Sport

England v Australia: Women's Ashes Test, day two – live!

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102nd over: Australia 270-3 (Perry 85, Haynes 58) Brunt to Perry, and this is the key match-up. If England don’t remove Australia’s top gun then she’ll fly all day. (Oh god that’s an accidental plug for the awful remake featuring a Tom Cruise who is now made of plasticine and an Ed Harris who is so, so sad that he’s still alive, sentences to some sort of Promethean fate of having to play cranky admirals for eternity.) Brunt angles a ball in and hits the pad, but it’s going well down leg. Perry blocks out and then pinches a single to end the over with a straight punch.

Updated





101st over: Australia 269-3 (Perry 84, Haynes 58) Anya Shrubsole to start things off, and despite the heavy atmosphere there’s not much movement off the straight and narrow with this 20-over old ball. There is a chance though, as Shrubsole gives width and Haynes can’t resist slashing at the ball, getting a big top edge between gully and slip from the angled bat. Four runskis.





Good news, we’re going to get a start on time. It may rain later, but we’ll battle on for the start. It’s so humid here today, and very warm. Sticky, heavy atmosphere. Let’s play.





Here is your highly detailed local weather update: it was raining earlier. It is not raining now. It may be raining later. Give me a job!





If there was one thing that stood out on the first day, it was the ruthlessness of this Australian team, even through a couple of patches where England competed. There’s something ominous about the way Australia has played in this series. Luckily I already wrote about it for you last night.





Preamble

Geoff Lemon

Here we go again. There have been a lot of last-chance moments for England in the past few weeks and here is another one. For the England women’s team to have any chance of winning their Ashes series against Australia, they need to win this Test. To win this Test, they need to rattle through seven Australian wickets, make 500 runs, then take ten more wickets. In three days. It’s hard, but so was landing on the moon, which everyone keeps reminding us about this week. (This match is admittedly less strategically important in a propaganda war against the Russians.)

For Australia though, it’s just a chance to bat and bat. Ellyse Perry is eyeing off a century, and that would be two in a row for the sport’s most obscenely gifted and hardest-working player. (That’s a winning combination.) Rachael Haynes has a fifty of her own and can see where that leads. And Australia don’t actually need to win, since a draw would deliver them the series trophy, but I’m guessing they’re still very keen to push for a result, not just bat things out.

As long as the rain stays away, get set for an eventful morning.

source: theguardian.com