The lights were on, English openers frazzled in their glare, as the dark clouds not so much closed in on Edgbaston but rolled menacingly over its fringes, like curious children peering into a well.
The Dukes ball, too, had found its inquisitive sense, finally daring to veer off the straight and narrow out of Pat Cummins’ hand. And here at last, after two-and-a-half days of Birmingham sun beating on a Rawalpindi-import road, emerged the England that Australia have come to know and, at times like these, can only love.
