Touring England is supposed to be hard. There is always something to surprise you. Blameless days followed by mornings when the ball suddenly seams and swings. Sudden Arctic afternoons to shock players from warmer climes. Scattergun rain delays that send you off the field and drag you back, like: I’m sorry, did I break your concentration?
In this context, matches can surge against a visiting team, backed by a crowd getting on top as a session breaks away. Mark Butcher at Headingley 2001. Ben Stokes at Headingley 2019. Ian Botham at Headingley 1981. Take your pick.
This Australian team steeled themselves for it. They have had an eye on this tour since the last one finished, and came into it talking about the need to adapt to momentum on the field, how to go with it and keep their composure to eventually start moving it back the other way. Then, across two sessions and two days at Lord’s, England parcelled up the match in some lovely wrapping paper and all but handed it over.
In Australia’s first innings in the first Test at Edgbaston, Nathan Lyon played the daft innings of a No 10. He got a series of short balls, swung mightily at all of them, and soon hit one to the catchers in the deep waiting for exactly that. In the second innings he did this once, had a catch dropped, then changed his ways, getting on the front foot to help bat out a win. So what did he do in his next innings at Lord’s? Revert to version one, pulling a ball straight to a catcher, instead of supporting a batting comrade and helping his team.
In England’s first innings at Lord’s, everyone seemed to have taken Lyon’s example as a tremendous lesson. It must have come as a surprise for the Australians, setting a field for cross-bat shots, scattering catchers everywhere, and then watch England batters stick their heads into the trap one by one by one.
You could tell a lot from the roars of delight, from David Warner on day two or Pat Cummins on day three: like the response of a weekend baller who has just made a half-court basket, they were celebrating, but were also in disbelief at what they had pulled off.
Harry Brook’s dismissal, having moved from 45 to 50 on the third morning, was one of the daftest bits of cricket anyone could conjure. There was a kid at my school who once looked down the barrel of a pellet gun and shot himself in the eye. The eye survived. His explanation was that he “wanted to see the BB coming out”. He just hadn’t thought about the part of the sequence that would follow.
Sometimes I wonder if in his dreams he sees that bright orange sphere, rolling towards him through space in super-slow motion. Maybe the dream is worth it. Maybe Brook will see a worn Dukes doing the same.
At least a dozen times during his innings, he jumped backwards outside leg stump and tried to flat-bat over or through the off-side field, a baseball swing. Most were strikes. He connected cleanly once: season average 0.833. Two balls before he got out, he bottom-edged one into the pitch at his feet. Foul. So of course he tried again, a line drive straight to Cummins at first base. You’re outta here.
With the tail soon docked and the lead at 91, Australia would have walked off the field in disbelief that a team from a position at 188 for one had so cheerfully thrown that position away. From there it was over to Australia to play differently. Absorbing the pressure, with the ball doing plenty for James Anderson and Stuart Broad in their favoured cloudy conditions, Australia’s opening pair found a way once again.
Usman Khawaja’s remarkable series continued, his judgment of line superb, leaving the ball wherever possible on line, taking singles when the bowling was straight and, at one, unfurling into a cover drive, like a time lapse of a flower opening. Warner batted most of a session with him, neutralising Broad’s around-the-wicket attack by getting right across his stumps into the line of the ball. It was slow, it was steady, and it worked: 24 overs for a partnership of 63, moving towards 130 for two when rain ended play early, an overall lead of 221.
And no, the match isn’t over. Australia could yet collapse, England’s batting could click. This is a team that built its reputation on large fourth-innings chases, flipping the script on the history that says how difficult it is to reach anywhere near 300 batting last. There would be no better time to repeat that magic trick.
Equally though, the history is the way it is for a reason. The conditions at Lord’s don’t look conducive to a last-day tee-off, by a team that would apparently prefer to spend that day teeing off literally. An exciting team can produce victories from difficult positions in the game. A good team doesn’t put itself in those positions to begin with.
