The first day-night Ashes Test looked like turning into the tale of two captain’s decisions at the end of a third day when England finally put their hosts on the back foot at the Adelaide Oval.
Australia will still be strong favorites to win the match with a 268-run lead going into the fourth day, but they could have been even more firmly in charge had captain Steve Smith enforced the follow-on after dismissing England for 227.
Smith instead sent his openers out in the late afternoon sun and four wickets, including that of Smith, fell before the end of the night as England’s seamers got the pink ball nipping around under the lights.
Photo: AFP
“It’s purely up to Smithy [whether to follow on],” said paceman Mitchell Starc, who earlier took 3-49 to help bowl out the tourists. “That’s why he’s the captain. There are pros and cons to both decisions. We were looking to build on our lead and freshen up for the second innings, and hopefully bowl them over.”
“There are two full night sessions to go if England really want to win this game,” he said. “There’s no reason why we can’t build a really big lead and then have England on the ropes in the night session.”
The other captain’s decision which had a major bearing on the match was that of England’s Joe Root to put Australia in to bat after winning toss.
England, 1-0 down in the series, failed to build sufficient pressure on Australia in either the day or night sessions and Shaun Marsh’s unbeaten 126 was the backbone of an imposing 442-8 declared.
Seamer Chris Woakes, who dismissed both Smith and opener David Warner cheaply in the second innings, said the England bowlers had learned an important lesson from their labors on Saturday.
“We knew we had to bowl a slightly fuller length,” Woakes said. “We were a little short in the first innings. I felt that we got that right tonight, got it moving around and got our rewards, got the nicks. We had to stay patient, consistently put the ball in the right areas, and that was it really.”
Woakes, who scored 36 and shared England’s highest partnership of 66 for the eighth wicket with fellow seamer Craig Overton, admitted England’s failure to thrive with the bat had been frustrating and that Australia were “ahead in the game.”
“The positive thing for us as a side is to believe we can go forward and put Australia under pressure,” he said. “We felt we did that tonight and it’s important we continue to do that into tomorrow as well. We need to make sure we fight back and make sure this lead doesn’t get to anything too big.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier