Lord’s goes Red for Ruth
Thursday was the annual Red for Ruth day, when attendees at Lord’s are encouraged to wear red in support of the Ruth Strauss Foundation, named after the wife of Sir Andrew Strauss, who died of non-smoking lung cancer in 2018, and dedicated to supporting families facing the loss of a parent to cancer and research into non-smoking lung cancers. Strauss himself rang the bell before play, joined by some of the families the foundation has supported.
Around the ground 90 volunteers sold caps, bucket hats, wristbands and rosettes and players of both sides wore red numbering on their shirts, which were being auctioned online even before they had peeled them off their backs (the auction ends on Sunday evening but in the early hours Stuart Broad’s was proving most popular, while Alex Carey’s looks a potential bargain). Don’t make the mistake of trying to find them on eBay, though – the only two auctions running there on Thursday that mention the charity, and are giving a percentage of their proceeds to it, were for a £15 green dress (“it’s smaller than expected and I couldn’t return it”) and some “top-of-the-range gloss finish semi-rigid spare wheel covers” for the Jeep Wrangler.
Warner left thoroughly puzzled
Pat Cummins is famously a fan of cryptic crosswords. “I’m actually not good at it at all,” he admitted in 2019. “It’s something we’ve got into a bit, a few of the cricket boys.” David Warner, however, appears to have discovered the perfect morale boost for players struggling with devilish cryptic puzzles, having been spotted on the balcony on Thursday toting a copy of the Sun Quick Crossword Book 10.
Described as “fun, fast and furious” – the book, not the batter – the publishers promise it will help you “while away the time and give your grey matter an enjoyable workout”. It may be very much the Ladybird book to the captain’s preferred Dostoevsky, but happily Cummins was batting at the time so he remained, unlike his favourite dressing room pastime, completely clueless.
Robinson torments the tail
In the context of this series the subject of cross words leads inevitably to Ollie Robinson. One of the many ways he has wound up Australians this summer is by trilling at Edgbaston that “once we get past Cummins” their side has “three No 11s” (since he said that England have not been able to get past Cummins, who has now been dismissed once in three innings and has a series average of 104).
Ricky Ponting raged that Robinson would “learn pretty quickly that if you’re going to talk to Australian cricketers in an Ashes series, you want to be able to back it up with your skills.” Australia have only picked two of those No 11s here – Mitchell Starc having been preferred to Scott Boland – but on Thursday Robinson bowled 13 deliveries to Nathan Lyon and Josh Hazlewood, conceded nine runs, and took two wickets. Even Ponting would probably have to admit he now has free range to badmouth the Aussie tail for a while.
Broad stuck on repeat
The stump mic occasionally picks up revealing chatter at the wickets, and the oratory with which Stuart Broad convinced Ben Stokes to review his rejected celebrappeal for lbw against Alex Carey was a classic. “It’s out, it’s out, it’s out,” Broad said. Stokes looked at him quizzically. “It’s out, it’s out,” Broad continued.
Stokes signalled, with an arched eyebrow, that he thought the ball might have been going over the stumps. “It’s out, it’s out, it’s out,” concluded Broad. At no point did Broad say anything other than “it’s” and “out”. It was hard to tell whether Stokes had been won over or worn down as he called for the review, but happily Broad’s were also the only two words in the mind of the TV umpire once ball tracking had done its thing.
