35th over: England 80-4 (Root 39, Moeen 1) Osh kosh. Moeen nearly out three times in a minute. Shortish ball from Starc, drops the gloves but not enough and it lobs up towards slip. Smith comes diving as the ball dies, but even he can’t pull this one off. Moeen gets off strike with a dicey single flapped away in the air to the leg side. There’s a short catcher in waiting for something like that. Root is playing like an absolute drain against the short ball. Hooks at Starc but doesn’t time it and flat-bats it straight back to the bowler via the pitch, then hooks again and gets a bottom edge running very fine for four. Can’t see how this is sustainable.
34th over: England 74-4 (Root 34, Moeen 0) What an over. The croowd cooing and roaring at every ball from an off-spinner on Day 4. Lyon beats Moeen’s edge first ball through to the keeper, then gets one to leap off a good length and spin as well, as Moeen gropes nowhere at it. Brilliant stuff. 50 wickets so far in 2017 for Nathan Lyon.
It’s happened again! Same method, slightly different technique. Stoneman’s ball was just outside off and turned a bit, Malan’s ball was middle and leg and turned a lot. He defended the line and Lyon took the edge. Smith clasps it in the breadbasket. The lead is only 48. Trouble looms.
33rd over: England 73-3 (Root 33, Malan 4) Starc continues, hasn’t looked the biggest threat so far today. They’re able to tick three singles from his over, though Root is still hooking with two men out.
32nd over: England 70-3 (Root 31, Malan 3) A couple of short ones from Lyon that over, but neither batsman takes full toll. Malan with the cut, Root with the pull, both with the single.
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Help this man out, someone. The pool has legitimately changed lives in Australia.
31st over: England 67-3 (Root 29, Malan 2) Cummins the post-hydration-refreshment-interval specialist, pounding up to the wicket. He has quite a simple action, thumps in chest-on, and then generates all his pace with the shoulder-down swing of the arm. “Comes in like he’s running the 100 metres,” says my colleague Adam Collins. Root gets off strike with a squirt, then Malan cops the short ball and hooks it for a single. Same way he got out in the first innings, and this run is taken to the man out in the deep for that purpose.
Speaking of drinks, “I’m on a night out in Kreuzberg in Berlin, following OBO from my pocket,” says Patrick Duce. “Interested to know what readers think will end in a bigger collapse – England’s innings or my night out?”
30th over: England 64-3 (Root 27, Malan 1) Positive stuff from Malan to Lyon, coming down the wicket to drive a quick single and get off the mark. Gets the strike back from Root, and next ball Malan goes well back instead. Just trying to mix things up so the bowler can’t entirely settle.
That is drinks. It might be worth some enthusiasts taking up this excellent offer from Jake Hawkins.
“I’m just getting ready for my final night out in Clarksdale, at the Ground Zero blues club, and will shortly be strolling past the Devil’s Crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul. If any England fans wish to give me power of attorney over their ever lasting souls I’ll see what type of deal I can get for them. Honestly it seems like a win-win situation for most England fans; immediate cricket success on this mortal coil followed by a warm, familiar and comforting eternity of anguish and suffering (and none of that pesky hope to spoil it).”
29th over: England 62-3 (Root 26, Malan 0) Cummins then, bowling to Root. Even more of the pressure and expectation rests on him. He’s vulnerable outside the off stump still, and fishes again, edges on the bounce to Smith at slip. Then goes after another short ball and can’t make contact again. “He’s not batting with a lot of composure at the moment,” says Katich. “We’re not seeing the same steeliness we saw from Smith yesterday.” Maiden.
28th over: England 62-3 (Root 26, Malan 0) So some turn in the pitch, an off-spinner, and many English left-handers. Lyon could well be the focus of the day. “Stoneman had no way out against Lyon there,” says Simon Katich on ABC radio. “He tried to cut him once, but that was it. He was just a sitting duck.”
Sorry to bring this news to the England part of our readership, but England’s morning is over. Lyon gives it a rip without too much flight, gets a bit of turn, and Stoneman with a stodgy forward defensive can only edge into the waiting hands of slip. Guess who.
