Ashes 2019: England v Australia, fifth Test day two – live!

12th over: Australia 29-2 (Labuschagne 15, Smith 6) Archer again, and Smith is away! Flowing cover drive, through the fuller ball. Jack Leach gives hot pursuit to the longest boundary out in front of the scoreboard, and wins a huge cheer as he dives to catch up and flick back for three. Too much width thereafter to Labuschagne, who leaves alone.

“Given the slow over rates,” suggests Martin Gillam, “why not save time by simply having Australia start every innings at 20 for two, with Smith and Labuschagne batting? And not that those two need a gilding of their achievements in this series, but I imagine they pad up quite quickly at the change of innings.”

Very good.

11th over: Australia 26-2 (Labuschagne 15, Smith 3) Time for Sam Curran. Player of the series last year, not getting a chance until the fifth Test this year. Left-arm, angled across Labuschagne. He takes advantage of the angle to cover-drive four, but misses another attempt. There’s an inch between bat and ball, but there’s a spike on UltraEdge again. So that’s out under the new rules, isn’t it?

10th over: Australia 22-2 (Labuschagne 11, Smith 3) Archer is doing it again! Bowling a fascinating spell, I mean. He aborts a celebrappeal after realising the ball took an inside edge into Smith’s pad. It was also way high, but any contact with Smith’s pad is a victory. Then Archer pulls the length back, cuts the ball away, and makes Smith waft off the back foot at fresh air. Meanwhile on TMS, Glenn McGrath is carefully saving a moth and releasing it out the window. Big mean fast bowler indeed.

9th over: Australia 22-2 (Labuschagne 11, Smith 3) It’s Broad who knocks the release valve with his elbow, sliding onto the pads where Marnus can clip him for four! That has been one of the strengths for Labuschagne: even when he’s defending for a long period, he’s still ready to take on the scoring chance when a bad ball comes.

“Am I correct in thinking that when Bradman scored his 974 runs in a series there were 6 Test matches rather than 5? If this is the case then surely an average needs to be worked out for this and Smith doesn’t need as many. However if he does get them playing less matches then it surely puts him as King of All Batting Superheroes.”

You’re not quite correct, Paul Frew. Bradman only batted seven times for his 974. From memory that included scores of 14, 1 and 8. The other four knocks went alright.

Smith is currently in his sixth innings, so he could have seven if he bats again.

He gets off the mark here, walking across to Broad to clip two, then a single. So he’s 301 short of passing Bradman.

8th over: Australia 14-2 (Labuschagne 6, Smith 0) … but the real action is at the other end. Archer versus Smith again, with some pace in the pitch and some sunshine around. Archer looks much happier than in the freezing wind of Manchester wearing about three cricket jumpers.

Smith has a flash outside off stump. Archer fields a defensive shot and throws it at Smith. But soon enough the batsman is into his rhythm, stepping across to get behind the ball outside off, and to hop and fend off the one into the body. Maiden.

7th over: Australia 14-2 (Labuschagne 6, Smith 0) Broad makes Labuschagne play at nearly every ball this over, and it’s another maiden. England turning the screws…

6th over: Australia 14-2 (Labuschagne 6, Smith 0) Archer’s 18th wicket in his fourth Test of this series. He has one ball at Smith, a bouncer on a good testing line that Smith ducks forward under. Smith needs 304 in the match to break Bradman’s record of 974 in a series. Anyone backing him?

Caught at slip! Harris’ unhappy tour continues in the vein of Warner’s, as Archer angled in from around the wicket, perhaps took the ball away slightly, and even though Harris was just blocking from the crease the ball strikes high on the shoulder of the bat and into the cordon, low and dipping on Stokes at third slip who takes the catch well.

5th over: Australia 14-1 (Harris 3, Labuschagne 6) Broad now, and Marnus is leaving whenever he can. He has played a greater proportion of leaves than any batsman in the series. He does nick one when he can’t get the bat away in time, though, and it bounces through to the cordon.

4th over: Australia 14-1 (Harris 3, Labuschagne 6) Archer again, bowls one lovely delivery to Harris that leaves him like a Communards song. A maiden.

“With all the talk in England about the lamentable batting, has a similar thing been happening in Australia?” asks Michael Hall. “Do you think this series might see the end of Warner, or does he still have enough credit from before Sandpapergate to see him through the winter?”

He still has 21 Test tons, so he’ll be in the side for the home summer for sure. Get his groove back in home conditions. It would be a silly overreaction to turf a player with that record on the back of a bad series.

3rd over: Australia 14-1 (Harris 3, Labuschagne 6) Broad to Labuschagne, angle, into the right-hander’s pads and a big appeal. Not out. Maybe a touch high, maybe just outside the line. Runs in the over though as well: Harris clips three, Marnus two, then a short ball from Broad is cracked through midwicket by Marnus for four. Well timed shot.

