England disintegrated from a position of dominance in their first innings of the second Ashes Test at Lord’s, losing six wickets for 47 runs to concede a 91-run deficit.
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If you were watching England bat, both after Tea yesterday and then this morning (June 30), you could be forgiven for thinking you’d been transported back to peak England collapse era. Think circa 2021 and endless crumblings against India, both at home and away.
In this edition, Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett had helped to salvage England’s dismal performance on day one, batting them into a decent position. Two hours after Ollie Pope took over from Crawley, England were in total control. They were 188-1 and closing down Australia’s target at a more than healthy rate. To add an extra spring to their step, Nathan Lyon had hobbled off injured and looked unlikely to be able to bowl again in the match, even at that stage. What happened next was an implosion of epic proportions.
Australia set an obvious trap for everyone watching to see. Pat Cummins spread the field, three men out on the hook, and watched as the batters took the bait. First was Pope. He turned face-on to a Cameron Green delivery and attempted to hoik it behind square leg and into the crowd. Instead, he picked out a rapidly back-cycling Steve Smith on the boundary. First one gone.
Out strolled Joe Root, England’s man in a crisis who has bailed them out of so many collapses before. No reverse ramp this time, just a poorly executed pull shot off the second ball he faced. As England hearts sank at the sight of their dependable maestro walking back to the pavilion, they were rescued by Green’s front foot. He had overstepped for the fifth time in his spell.
Traditional thought would dictate that those two warning shots would bring on a period of reflection and regrouping. But that’s never been part of Duckett’s modus operandi. He was two runs off a Lord’s Ashes century, the zenith that so few get the chance to achieve, but a 14th pull shot in six overs proved too difficult to resist. He was caught by Josh Hazlewood at deep fine leg.
Root’s reprieve wasn’t to last long either. He swatted at a ball banged in halfway down the pitch by Mitchell Starc, popping it up to backward square. Steve Smith dived forward and slid his fingers underneath the ball close to the ground. There was some brief controversy over the legitimacy of the catch, but it only took a couple of minutes for Marais Erasmus to give it out from the video replays.
Three overs after being in complete control, England were veering towards throwing it away. It took Ben Stokes to steady the collapse and ensure England did not entirely lose their grip on the match that evening. By the close of play, he had scored 17 off 57 balls. At stumps, Duckett’s response to what had taken place embodied the last 12 months of Bazball rhetoric.
“It’s the way we play our cricket,” he said. “If they’re going to have plans like that and we go into our shells and get bombed out, people would be going totally against what we do… We lost a couple of wickets, but, as I said earlier, we’re in a good position.”
Looking just at the scorecard, Duckett was right. 278-4 against a world-class attack is nothing to sniff at. But in the context of where they’d been an hour before, they’d missed an opportunity. Had they come out on the morning of day three and got themselves close to Australia’s total or even a small lead, all could possibly have been forgiven. After all, the freedom to attack is what’s made them so successful. But they didn’t.
Stokes can be somewhat absolved from accusations of brainless shots. He got a leading edge on a good length ball from Starc off the second ball of the day. But Harry Brook made sure England fans’ heads didn’t stay out of their hands for long.
In an attempt to flat-bat Starc back down the ground, he spliced the ball straight to cover. England were 293-6 and, with no Moeen Ali to biff some late innings runs, the wheels had well and truly come off. A few blasted fours from Bairstow compensated the crowd before he too was walking back to the dressing room. Not a short ball this time, but a tame-looking chip straight to mid-on at knee height.
Eight balls separated the last three wickets, a painful reminder of Ollie Robinson’s dig at the length of Australia’s tail at Edgbaston. Travis Head shunned worries of Australia’s reliance on Lyon for the fourth innings by taking two of them. Robinson himself charged down the wicket and attempted to hit Head up into the media box but nicked through to Carey. Broad, hit on the head in the previous over, missed a sweep four balls later. The plumb-ness of where he was hit on his front pad did nothing to prevent an immediate review.
Josh Tongue provided a fitting end by splicing another bouncer. The ball popped up to Matthew Renshaw at short-leg, and the madness was over. England all-out for 325. Nine wickets gone for 137, the six this morning for 47 in just 15 overs and two balls.
There will be preachings of one-off collapses being the price to pay for the England who have provided so much entertainment over the last year, but when it boils down to it, less than three hours of cricket ago, England were in a position to level the series. Now, they’ve almost lost it.