27th over: England 61-2 (Stoneman 27, Root 25) Root hooks and misses! An appeal from behind the wicket as Cummins unleashes a springy short ball. It was straight through England’s captain without contact, but he gave it his best. Put it away, lad! He gets away from the examination with a nudge to leg.
26th over: England 60-2 (Stoneman 27, Root 24) Lyon doesn’t take much time to get into a spell these days. Lovely shape, not huge air but a nice bit of loop, and he’s extracting turn from the pitch in varying degrees while landing on a good length. Just a single.
“Hello Geoff – pleasure to have you on the OBO again,” writes the very polite John Culkin. “What a Test so far! I literally haven’t seen a single ball of it, but I’m hooked. Looking forward to falling asleep with TMS in my headphones and being woken by the cheer when a wicket falls. An odd way to follow sport. Anyone else having weird cricket-orientated dreams?”
My entire life is a weird cricket-oriented dream, John.
25th over: England 59-2 (Stoneman 27, Root 23) Edged, but safe! Stoneman goes hard forward at Cummins, gets the thick edge through gully, but fine of the catcher. It runs away for four. That touch of fortune.
24th over: England 54-2 (Stoneman 23, Root 22) Lyon on as well, in a double change. He lands them well from the get-go. Stoneman defends five, tries to slash away the sixth but can’t beat the field. Positive intent nonetheless.
Brian Withington is quick on the keyboard. “Your appeal to read the St Crispin’s day speech prompted me to revisit the concluding paragraphs of my longer Captain’s dressing room version, now adapted from an expectant OBO’er perspective …”
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that shares the OBO with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall keep his comments clean;
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they missed this day,
And hold their comments cheap whiles any tweets
That followed the Guardian stream on that Sunday.”
Amen
23rd over: England 54-2 (Stoneman 23, Root 22) Cummins for his first bowl of the morning, and the batsmen use their pet areas, Root punching into cover, Stoneman tickling to leg.
22nd over: England 52-2 (Stoneman 22, Root 21) Another Starc over with a couple of nudged singles. Interesting chat between Nannes and Jonathan Agnew about England’s dismissals against the short ball, and the inability to put the shot away. Agnew references Smith’s batting from yesterday, in the way he responded to England’s tactics. “Oh, were trying that one are we? I’m not going to play. Oh, we’re going there now. I’m not going to do it.”
Hello to Chris Busby, who’s helping to keep people well. “Not really been into much Test cricket in the past. Currently on night shift in the hospital and checking in between patients. Loving the coverage, can’t wait to see how it goes today. Hoping for some drama with an England win at the end.”
21st over: England 50-2 (Stoneman 21, Root 20) Gee, this over seems stacked with portent. Hazlewood is bowling back of a length, and Root keeps playing at those off the back foot, reaching a bit, and guides a couple into the cordon on the bounce. He’ll nick off for sure if he keeps playing like that.
Counterpart to Root, allow me to present some interesting thoughts about the other captain. Exhibit A, this pair of messages.
Exhibit B, incisive stuff from our longtime correspondent Robert Wilson.
“I was thinking about Stevie S this morning, and I think I now understand everything. I tried to work out how many shots he had. Some batsmen build a career around two or three (in their different ways, Ponting and Cook spring to mind), some have every shot going but one neon-lit giant weakness.”
“Or was it an outsize mental strength or will (Waugh and Warne step up as temperamentally variant exemplars)? Particular dedication, lunatic ambition, global cussedness? He’s no Brian Lara but nor is he a Boycott, a Border nor a Gavaskar. It didn’t take me long to understand that I couldn’t work him out at all.”
“That was when the world became clear to me (and gloriously simple and beautiful too). I don’t think anyone can work him out. That’s a pretty sizable trump card.”
20th over: England 50-2 (Stoneman 21, Root 20) Jim Maxwell on the radio is enjoying Stoneman’s work, as he finally gets back on strike. Trades singles with Root, and thereafter he’s leaving Starc with discipline, and when the bowler goes at his ribs, he just hauls bat and gloves well up out the way, like people with TV sets held above their heads in those aforementioned Brisbane floods. He’s got a lot more wading to do, even if the Australian wicketkeeper of that name is not playing. The 50 comes up for England.