2nd over: Australia 5-1 (Harris 0, Labuschagne 0) Any rate, it’s another failure in the book, and another paltry opening partnership. England’s 27 in the first innings here remains the best opening stand of the series for either side.

Archer started from the Vauxhall End. Warner got an edge second ball, played with nice soft hands into the ground, into the gap in the cordon, into the boundary cushion for four. But tried to lather the fifth and instead got a bath. Marnus in the Middle starts early.

Controversially out. Width from Archer, and short. Warner swats at it wide of off stump and misses, from all appearances. Bairstow goes up, and the cordon half goes up. Then after a long chat they send the not out decision to DRS. On the replay it looks to me like there’s daylight between bat and ball. The ball is close to the edge, but never clearly touching the bat. Yet when the UltraEdge comes up, there’s movement on the graph. Not a spike, like leather on willow usually creates, but a flatter bobble. Which could be the batsman’s spikes on the ground, or something else. But the third umpire says that there’s movement, and that’s enough. Erasmus has his decision overturned on the basis of very sketchy evidence. Warner played a bad shot, but I don’t think you can look at that replay and credibly say he hit the ball.

1st over: Australia 1-0 (Warner 1, Harris 0) Warner will take first ball, choosing to face Broad. Wanting to be positive, take on the challenge. He’s done that a couple of times recently and it hasn’t worked. Three ducks in 10 balls against Broad.

You can see why with the first two balls. One is wide. The next is very wide. Warner slaps at both of them, and misses. You can hear Jim Maxwell chuckling at the back of the TMS box. “He’s going to need a longer bat,” says Michael Vaughan. The second one should have been called wide, really. Third ball…

Warner’s off the mark! Gets a run this time, angled in at the stumps and he jams his bat down, gets a leading edge along the ground into the covers for one.

The David Warner v Stuart Broad contest will now re-commence.

Thus far:
lbw Broad for 2
caught behind from Broad for 8
bowled by Broad for 3
lbw Broad for 0
caught behind from Broad for 0
lbw Broad for 0

“Geoff, what is the proportionate response to those saying ‘but it’s his natural game’ or ‘it’s a World Cup hangover’ to Buttler being bowled from a T20 shot in the first half hour of the day? A court order banning them from every cricket ground and the OBO?” asks Dominic O’Reilly.

Well, he played some T20 shots off Hazlewood yesterday and it worked quite nicely. I just think he didn’t need to go after Cummins, specifically. But it’s easy to criticise after that fact.

Buttler and Leach added 68 in all, which made a big difference, but didn’t add enough additional runs this morning to wrest the initiative. Andrew Samson on TMS says that England add an average of over 50 runs while Jack Leach is at the crease in Test cricket. So 294 doesn’t look like a huge total, but runs on the board can be worth more than you think. It’s a total bigger than Australia would have hoped for after sending England in, certainly.

The main question, as ever in this series, is what Steve Smith can do. He might make 294 on his own, like Alastair Cook once did at Edgbaston. England must get him. But that’s been the story forever.

Five wickets for Mitchell Marsh! His first time in Test cricket! He spreads both arms to the sky and beams, gloriously, like the English September sun on his face. What a lovely moment for a player who gets more than his share of barbs, but retains that cheerful outlook regardless. He’s done the job for Australia! And he did it by pitching up. Some swing, on the pads, and Leach tried to work the ball square but didn’t get it.

87th over: England 294-9 (Leach 21, Broad 0) Buttler out from the first ball of the over, so Cummins… bowls everything else short at Broad and doesn’t look like getting him out. They haven’t got their balance quite right.

The specialist goes before the tailender! Full and at leg stump, Buttler clears his leg and tries to pump the ball straight, instead he misses and it hits his pad outside leg stump and ricochets back onto the timber. It didn’t feel necessary to play such a big shot at that stage, with Leach hanging in there and runs to be collected rather than plundered.

86th over: England 294-8 (Buttler 70, Leach 21) Buttler is doing a half-and-half sort of job of farming the strike, turning down a single to deep point from the third ball, then taking one from the fourth. Marsh bowls to Leach, who edges him for four!

85th over: England 289-8 (Buttler 69, Leach 17) Buttler blocks a couple from Cummins then winds up for a wipe but finds the field. He flirts with the idea of giving himself room outside leg, so Cummins tries to follow him and instead bowls straight to fine leg for five wides. Buttler glances a single from the re-bowled fourth ball. Cummins has two balls at Leach… and they’re both short. Have the Australians learned nothing from Headingley.

