The opening day here at Lord’s was by consensus England’s most chastening of the Bazball era and so, to keep this Second Ashes Test alive, the next surely had to be one of the best.
For two and a bit sessions, it looked like it might be right up there: the final five Australian wickets had fallen well before lunch, England’s openers had produced their best Ashes partnership since Strauss and Cook, Ben Duckett looked on track to join Steve Smith as the day’s second centurion and, thrown in for nothing, the series’ best bowler so far, Nathan Lyon, had hobbled off with a bad calf.
