Marcus Trescothick said England’s coaches were bewildered when the umpires forced the team to sideline their seamers and turn to spin under ashen skies on a rain-affected penultimate day in Manchester. Mark Wood was at the end of his run-up and preparing to bowl when Ben Stokes was ordered to stand him down at 4.20pm, leaving Joe Root and Moeen Ali to bowl the last 13 overs of the day in tandem.
“We were sat on the balcony and we didn’t think [the light] had deteriorated that much to not allow the seamers to bowl,” Trescothick said. “Obviously the umpires out in the middle deemed it was too dark. They’ve got to make that decision. It didn’t feel like it from where we were. But if that’s what we’re given then that’s what we’ll take. Any opportunity to get out in the middle we’ll be grabbing with both hands.”
After scoring relatively slowly when play belatedly started at 2.45pm Australia tucked in to their diet of spin, and Marnus Labuschagne motored from an overnight 44 to 111 before becoming the only batter to fall, leaving England to find five more wickets amid the rainshowers forecast for Sunday.
“The thing with the light, it’s completely out of the hands of the players,” Labuschagne said. “Facing a 150kph bowler in pretty dark conditions is probably not the best result if you’re a batter. It was in England’s court to go off the field or keep bowling spin, and having two spinners on was an opportunity for us to put a little bit of pressure back on them.”
Trescothick, England’s assistant coach, described a dressing room that has become completely focused on forecasts amid the rainfall. “Everyone’s got a different one on their phone or there’s lots of different ones on computers and they’re all pretty much saying the same thing at the moment,” he said.
Typically, for this most golf-focused of groups, they worked out that the most reliable indicator was located 40 miles west in Hoylake. “You could see the golf was in the right direction, so when the brollies went down over there we were a little bit more hopeful we might get a bit of a break,” Trescothick said. “If that’s what gives us a bit of an indication we’ll be following that closely tomorrow.”
It may be that play is again severely truncated, and Trescothick warned that England’s task is still considerable: “We’ve got a decent amount of work to do. It’s not as if we’re going to roll them out in 10 overs, it’s going to need a bit more graft than that.”
Australia are also preparing to put in a decent, if abbreviated, shift. “For us now it’s about retaining the Ashes, this is what it comes down to,” said Labuschagne. “Whatever time we have left there’s only one option, which is bat out the day.”
