Key events
58th over: Australia 175-2 (Khawaja 73, Smith 28) What on earth was that! Smith backs away to leg, Robinson follows him. Smith gets a bumper that doesn’t get up, and he swats down on it like he’s killing a fly. Middles it, into the ground at midwicket, and falls over backwards in the process. Lies there for a while practising that bizarre tennis smash.
Plays a normal pull shot to follow, gets off strike. Then Khawaja takes on a short ball, pulls it over backward square for four! Why is he playing like that? Goes aerial and gets lucky. Then gets luckier… he’s dropped. Hooks again, glove, looping over the keeper, and Bairstow gets as high as he can but can only get it to clip the webbing.
He gets a run, Smith another, but what’s going on? Is the England brain virus fungal? Has it spread between dressing rooms via spores?
57th over: Australia 168-2 (Khawaja 68, Smith 26) Tongue around the wicket, bowling short, and five byes from the over. A single and a four.
@GeoffLemonSport Hey Geoff, do you think that Bazball may cause some issues for bowlers if their mid 30s in a packed Ashes series? Just wonder if you are consistently off for a day or less when England are batting whether the toll will tell.
— Vectron44 (@vectron44) July 1, 2023
Absolutely! England have faced 78, 66, and 76 overs in this series, and the bowlers have batted some of that.
Australia faced 116, 92, 100, and now 57 and counting. England have picked older bowlers and then given them less rest. Fast batting is one thing, but a cricket team is an ecosystem.
56th over: Australia 163-2 (Khawaja 68, Smith 26) Gets onto one well, Khawaja, a lower short ball that he pulls off the hip and nearly gets four, but it’s saved on the fence. A trampoline bouncer is called wide.
“Good morning from Pittsburgh!” writes Eric Peterson. “Yesterday’s events and the backlash about England’s obstinate approach at the bat made me think of Bruce Lee’s legendary quote about not fearing the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. If that man goes up against Bruce Lee and only uses that one kick without varying it up, Bruce Lee still wipes the floor with him. (I feel like I’m pushing the bounds of reason drawing an analogy between the martial arts and cricket, but this passes muster better than the Daniel LaRusso crane-kick theory I also had in mind.)”
To be fair, Bruce Lee wipes the floor with anyone. But if you can build a Johnny Lawrence analogy, I’m interested. Sweep to leg?
55th over: Australia 160-2 (Khawaja 66, Smith 26) This is interesting. The Australians are playing the pull shot. They’re not trying to hit it very hard though, they’re just placing the ball away. Two singles each, all from short balls.
Another move up the record list for Smith.
Reaching 25 today, Steve Smith goes past Steve Waugh’s 3200 runs against England. Which is a different number to Waugh’s Ashes runs.
Only Garfield Sobers, Allan Border and Don Bradman have more runs against England. https://t.co/phwvteHwU7
— Geoff Lemon Sport (@GeoffLemonSport) July 1, 2023
54th over: Australia 156-2 (Khawaja 64, Smith 24) Field set for bouncers to Smith. Fine leg. Deep backward square, two thirds. Regulation square leg. Deep forward square leg. Midwicket. On the off side, deep fine third, gully, deep cover point, mid off.
So they want Australia to play the pull shot, and Smith doesn’t, until he gets a ball that’s only waist high, and rolls his wrists over it to pick up a safe single. Especially safe because it turns out to be a no ball.
Robinson isn’t exactly your short-ball enforcer, is he? Where oh where is Mark Wood, again. Khawaja does pull a ball, again along the ground and no run to backward square. Ducks a better bouncer, Robinson finally gets the line at Khawaja’s helmet.
53rd over: Australia 154-2 (Khawaja 64, Smith 23) Josh Tongue on to bowl, he’s been the one to make things happen, but this is a pretty limp over of short leg-side stuff that Khawaja can again ignore.
52nd over: Australia 154-2 (Khawaja 64, Smith 23) Robinson tries a bouncer to Khawaja, loopy and wide of the off stump. Khawaja treats that like a plate of leftovers that have been sitting out overnight. Disregard. Gets a run to leg, last ball of the over.
51st over: Australia 153-2 (Khawaja 63, Smith 23) What a shot from Smith! There is swing there for Anderson, away from the bat, but Smith covers it, accounts for it, and sends it elbow high through the covers. Gorgeous.
Pitches up again, looking for swing, and Smith drives it back past him for four! Anderson gets the left boot out, can’t reach it. And the very next ball, more width, Smith steers it between gully and backward point for another boundary.
Yikes.
50th over: Australia 141-2 (Khawaja 63, Smith 11) No rush from Australia this morning, Smith forward to press a single into the off side.
49th over: Australia 140-2 (Khawaja 63, Smith 10) Buttery from Khawaja! Onto the front foot, gets to the pitch perfectly, and places his extra cover drive too wide for Broad to get across and field. It streaks up the hill towards the digital scoreboard in the corner by the renovated Compton Stand.
48th over: Australia 136-2 (Khawaja 59, Smith 10) Khawaja facing Robinson, angled across the lefty from over the wicket. Leaves what he can, defends until he gets a leg stump ball to glance for one.
