It was fun while it lasted, everyone. I’m writing this five minutes after day two of the first Ashes Test – and England have already capitulated and lost.
Don’t get me wrong, Australia had their fair share of capitulation too. In fact, I was optimistic going to bed last night: England were on the verge of a big first-innings lead. But when I woke up at 5:30 this morning and glanced at my phone, we were 73-5 and on our way to posting a distinctly mediocre total.
I went back to bed.
After another brief, rude awakening two hours later, when I found out Australia were already serenely on their way to a target of 205, I drifted off into a peaceful dream. I still remember all eight imaginary wickets – but sadly I woke up before I could at least experience the fake delirium of winning an Ashes Test at Perth. Now, it’s going to be four years before I can be disappointed again.
And this time, it felt like we had a real chance. Not at 2:30 on Friday morning, when Zak Crawley was caught for a six-ball duck. Not three hours later, when we were all out for 172 in 33 overs on day one. Not at 3 this morning, when Zak Crawley was caught for a five-ball duck.
But in between those strangely inevitable events we had hope. Waking up on Friday morning was a strange experience. Despite our catastrophic first innings batting attempt, we seemed to be doing… well?
Jofra Archer bowled with fire, taking 2-7 from his first 7 overs and continuing his favourite activity of hitting Steve Smith with the ball. Brydon Carse nicked Smith off with basically the first ball I was awake enough to watch, before bouncing Usman Khawaja out with a snorter of a ball.
Australia staged a bit of a recovery, so Ben Stokes took the ball and conjured five wickets in 36 balls to make it 19 wickets in the day. The Aussies were still 50 runs behind, with Nathan Lyon and Brendan Doggett as the last batters standing.
So you can understand why I went to sleep thinking maybe I would wake up to England calmly building their lead, with several days left in the game, rather than whatever this was.
Because I am English, and upset, I’m not going to talk about the magic that was Mitchell Starc’s ten-wicket match haul. I’m not even going to go into detail about stand-in opener Travis Head’s freewheeling, legendary 69-ball hundred to win the game in the fourth innings.
Instead, let’s look at the positives. I’m a massive fan of Ollie Pope – mainly because he seems like a nice young man. It’s kind of an added bonus when he remembers how to bat. It’s rare to come out of a match with scores of 46 and 33 looking like your team’s best batter, but Pope is probably the only one of the English top seven who can claim to have kind of done his bit.
Finally, a word for the guy on the BBC Sport live text who was flying in from Hong Kong for day three. Ow.
