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Finally, Jonathan Liew with an impassioned appeal to the fates and their involvement with one James Anderson – still a piece more optimistic than some of the correspondence we got yesterday.
Andy Bull has a good piece sourced from wandering around the Lord’s Pavilion and overhearing bits and pieces, in the context of the ICEC report and yesterday’s recurring Long Room footage of people of a very consistent appearance and social status.
I wrote about everybody’s favourite neighbourhood scamp, Little Davey Warner, and his propensity to look for a scrape and a scrap.
There’s a bit about Jonny Bairstow and his human haulage sideline. Acting against orders, tsk.
Simon Burnton got the quotes, including Josh Tongue with the interpretation of luck that is usually used by teams that haven’t bowled very well.
Let’s play our favourite game of What Was Written Yesterday?
Starting as usual with the Guardian match report, by Ali Martin.
Preamble
Geoff Lemon
Hello again from Lord’s, the place that they love to talk about. I don’t know if any of you noticed yesterday, but there’s actually something of a slope to the ground, including the pitch. Nobody mentions it. But don’t let them fool you with their conspiracy of silence.
England … made rather a hash of it on day one, didn’t they? Picked four frontline quicks. Won the toss and bowled first. Bowled badly, for enough of the day that it mostly got away from them. Pulled it back late in the piece with a couple of wickets to the part-time spinner. Australia could get run through this morning and from 339 for 5 they would still have a decent score on the board.
Australia meanwhile had a largely positive day. Usman Khawaja didn’t make many but batted through the first session to help lay the base. David Warner made a half-century, and his highest score in England since 2015. Travis Head did Travis Head things, namely making a bunch of fast runs and getting out in an outlandish way. And Steve Smith is still there, eyeing off another entry on the honour board.
England need to get through him and Alex Carey urgently to get this match back on track. Of course, given Zak Crawley said they would win by 150 runs, they will then need to be bowled out short of the follow-on, make about 500 batting third, then run through Australia bowling last. Don’t rule it out. Brendon McCullum might have planned it exactly that way.