A piece of Dadaist chat in from Paul Billington. “Oh man oh man oh man. I’m not looking forward to this first session – and even if England survive intact I’m convinced they’ll cock it up afterwards. They always seem to lack the grit needed to just stay in there.I liken following winter ashes series over here to going to bed with a Shrödinger’s cat in a box downstairs. In the morning it normally turns out the box was balanced in lava all along. This may be the gin talking though.”
In which case, hand it the mic.
19th over: England 48-2 (Stoneman 20, Root 19) Root has been hogging up the strike so far, but he’s doing good things with it. Gets a bit too much width and plays a clever cut, getting the ball to ground so there’s no risk as it zooms through the gap between slip and gully. “You don’t want to hand England an easy lead just because your bowlers aren’t on target early,” says Dirk Nannes on ABC Grandstand. Root adds two more flicking a straight ball. Happy days.
18th over: England 42-2 (Stoneman 20, Root 13) Starc with first go at this alleged crack. To be honest, I can’t see anything much from my vantage point, nor on the monitor. Maybe it’s all bluff and bluster. Starc bowls full, and Root drives through cover for four. Not a full flowing glorious one, just a do-the-business cover drive. Your sort of 3pm Wednesday job. Short ball, and Root pulls. Controls it, gets a single down to fine leg. A lot of talk yesterday about whether he’d be able to put the pull away, with this paper’s writer Will Macpherson advancing the idea that Root is compulsive about it, but might be able to train himself in the idea with a full night to think about it. Evidently, that hasn’t worked.
“Come on everybody, let’s stop pussy footing around, surely the topic of the day is when exactly England should declare and put Australia in?!” Richard Williams has the spirit I want to hear.
17th over: England 37-2 (Stoneman 20, Root 8) Hazlewood to start things off, and he’s bowling from the Vulture Street end, where last night he came from Stanley Street. Former Australian batsman Chris Rogers hands me the tip that it’s because there’s a crack opening up from the other end, in an awkward spot for the right-hander, so the Aussies want Starc or Cummins to have a go at hitting that. We shall see. Hazle gets a thick edge from Root all along the ground, and it earns him two runs through the cordon. Then the bowler thinks he might be through onto Root’s pads, but the batsman comes down late on it and works a single. Stoneman got a run to start the over nudging a short ball square. Decent start for England.
This is a more upbeat phrasing of pessimism, at least.
A lot of it riding on Root. It’s his chance to match what Smith did yesterday. He’s ok to play…
But the numbers aren’t necessarily in his favour.
Some anxious Englanders getting around this morning. Delicious.
“Shitting myself,” echoes Chris Allison in straightforward fashion. “That’s it. And I’m about to go to bed. Not a good combo. I don’t think the wife will be best pleased. I go hope I wake up to a glorious root 100. I fear I’ll wake up to 140 all out and the Aussies on their horrible way.”
Fear not, fair Isle dwellers. In my humble cricketing opinion, they’re well in this. Things haven’t been easy on this wicket, and a target of 200 could prove quite testing for the Wizards of Oz given the accuracy of bowling at England’s disposal. Keep the faith, read the St Crispin’s day speech to yourself, have a medicinal biscuit, whatever it takes.
Now, either someone has scripted a ‘Jimmy Anderson injury’ bot, or there is widespread concern out there on the internet.
Alright, already! Anderson is fine. All that happened yesterday is that he didn’t bowl at a stage when some of the commentators thought he should have been bowling. It was hot in the middle and he went off for a break. He did bowl 29 overs in the innings, so that doesn’t give the impression of infirmity. As far as we know, keeping an ear to the ground here at the Gabba, there’s no problem. Just a long series ahead of a veteran cricketer.
While we’re whiling away the whiles, let me tell you something about Brisbane. I’m guessing that a lot of you following cricket from the distant lands across the sea will know it only from descriptions of cricketing tours past. Johnson’s menace, Cook and Trott’s bat-a-thon, Nasser’s overly criticised decion-making and all the rest. So as a Queensland outsider myself, here are some impressions.
