By Rob Bagchi
Good morning and welcome to live coverage of day three of the second Ashes Test which begins with England 138 runs behind with six wickets left and a fifth-wicket partnership between Harry Brook and Ben Stokes on 56*. England’s approach for the past 13 months has split opinion between those wholeheartedly opposed to it, those who enjoy it but want to see some tactical if not strategical refinements and those who endorse it, sharing Sir Ian Botham’s lifelong impulse to “ride the torpedo to the end of the tube”.
Absolutists of the first and third stripe, zealots for a right way of losing as well as winning, have wildly diverging views of the “45 minutes of madness” that began when Nathan Lyon limped off with a calf injury and the Steve Smith/Pat Cummins hive mind captaincy switched to the short stuff. Ricky Ponting, in the Sky commentary box, said he knew England would not be able to resist pulling and hooking the bouncers because of their “egos”.
I don’t think that’s quite right. It might be wrongheaded but it’s not ego-driven or selfish. Where others see risk, they see opportunity. Ben Duckett when asked by Jonathan Agnew on TMS whether he, Ollie Pope and Joe Root regretted, ahem, going out on the pull, rejected the premise of the question. “We’ve played positive cricket for the past 12 months and we’re certainly not going to change,” he said. “We’re very happy with the position we’re in.” No recrimination, no backward step, no return to the days when they did what they were told and got dropped anyway.
And, if they can bat well for a couple of hours this morning, bat in the way they want to play, which isn’t a uniform style as shown by Stokes and Brook last night, they can put themselves in a winning position. In 16 Tests in England, 15 against the host country and one against India, Nathan Lyon has bowled more than 580 overs, taking 59 wickets but, as importantly, with an economy rate of 2.99. Cameron Green, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood may have taken wickets with their bouncers but they went for more than six an over. England have a chance to turn the screw today in Lyon’s absence.
It’s tempting to write ‘carpe diem’ to round off these opening witterings but they’ve been doing that since the dog days of Grenada last March, and 10 times out of 13 successfully. As Danny Baker says on another matter: “Sometimes right, sometimes wrong, always certain.”
