ENGLAND v AUSTRALIA, Second Ashes Test, Lord’s, Day Three on Friday.
SCORE: England (325 and 4-114) want 257 runs to beat Australia (416 and 279), with six wickets in hand.
SUMMARY: Steve Smith and Usman Khawaja drove three boundaries within the first three overs, earlier than Australia’s batters barely bought one other ball of their half of the pitch all day. All eight of Australia’s wickets to go on day 4 got here from the brief ball, as England restricted their scoring with fields set again for bouncers and ultimately strangled them out. The spotlight of the innings was a closely wounded Nathan Lyon serving to Mitchell Starc add 15 for the final wicket, hopping onto the sector and even finishing a run on one leg. Starc then struck twice early with the ball, together with the ball of the Test to this point to bowl Ollie Pope, earlier than Pat Cummins knocked over Joe Root and Harry Brook to place Australia firmly within the field seat. Ben Stokes is eyeing off one other Headingley-like miracle on 29 not out, however at 4-114, England’s goal of 371 appears a good distance away for England.
PLAYER OF THE MOMENT: He solely spent 25 minutes on the sector, however they stands out as the 25 minutes this Ashes sequence is remembered by. Lyon hobbled down the Lord’s Pavilion stairs, limped to the sector, hopped a single and placed on 15 runs for the final wicket with Mitchell Starc with a badly torn calf. The morale increase it gave Australia could have been value excess of that.
KEY MOMENT: Mitchell Stars’s ball to bowl Ollie Pope was a magnificence, however the harm from Pat Cummins’ second over of his second spell may very well be sequence defining. He struck Joe Root on the bicep and had the England caught at slip subsequent ball off a fast-climbing bouncer, earlier than bowling Harry Brook a couple of deliveries later. England have been 4-45 at that time, and their hopes of chasing down 371 severely crushed.
STAT OF THE DAY: Ninety-eight per cent of balls England bowled within the center session have been brief, because the bumper barrage on a dull Lord’s wicket went into overdrive.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “I had to go down to the long room and wait in the long room, because I would have been timed out. The lifts here are pretty slow, so I had to go down the stairs.” – Nathan Lyon, summing up his battle to exit and bat.
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
