It was only the second day of the Ashes and already Steve Smith needed to rescue Australia from the kind of trouble that local critics predicted England would be confronting throughout the five-Test series.
Smith yesterday scored a composed 64 in an unbroken 89-run, fifth-wicket stand with Shaun Marsh (44 not out) to lift Australia from 76-4 at the start of the evening session to 165-4 by stumps in reply to England’s 302.
Amid the banter and preseries hype, former Australian Test players and the local media questioned the quality of the England squad.
Photo: Reuters
Vice captain David Warner and veteran spinner Nathan Lyon generated headlines for some hostile commentary, too.
So far, England have been the more settled of the teams, sticking to batting plans to keep the big Australia pacemen bowling plenty of overs — Ashes rookies James Vince (83), Mark Stoneman (53) and Dawid Malan (56) all posting half-centuries in the first innings — and executing well-devised strategies in the field to pick off Australia’s top order.
“We’re in a good place as a team,” England fast bowler Jake Ball said. “We’ve done a lot of research and a lot of work on our plans to each batter, [and] we executed them well.”
“I thought the way [Marsh] and Smith battled there, especially in the hour after tea, was probably one of the hardest hours they’ve probably faced in a long time,” said Lyon, who added that the innings underlined his belief that Smith is the No. 1 batsman in the world. “I’m not amazed. He goes out there and sticks to a plan, and it works for him, so hats off to our captain.”
Australia’s bowlers were under pressure early on an unusually slow Gabba wicket when England added 50 without loss to the overnight total, but Mitchell Starc’s dismissal of Malan ended his 83-run fifth-wicket stand with Moeen Ali (38) and triggered a collapse as three wickets fell for four runs.
Lyon picked up two wickets in seven balls as the last six English wickets fell for 56 runs.
However, any confidence Australia gained in the first session eroded after the interval when opener Cameron Bancroft (5) was caught behind off Stuart Broad in the fourth over in his first Ashes innings.
Ali struck in his second over to trap Usman Khawaja (11) leg before wicket and Ball made a key breakthrough with his first Ashes wicket, getting combative opener Warner (26) out paddling a catch to mid-wicket as Australia slipped to 59-3 in the 20th over.
Australia’s position deteriorated to 76-4 when Peter Handscomb (14) was given out leg before wicket on review to James Anderson.
“The game is still in the balance,” Lyon said. “England bowled very well to take four early wickets, but I think we’ve fought back hard and there’s a massive partnership out there now, and hopefully we can build on that... there’s a lot of cricket left in this game.”
RECORD DEFEAT: The Shanghai-based ‘Oriental Sports Daily’ said the drubbing was so disastrous, and taste so bitter, that all that is left is ‘numbness’ Chinese soccer fans and media rounded on the national team yesterday after they experienced fresh humiliation in a 7-0 thrashing to rivals Japan in their opening Group C match in the third phase of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. The humiliation in Saitama on Thursday against Asia’s top-ranked team was China’s worst defeat in World Cup qualifying and only a goal short of their record 8-0 loss to Brazil in 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping once said he wanted China to host and even win the World Cup one day, but that ambition looked further away than ever after a
‘KHELIFMANIA’: In the weeks since the Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women In the weeks since Algeria’s Imane Khelif won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing, athletes and coaches in the North African nation say national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women. Khelif’s image is practically everywhere, featured in advertisements at airports, on highway billboards and in boxing gyms. The 25-year-old welterweight’s success in Paris has vaulted her to national hero status, especially after Algerians rallied behind her in the face of uninformed speculation about her gender and eligibility to compete. Amateur boxer Zougar Amina, a medical student who has been practicing for a year, called Khelif an
Crowds descended on the home of 17-year-old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan after she won two golds at the Paris Olympics while gymnast Zhang Boheng hid in a Beijing airport toilet to escape overzealous throngs of fans. They are just two recent examples of what state media are calling “toxic fandom” and Chinese authorities have vowed to crack down on it. Some of the adulation toward China’s sports stars has been more sinister — fans obsessing over athletes’ personal lives, cyberbullying opponents or slamming supposedly crooked judges. Experts say it mirrors the kind of behavior once reserved for entertainment celebrities before
GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures
RSS