Brisbane is a city thick with tropical murk. In the middle of its more oppressive days, it can be like living in an overly exerted armpit. But then its evenings can unroll like picnic blankets, as the skies detonate in extraordinary configurations, and the fat leathery slap of the fruit-bats punctuates the evening on their way to frolic or feed. Some of the fruit-bats have a pretty nasty form of plague, so don’t hug them. It’s Australia, after all, where even the nice things have an edge.
From the 60s to the 80s, Brisbane was run by Joh Bjelke-Peterson, whose regime was a few degrees south of fascist. The town got nicknamed Pig City, due to its Premier’s fondness for using police force to solve just about every problem. It was a combative place with a slightly wild edge. Since then, the state has mostly had Labor governments, with that party holding a slight numerical advantage today after an unclear election result from yesterday.
The city itself is a beauty, in places. The river winds back and forth through it like a constantly changing mind. It’s Tony Greig’s bowling action, all loops and elbows. Southbank and West End, bridges akimbo as though a cartwheel had shattered, a mire of confusion for the visitor.
The river can turn against the city, as it did when Brisbane was submerged in 2010. The dams were at 200% capacity, and weeks of storms saw the water come downstream Biblically. But on a good day, like today, you can stroll down to the waterfront, jump on a fast ferry shooting up and down the river’s course, from the university out at St Lucia all the way down. I ran into The Age’s legendary scribe Greg Baum on the boat this morning, who covered an election up here in the 80s. “Brisbane has changed more than any Australian city,” he said. “It really was just a big country town.”
Now, it’s a different place. Hilly suburbs full of student sharehouses, cafes in old mechanic’s garages, art precincts and apartment towers. I was among thousands the other night jammed in to see Lorde play at the Riverside, a grassed amphitheatre down on the banks.
Take the ferry further up the river, and you’ll pass prehistoric-looking cliffs covered in foliage coming down to the water, and floating pontoon walkways along its length. Downstream, at night, the city’s bridges light up with projections in all colours as you sail underneath them, dancing and shifting. There are seabirds croaking and the captain announces the stops as you sail along. I can safely say that it beats the Luton bus.
Meanwhile, if you want a more fulsome description of the game so far than my potted summary, the report from Vic Marks is lovely as ever.
Loved getting all your emails and twitter missives on Day 1, so please fire them through again. I’m @GeoffLemonSport on the birdbox, or [email protected] on the old fashioned Royal Electronic Mail.
One of those ones where you think, why did they even bother having a first innings? Scores ended up just about level, the Australians eventually with a 26-run lead. But it wasn’t straightforward, not at all. We’ve had surprises galore.
First from England, whose three debutants all impressed with half-centuries on debut, while the blue-chip options failed. That got England to a strong position of 246 for 4. Then the swing the other way, as Australia grabbed the last six wickets to wrap things up at 302. England got back on top with the ball, reducing the home team to 76 for 4, then back Australia came, with Steve Smith’s superb hundred doing what his top order teammates could not. He was not out with the innings worth 328.
Finally, the moment last night. An hour or so to bat, Alastair Cook facing, and hooking Josh Hazlewood to fine leg. Catch. Then JH produced an utter snorter to James Vince, the kind of ball any batsman would nick, and it ended with Smith at second slip.
So now we have England at 33 for 2, a lead of 7 runs, with eight wickets in hand, and two days to play. The match is anyone’s, and it’s a glorious time to follow Ashes cricket.
Hello friends, hello countrymen, and possibly even hello to a few Romans, who must count a few cricket enthusiasts among their number. I remember the days when Romans used to be legion. Welcome again to the McGinty’s Glorious High-Flying OBO Spectacular. I don’t know who McGinty is, because it’s Lemon and Smyth running the circus tent today – old man McGinty never gives us our cut. But enough preamble, we’ve got cricket to be played. And with a Test match brilliantly set up, we won’t be doing a lot of ambling through today’s play.
Geoff will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s Adam Collins on Steve Smith’s performance at the crease on day three:
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