Australia was able to build a lead of 221 on the third day of the second test match at Lord’s before rain interrupted play on Friday. They added 130 to their first-innings tally for the loss of two wickets after skittling off England’s tail end in the morning. The match was stopped due to rain.
Usman Khawaja was the best of the batsmen, scoring 58 runs without being out, while England’s bogeyman Steve Smith was only on six when the rain stopped play for the day.
Khawaja and fellow opener David Warner put up 63 steadily and methodically until Warner was bowled lbw on 25 by a ball nipping in from Josh Tongue in the 25th over. This was in contrast to England’s flamboyant and at times reckless attitude with the bat.
Although this is the first time since 1971 that two opening partnerships in a test match have scored more than 50 runs in the first three innings of the match, the techniques that both teams took to accomplishing this task could not be more different from one another.
Warner’s 25 came off of 76 balls, a glacial pace compared to that of England’s Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett in the first innings of the match.
Khawaja, who bats at the other end for Australia, has been confronted by more than 700 balls over the course of the first two tests of this Ashes series.
The away team will try to put as high of a target on the board for England as they can in an effort to take a 2-0 lead in the series; the West Indies were the only team to successfully chase down a fourth-innings mark of more than 300 at Lord’s in 1984. The away team will attempt to set England as high of a goal as they can.
After suffering a slight collapse earlier on Friday, England struck 325 in response to Australia’s first-innings total of 416. For their last six wickets, England added just 47 runs to their score from the previous day, bringing their total to 325.
Ben Stokes, who was 17 at the time, was out to the second ball of the day. He swished at a shortish one from Mitchell Starc, but all he did was get an edge on it, and Cameron Green was able to take a challenging catch in the gully by reaching up to his right.
Harry Brook reached his maiden 50 in Ashes cricket after adding five runs to his overnight total. However, seconds later, when he tried to swipe another Starc ball down the ground, he instead sliced it high into the air, where Pat Cummins was able to make an easy catch at cover.
Jonny Bairstow, who was 16 at the time, lost his wicket to a straightforward practice stroke off Josh Hazlewood that was caught by Pat Cummins at mid-on. Additionally, Stuart Broad, Ollie Robinson, and Josh Tongue all lost their wickets for a low score, while Australia’s part-time spinner Travis Head took two wickets for them.
Starc was the toast of the bowlers, though, taking three wickets for 33 runs in the morning after being hammered for 55 runs without a wicket on Thursday afternoon. Starc’s performance in the morning earned him 33 runs for his three wickets.
“England was in a dominant position but was oblivious to the fact that they were in first place. According to their former one-day captain, Eoin Morgan, who spoke to Sky Sports, “they created the risk themselves.”