A gripping Ashes series opener had to be kept on hold on Tuesday morning, as rain pouring on Birmingham forced a delayed start to day five.
After four days of sunshine interrupted only by a thunderstorm on the third afternoon, Tuesday’s forecast downpour duly arrived in the early hours, with the covers on at Edgbaston and rain still falling by the scheduled start time of 11am.
The entire morning session was wiped out, with early lunch taken at 12.30pm, but with the afternoon and evening outlook more promising, all four results remained on the cards, with a sell-out crowd still expected.
Australia had been set 281 for victory — notably just one run shy of their target in England’s thrilling two-run win here in 2005 — and had made a smooth start to what would be their second-highest away Ashes chase on the third evening, openers David Warner and Usman Khawaja sharing a 61-run stand before Ollie Robinson’s breakthrough.
Stuart Broad then dismissed both Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne in another superb spell to leave England seven wickets from victory and Australia 174 runs shy.
Broad has enjoyed phenomenal success against Warner in recent Ashes series, but had said earlier in the county season that he was working on improving his outswinger as a specific ploy to target Labuschagne and Smith.
The pair, ranked the No1 and No2 batters in the world respectively, have made just 35 runs between them across four innings in this First Test, Broad having also dismissed Labuschagne for the first golden duck of his Test career in the first dig. With a view to the rest of the series, the seamer hopes a seed of doubt has been planted in Australian minds.
“Be nice, wouldn’t it?” Broad agreed. “They’re one and two in the world, they know what they’re doing. They’re fantastic players. One thing we know as a bowling group, you’ve got to try and put them under pressure early. They’re the sort of guys that if they get to 30, 40, they don’t give it away cheaply.
“We know as a group we want to try and make them play as much as we possibly can early. They’ve scored a lot of runs against us as a group, so to see the back of them twice in this Test match without too much damage is awesome. I enjoy bowling at both. I’ve had a lot of great battles, and they’ve probably won most of them. But it was good for a little plan I came up with a few months ago to have paid off in the first Test.”
Meanwhile, Australia spinner Nathan Lyon expressed his sympathy for Moeen Ali as his counterpart continues to struggle with a blistered finger on his Test return.
Moeen was recalled after a near two-year absence as a replacement for the injured Jack Leach, but after bowling 29 overs on Saturday has been suffering from significant blistering on his spinning finger. He was also fined 25 per cent of his match fee for applying a drying agent to his hand while in the field and looked in visible discomfort while bowling yesterday evening.
“I’ve got a lot of sympathy for Mo,” said Lyon, who took four wickets in each of England’s innings, including that of the in-form Joe Root on Monday. “Not coming off any red-ball cricket for two years and thrown in to bowl a lot of overs. The best way I can probably sum it up is probably going to sound weird: it’s probably like a singer losing their vocals but expected to go out there and put a concert on.
“It is extremely tough to grip the ball, especially as finger-spinners. As offies, we put our fingers on the seam and we try and spin it up the back of the ball, that’s where you get spin, drop and drift. So a lot of sympathy for him, I’ve been there before. It is quite painful.”
Elsewhere, Alice Capsey has been denied the chance of a Test debut in next week’s Women’s Ashes opener, after England whittled their original 15-player squad down to 13.
Both Capsey and Alice Davidson-Richards, who made a century in England’s last Test against South Africa last summer, have been released and will instead play for an England A side in tomorrow’s T20 against Australia A. The Women’s Ashes starts with the five-day Test at Trent Bridge on Thursday, followed by three T20Is and three ODIs.