84th over: England 283-8 (Buttler 68, Leach 17) Mitchell Marsh to take the almost new ball from the other end. Interesting move. Perhaps Paine wants to get him a fifth wicket? Perhaps they think he’ll swing the ball more. Hazlewood would normally be your pick, though? A couple of defensive shots from Leach, given he farmed the strike. And then there he goes! What a shot! A square drive for four from Leach, when he gets width and strides into the ball. He follows up with a brace, a more modest checked drive to cover. This is wonderful stuff from Leach.

83rd over: England 277-8 (Buttler 68, Leach 11) Thanks JP, and good morning from The Oval to everyone around the world. It’s cricket time. Whatever you make of Buttler (he’s very good, sorry) he is here to do something fun this morning. Hopefully. Pat Cummins will start with the ball. Can Buttler and Leach put together more of a stand to annoy the Aussies? They put on 45 together last night, from memory. Buttler wants to get his eye in, and waits and watches against Cummins, until the fourth ball cuts in and ricochets for a leg bye. Buttler takes it, perhaps thinking to minimise Leach’s time on strike. But Leach is having none of that, pushing a single to cover! Resigned to his fate, Buttler blasts a wide ball through cover point for four.

Ian Forth can have my final post of the morning before Geoff Lemon strides in confidently to mark his guard. “Each new series brings new entrants in what the legendary Irish writer Flann O’Brien once termed the catechism of cliche,” Ian emails. “In honour of the great man, allow me to observe. Q. Out of what has the fielding position of forward short leg these days gone? A. The game. Q. To what did the World Cup Final after eight weeks, six days and seven hours of incredible entertainment, marked by the joyous participation of a capacity crowd at the Home of Cricket come down to? A: This.”

“The argument over whether a specialist wicketkeeper who can’t bat is more vital for a team than a so-so wicketkeeper who CAN bat has a long history,” begins Roy Greenslade (of this parish?). “I pine for the arrival of a re-born Godfrey Evans. Look at that record: 219 dismissals in 91 Tests and the first English player to reach both 1,000 runs and 100 dismissals and then 2,000 runs and 200 dismissals in Tests.”

Some revamped England XIs starting to filter through now.

“I’d like to see a top seven of Burns, Sibley, Root, Stokes, Pope, Buttler, Foakes given a run, and dropped players (Roy, Bairstow, Ali, Denly) who want to make it back into the side need to demonstrate why they should.” That’s from Joe Cross.

George Brown has gone for “Sibley, Burns, Denley, Root, Stokes, Bairstow / Buttler, Buttler (Wk) / Foakes (Wk ), Archer, Leach, Broad, Anderson. We’d drop YJB for a bit and tell him that we need his runs more than we need his gloves – he’s only getting back in the side as a batsman, partly to upset him (this always seems to produce his best) and partly to show him that he’s not untouchable.”

But Peter Davies gets the last word. “I have a suggestion: pick an England team consisting of 10 bowlers and a keeper. This would mean every innings would consist purely of dogged lower order resistance, and we might get some runs. And one of them might know how to get Smith out, as a bonus.”

Anthony Galvin has done the over rate math(s). “I was at the Oval yesterday and it cost me about £1.30 an over. I’d be happy to have a pay-per-over seat, which would take care of rain delays, extra hours etc.. The bars at the Oval are cashless and able to refund the money for your returnable beer glass back onto your card at the end of the day, so technology isn’t the problem here. Make this a problem for the money men and they’ll soon get onto the players if they are refunding everyone on the way out of the ground!” Amen!

“Your man Duncan’s point on wicket-keepers living in a post-Gilchrist world is an interesting one,” emails Richard McConnell. “I am personally mystified that Foakes, who is a vastly superior keeper and a decent bat, can’t find a place in the team this summer. With all the questions around Root’s role as captain and his waning average with the bat, how much of as burden are the gloves on YJB and Buttler? It feels like a team built on a foundation of compromise. Bring in Foakes and let YJB and Buttler fight it out.” Hard to disagree. Funny how in victory that “foundation of compromise” (a lovely turn of phrase) is celebrated as flexibility and boldness. At the end of the day it comes down to scoring runs and taking 20 wickets as often as possible.

Staying with Australian cricket, Shane Warne has put his name to an MCC report calling for action to address the climate crisis because of its impact on cricket around the world. Tanya Aldred has more.

Warne was part of the MCC World Committee that was last month given a preview of the Hit for Six report, published on Tuesday, which examined the threats that face cricket-playing nations, many situated in areas of the world most vulnerable to the changing climate.

Geoff Lemon, our resident Australian correspondent, was finally given a new storyline to write about yesterday, in the form of the revitalised Mitch Marsh.

Shaun has made a few of the most brilliant Test hundreds of the last decade but can also slump like no other – barely a specialist batsman in history has scored in single figures as frequently. Mitch has shown glimpses of 90mph bowling and heavy run-scoring, but has never strung them together and at times has been abandoned by both.

