Among Ben Stokes’s many departures from cricketing convention over the last year has been his rephrasing of the act of asking the opposition to bat.
“We’ll chase,” the England captain had pretty much taken to saying after winning any toss last summer as he dragged one-day parlance, along with aggression, into the Test arena.
Here at Lord’s though, under grey skies, on a green-tinged wicket and with the first all-seam attack of his tenure, the same decision was broadcast in more traditional fashion: “I think we’ll have a bowl”.
Stokes could hardly get the words out fast enough when the coin fell in his favour on this first morning of the second Ashes Test, the hope - and probably expectation - that Australia’s batters would soon be displaying the old moving ball frailties that had hardly come into the equation on a lifeless deck at Edgbaston.
James Anderson, in particular, had found the going tough in the two-wicket defeat in Birmingham, calling the wicket his kryptonite. This surface, on one of the many grounds where his record is outstanding, would surely be more like catnip? Not quite.
On what for a long time was a chastening day, interrupted briefly by rain and protest, England toiled, bowling without luck but also without anything like enough consistent quality. Australia, meanwhile, charged with increasing confidence to within sight of the close in a position of some dominance, rampant at 313 for three, a century stand between Steve Smith and Travis Head having come at almost a run-a-ball.
But with the boundary taking a peppering and a ragged England likewise, Joe Root - nominally the frontline spinner - nabbed two wickets in three deliveries to drag the hosts back into the match. By stumps, Australia had moved to 339 for five, still well on top, but not out of sight.
In the first two sessions, there was little of the ebb and flow, nor the nip, tuck, back or forth that had so defined all five days of the series opener, and for almost two hours of the third it was one-way traffic.
There were half-centuries for David Warner, Smith and Head, the former his first on these shores since 2015, the latter in an explosive knock that took Bazball to the Bazballers. It ended, though, in fitting fashion, out stumped for 77 trying to hit Root into Little Venice, before Cameron Green’s tepid departure in the same over gifted England a foothold.
Smith, at least, remains ominously unmoved on 85, having drilled Stuart Broad through cover twice to get his innings moving and looked every inch the force of the 2019 series since.
Warner, too, played with more intent than at Edgbaston, down on one knee slog-sweeping in just the sixth over of the day, an approach that suits his game better but is also bound to cough up chances. As last week, though, England were not clinical enough to exploit them, the opener going on to 66 after being dropped on 20 by Ollie Pope, who left the field with a shoulder injury soon after lunch to compound England’s problems.
Breakthroughs were, throughout the day, hard to come by, as two Just Stop Oil demonstrators found when attempting to disrupt the morning’s play after only one over. Dashing on from the Grandstand, the pair made for the square with the group’s trademark orange puff, cricket’s great fear in discussions over the enhanced threat of protests this summer.
Security, we were told, had been ramped up, but here it was only players moonlighting as stewards that saved the day. Stokes and Warner combined to halt one invader only yards from the strip, while Jonny Bairstow, most aggrieved by the go-slow demo that delayed England’s coach en route to the Ireland Test, saw an opportunity for reprisal, nailing the second with a fine tackle and escorting him back to the boundary edge in a bear-hug vice.
Josh Tongue had been brought into the attack in place of Moeen Ali to deliver a point of difference, the main one here being a bit of success. The Worcestershire seamer bowled Usman Khawaja with a beauty of a last ball before lunch and then blew Warner’s stumps apart during a sensational over after it that, in other circumstances, might have headed the day’s highlights reel.
Ollie Robinson claimed the only other wicket to fall prior to Root’s late cameo, Marnus Labuschagne nicking off to a nut that was very much fully clothed.
There were moments of exasperation in between, the bat beaten often enough to merit more, and twice false celebration, both Smith and Labuschagne given out on field but overturning on review.
England, though, can have few grumbles: already 1-0 down in the series, they could easily be further behind in this game, too.
