced Alex Carey into a defensive shot that resulted in Joe Root snaffling the second of his innings total of three important catches. Aussie skipper Pat Cummins was “bounced out”, his bowling mate Josh Hazlewood too, before a heavily injured Nathan Lyon gamely limped to the wicket to aid a last wicket partnership with Mitchell Starc. The longer Lyon lasted, gamely batting on one leg, the louder the Australians in the crowd sang “Gary! Gary! Gary!”, one of Lyon’s many nicknames alongside “Gaz”, “Gazza” and “The Goat”. Together with the absurdity of the situation and Lyon’s awful injury adding to those of his captain Pat Cummins, Ollie Pope and his badly damaged shoulder and Ben Stokes limping around the outfield after bowling for almost the entirety of the final hour of a session that was acclaimed on TV commentary as a “scene from M*A*S*H!”, the surreal quality of today’s play from Lords was still yet to click into top gear. But Australia were finally out and with an even bigger but for England fans, their team now required a mammoth 371 runs to win which, if successful, will be their second highest ever total scored to win a Test Match in the entire history of this great game.
Act Three: Duckett hat-trick keeps English hopes alive
The famed hourly phases of play continued in a final session of play that saw those Australian World Test Champions arrive to play once more before a brilliant rear-guard partnership between Ben Duckett and his captain Ben Stokes just, just kept their team’s hopes alive entering tomorrow’s fifth and final day. With scarred memories of the batting collapses in Melbourne and Hobart during the last Ashes, I feared for something similar this evening as England didn’t exactly collapse but were blown away in an hour’s bewitching spell of incredible fast bowling from Aussie skipper Pat Cummins and the left armed fast bowling wizardry of his great friend Mitchell Starc. After Zak Crawley tamely feathered an edge from a cricketing “waft” down the leg side into the gloves of Alex Carey for just 3, England collapsed from 9–1 for 45–4 and in process Ollie Pope saw his middle stump smashed out of the ground in a mesmeric spell of bowling from Mitchell Starc before his skipper Cummins “bounced out” Joe Root with a vicious lifting, unplayable delivery and just 3 deliveries later, he pinged back Harry Brook’s off stump with a beautiful delivery that cut away from the young Yorkshireman’s seemingly perfect forward defence.
At 45–4 and those painful early morning memories returning of Ashes past in the dead of an English morning from a world away in Australia, the evening sun set on a 69 run partnership between the two Ben’s, Duckett and Stokes, and how Ben Duckett is still not out at the close of play is yet another example of the surreal magic and madness that has surrounded this enthralling day of Test Match cricket. As fellow Ben, Stokes, limped around the crease and doggedly resisted everything thrown at him to remain 29 not out overnight, Duckett received a “life” when on 0 and for once, a flying catch by Cameron Green didn’t stick in his huge hands but burst through his fingertips for the England opener’s first runs of the 2nd innings. A second reprieve arrived when Duckett was on just 6 and his team collapsing at 12–1 as he more than reluctantly reviewed the on-field decision of LBW (Leg Before Wicket) and by the width of a cigarette paper, he was shown on TV review to be safe and not out.
Duckett’s surreal and unique hat-trick (of sorts) arrived in the last knockings of a day that saw him inexplicably hooking a ball he should have watched safely pass by. Instead, his awkward attempt at an uppercut slash for a boundary 4 landed in the hands of Mitchell Starc racing around the boundary edge and although he safely pouched the catch, he clearly dragged the ball on the turf as he regained a bodily balance and via the TV umpire once more, Duckett survived.
Again.
So the day’s re-cap is a simple one:
England need a further 257 runs to win.
Australia need 6 wickets to win to take a 2–0 advantage in this best of 5 series.
Memories? Magic spells? Surreal happenings? A goat limping around the home of cricket? Ghosts of Ashes past? All things are seemingly possible in this grandest of all games when there’s an urn full of ashes from centuries past on offer to the victor.
Is Ben Duckett on his way to the century he should have made in the 1st innings and who will bat with him and around him if skipper Ben Stokes doesn’t? Will it be another famed day of rear-guard runs scoring from Yorkshire’s finest Jonny Bairstow or are there yet more Ben Stokes memories to add to Headingley in 2019?
Or are Australia on the precipice of an almost unassailable 2–0 lead in the best of 5 series? They have a huge 257 runs to play with and only require 6 England wickets for victory, which in truth is only really 3 as there isn’t a huge amount of batting to follow Jonny Bairstow.
Australia are heavy favourites but magical sporting moments are reserved for The Ashes and England need a magic filled miracle tomorrow to retain any chance of winning the smallest trophy in all of sport.
Thanks for reading. My daily recaps from days 1 through 3 of this 2nd Ashes Test Match are linked below:
Indiana Jones and a Quest for the Ashes
Ashes Day 6: Lords Cricket Ground, London.medium.com
Aussies bounce out the Bazballers! Lords Test perfectly poised
Ashes Day 7: Lords Cricket Ground, London.medium.com
Rain ends the England pain as Australia dominate at Lords
Ashes Day 8: Lords Cricket Ground, London.medium.com