Predictably, his selection in this Ashes squad in July brought complaints, as did his mooted selection for the fourth Test at Old Trafford, and confirmation of his eventual selection for the fifth. There must have been a moment of double-take in the Australian morning for some of his detractors who woke up to see his first-day figures of four for 35.

And Rob Little has joined in too, very much in the pro-Buttler camp. “I don’t disagree about Buttler – he has been oddly underwhelming at times, particularly in this series – but if you peruse the statistics of *all* England batsmen since his recall (May 2018) I think he does quite well (note that eg Bairstow in that period averages 24). I’d say it’d be harsh to leave him out for the winter tours.”

Mike Gershon has joined in the discussion about where Jos Buttler best fits into this England XI. “I’ve been wondering this summer how he, Bairstow and others might bat if we had a consistently solid top four, so that the potentially explosive middle order batsmen could come in against a softer, older ball, with the bowlers having more overs in their legs. Seeing Buttler revert to some of his ODI style batting yesterday was great, and it clearly put Paine on the back foot. All we need to do is find a new opener to partner Burns and an accomplished number 3 batsman. Oh, wait…” Frustrating isn’t it? But also, at what point does one cut ones losses? Sunk cost fallacy and all…

Ian Forth has failed to realise that I’m not an executive producer at a major movie studio. Easy mistake to make, mind you. “Ah, The Smith Supremacy. Cricket cognoscenti insist that Smith is great for the game, what a time it is to be alive, etc. Absolute nonsense, of course. The only thing that’s ruined this series is Smith being the ringer from the first eleven playing in the under-13s. Imagine if we’d had five Headingleys instead.” Five Headingleys AND a Boycott knighthood in the same summer? You haven’t thought this through Ian.

Barney Ronay has written about Joe Root’s misfortune.

On a crisp, browny-green south London day Root had looked at times like a man draining the last drops of juice from the tank. With good reason. Since the start of May Root has played 24 international matches across three formats, with the full hand in recent weeks of captaincy, post-match blah, dawn stress and night-time insomnia. Even walking to the wicket at first drop these last two matches England’s captain has resembled some bedraggled desert soldier emerging from the dunes at Alexandria, khakis caked with salt and sand, craving just a single cold beer and the credits.

Kim Thonger’s punched his card for the day. “I read this headline ECB faces backlash over stimulus package just now and my first thought was, aha, people are finally realising the stupidity of the ECB’s ‘The Hundred’ format and are kicking off about it. Sadly it’s about the European Central Bank printing Monopoly money or some such. When WILL all we sensible peaceful Test Match cricket fans rise up as one against the buffoons in the committee rooms? (I’m free Tuesday afternoon?)” Ha, that made think of the Death of a Gentleman movie and the excellent Sam Collins and Jarrod Kimber stalking N. Srinivasan.

“Hi Jonathan,” hi Duncan Stackhouse. “What do you think of Buttler in the Test team? For some reason I rate him more than Bairstow as a Test cricketer even though he has an inferior average (32 to 35) and fewer hundreds (1 to 6). I have a feeling it’s because he looks much better in defence, allied to the fact that Bairstow gets bowled way too much. In terms of averages though, both of them would be about par for wicketkeeper batsmen. I think it was Geoff Lemon who wrote that our idea of what wicketkeepers can manage has been warped by Gilchrist (and to a lesser extent Sangakkara and ABdV, who stopped keeping to help their batting). Anyway, to the point. My 5, 6, 7 moving forward would be Pope, Buttler, Foakes (don’t ask me where stokes goes, 3?). Mainly because I feel YJB needs to be dropped and I just have a feeling that Jos might yet become our ABdV. What do you reckon?”

It’s a tough one to answer pithily, but here’s my take. I like the idea of Jos Buttler. I think his ceiling as a Test cricketer is high, if only he can find consistent form and a clearly defined role. But I think it’s time he’s picked as a top-six batsman or not at all. He’s 29 and been around Test cricket for five years now without returning the sort of numbers to demand reselection.

Apologies, I’ve logged on in a bit of a grumpy mood (any suggestions for shaking it, gratefully accepted) but it means I can’t overlook that yesterday – a fine and dry day of Test cricket – featured just 82 overs. And that includes an extra half-hour after the scheduled close. Come on ICC, come on international captains, get a grip!

Don’t take my word on the state of play at the start of day two, take Vic Marks’s.

Two contrasting half-centuries kept England afloat – just about – on an another engaging day of Test cricket. Joe Root dutifully grafted away without inspiration in the first half of the day, while Jos Buttler for the first time in the series unfurled some of his one-day magic in the final session. The upshot was that England finished the day on 271 for eight; Australia will not be too disappointed by that; England might be relieved given that they had sunk to 226 for eight before Buttler and Jack Leach combined under the floodlights.