“Going to struggle to follow the Test this afternoon as I’m going to watch a Lioness vs Portugal friendly,” writes Stephen Brown. “It’s their last warm up before they head down under for the World Cup, so hoping they are firing on all cylinders. Will be keeping up with the morning session by your fine commentary though. I think Jonathan Liew comes closest to encapsulating my feelings. Yes, Bazball is good. Yes, it is England’s best chance of winning the Ashes. But no, it shouldn’t mean having a swing at everything all the time. If they can learn that before the next Test we can still have a decent series with a plucky underdog fightback story. It’s the hope that gets ya.”
47th over: Australia 135-2 (Khawaja 58, Smith 10) Anderson to bowl the first full over, from the Nursery End. Khawaja produces an extra off the thigh pad. Smith starts his crabbing for the day, across the stumps to defend, picking off the straight one but right at the midwicket fielder. Two slips, gully, backward point, an extra cover really, splitting the gap between cover and mid off, a wide-set mid on, midwicket, long leg. Conventional. No run. Technically a maiden over, because leg byes don’t count as bowling errors. Some of them certainly are.
46th over: Australia 134-2 (Khawaja 58, Smith 10) Two balls for Ollie Robinson to bowl after his over was interrupted yesterday, and Smith squeezes the first of them out behind square leg for a not entirely intended boundary.
The players are out, the quasi-hymn is blared, and we’re ready to go.
“Could you please pass on my thanks to Barney for his excellent article yesterday,” writes Paulo Biriani. “And if he has a dossier to publish it. I speak as a state school cricket coach who despaired to the point where I just gave up – my students were never going to make it in cricket. I returned to football instead.”
“Geoff, have you got over your hangover from Adam’s wedding in the week?” asks Dechlan Brennan. It is true that only my OBO colleague Adam Collins would schedule his wedding the day before the Lord’s Test. But no, I was wise to the pitfalls, and sensible that evening. Have learned that lesson.
Test Match Special link for overseas listening? Yes, yes.
Tom van der Gucht has emailed in. “I’m pretty confident that England pretty much have this wrapped up. There seems to have been massive collapses in the morning session over the past two days and I’m hopeful there’ll be another one today. Yesterday’s rain has stopped Australia getting too many on the board before England skittle the last 7 wickets (I can’t see Lyon batting again) for 50 runs before Crawley smashes out the fastest century by an England player in Tests to win just before the close of play.”
Tongue out of cheek, there could easily be wickets this morning. It’s cloudy and it will take some serious batting to get back in, though a few specks of blue sky have started to appear.
Revised session times
Five minute delay. Plus an extended session by 15 minutes due to the time lost yesterday. So we’ll play 11:05 to lunch at 13:20.
Tea at 16:15.
Stumps at 18:35, but they can take the extra half hour, so no doubt they will.
Tie a piece of string to a can
Email, tweets. Send me your mournful melancholy or triumphalist blaring. Or preferably, send me something more textured and precious. I’ll include some bits and pieces as we go through the session.
They did get the square covers down eventually, now they’re rolling them up again. Still 18 minutes before the scheduled start, might yet get going on time.
Jonathan Liew to finish, who spent most of yesterday looking extremely perplexed, and most of this column sounding the same way.
“It’s just the way they cook. They’re taking a whole new approach to gastronomy. And ultimately, when you get down to it, is there really any difference between fine dining and violent diarrhoea?”
I’ve chipped in, mostly to try to capture the blinking Australian surprise at being handed the ascendancy in such a cheerfully pliable manner.
And there’s a Final Word episode from Lord’s last night for the podcast inclined.
Half an hour before play, and the hovercraft pitch cover has come on. Is it actually raining or are they anticipating rain? Can’t see anything, but a few umbrellas are up. It must be very light.
Andy Bull wonders if – at last, at last – we have seen the final waning of a great England partnership.
Some sombre news came in yesterday from one of Australia’s all-time greats, Allan Border. Not news for him, but something he’s gone public with after knowing for some years. Steve Smith overtook his catches record recently, and could pass a couple of his runs records today – which given Smith’s career, underlines how significant Border’s was.
England women’s captain Heather Knight has spoken about the ICEC report finding that women were marginalised in cricket – not that she needed a report to tell her that.
Simon Burnton has a strange news line, that according to Ollie Pope’s shoulder injury from the first innings was deemed to have vanished by the third innings because he batted in the second. And promptly hurt himself again.
Time to catch up with yesterday’s happenings. Let’s start you on Ali Martin’s match report, and note that he holds no responsibility for the headline’s hardware-related mixed metaphor.
Preamble
Geoff Lemon
Good morning, good morning, the general said. I’ve wandered around Lord’s already this morning and had a number of conversations with some fairly downcast English folk. They don’t think there’s a way back. But hey, why do we play the game if not to enjoy those triumphs of the unlikely? Ben Stokes is a couple of stories below me wandering to the nets right now in preparation of the Headingley Mach II innings that he is obviously planning for later.
The Australians I’ve been speaking to, meanwhile, are a cross between smug and confused, with some containing the former better than others.
But I’m hearing talk of Australia batting all day, declaring, setting 500, and I doubt that things will be that easy. Two wickets down, England could and should be able to work through the rest as the day goes on. Then it’s a question of how big that lead can get in the meantime, and whether England have the confidence and competence to try to reel it in, on a surface that is not a batting paradise. Nor is it a minefield, but I suspect it’ll get slower and trickier with each session from here.
It is Australia’s Test for the taking, don’t get me wrong, but they will still have to play well from here to formalise the seizure.
