After having their collective noses rubbed in it, you would hope that the #1 ranked team would respond. And they did, sorta.
AUS won the toss and elected to bowl.
Dismissed BAN for 64
Scored 210
Dismissed BAN for 95.
Which is comprehensive enough, if they had scored 350.
Weatherall was replaced and Matt Renshaw restored to open. And fell cheaply.
Marnus failed. I don’t like Head going in at #1. Smudge played a nice cameo. Green did OK, but the tail fell mostly cheaply and quickly. Third top score was Lyon.
BAN’s 64 & 95 is the first time a team has been skittled for double figures twice in a Test in 21 years. Starc was devastating, taking his 4th “Test wicket with first ball of innings” and finishing with 10 for the match.
Australia’s all-out 210 proved the lowest total to underpin an innings victory in 80 years.
The 750-ball Test was the shortest seen in Australia in almost a century, briefer than last summer’s pair of two-day Ashes Tests in Perth and Melbourne, as well as the 2022-23 Gabba Test against South Africa.
On a recent “Stick To Cricket” podcast (with Vaughan, Lloyd, Cook & Tuffnell) Vaughan made the observation that of the 26 ECB contracted players, since Halloween 2025, 10 of them have interactions and/or investigations" with the police relating to off-field incidents. That’s almost 40%.
I appreciate the zing of the “Australians were selected by the best judges in England” slur used by the Balmy Army, but the Dartmoor XI picked to play the next Test could equally arguably be titled as “selected by the best bouncers in England”.
Amazing fight back from Sri Lanka. They were gone for all money at the end of day 4 effectively 35-6, but ground out 200 in 77 overs on the last day losing only three wickets. Wonderful example of a draw in test cricket.
Recovered to 248-9 at the close. I feel like we let them off the hook. I don’t know how spicy the wicket was in the morning, but if you have them 80-4 at lunch on day 1, you’d hope to get them all under 200.
There’s a strange issue with Imam-Ul-Haq as well, it seems he’s feigned an injury to avoid having to bat at all in the second test. They were doing badly, it’s true, but losing one of their better rated batters in both innings won’t have helped.
Looking over it now, it appears not. Certainly nothing that I would trust - there’s a lot of “If Imam ul Haq is found guilty of faking an injury he could be banned for two years!” type opinion, but no official suggestion he’s actually being investigated for it that I could find.
Their policy of ditching half their team and coaching team, however, seems to be going poorly.
Amazing batting performance by Pakistan in the second innings. They will still lose, maybe even in three days, but being 320 behind on the first inning and 0-2 in the second, no one expected that England would need to bag again.