Indeed - I just said to a friend on facebook "when was the last time two innings were completed on the first day" I was tongue-in-cheek, mind - honest!
We're already more than a third of the way to their total for the loss of Lyth who appears to be a dead man walking at the minute despite looking a world beater in the county game. His best hope may well be a lack of other openers knocking on the door by scoring heavily at county level. Shame he is struggling as when on form he is really good to watch and can be very destructive.
On the subject of which Tom Westley, of Essex, scored a virtual run a ball 108 today, admittedly not in the four day format. Just saying...
Adam Lyth will be desperately hoping England don't win by an innings. He needs another go to prove he should be in the team next time. There's a whole queue of failed openers who would fancy another go. I think Sam Robson showed promise.
Nice to see Ian Bell, on his home ground, having been asked to move up the order caress a run a ball 50 to announce his re-arrival at number 3 Edit - and then promptly hole out with a one-handed shot I feel semi-responsible
So, bit surprised I'm the only one feeling a little smug and chest puffing tonight? England are 3 (three) runs adrift with seven wickets in hand. And that's after Clarke won the toss and elected to bat first Yorkshire grit and obduracy until lunch tomorrow would be tremendous Any ideas what sort of first innings lead would be realistic, though until we see how the pitch plays / conditions are tomorrow, it's hard to say. I'd want a lead of 250+ as things stand tonight.
Bat as much of tomorrow as possible, and just build whatever lead we can, there's no rush. If we can make 400 we're in a strong position, regardless we'll still need another excellent bowling display.
Pitch was doing quite a bit today. Hopefully the conditions tomorrow will be good for us to push on. The longer we can bat the more there's going to be in the pitch too. There's absolutely no rush to score as pretty much everything thing tomorrow will be building a lead hopefully this will frustrate their bowlers.
I have a horrible feeling that we will throw this match away. My concern is that we have a middle order more suited to 50 0ver type cricket and have not got the concentration and discipline to bat for hours. Without the conditions helping, our attack does not seem that threatening and once some of the Aussies get in they look a class apart - smith particularly. I hope to be proved wrong.
I'm hoping Root and Bairstow will be able to bat 'proper' test innings and leave the swashbuckling and massive lead-building to Stokes, Buttler and Ali. One early wicket this morning and my theory goes straight out of the window, though
Well, Root has shown a great maturity in the past, and bats to the situation. I just hope Bairstowe can rise to the occasion.
Definitely not now that Stokes has gone as well. Could do with Buttler knuckling down and finding his some form for the first time this series or Moeen sticking in otherwise we are going to rely on Root scoring quickly enough to give us a lead before the real Rabbits come in to bat.
I thought this morning that we'd need 350 to turn the screw, pretty sure I'd snap their hand off if offered 300 now!
