Australia cloud England’s mood after seeing their own tail washed away

Rain cut day three of the first Ashes Test short but it was the heavy skies that brought it that put paid to England’s openers

You learn as you go that cricket in England has moods. Like some figure from myth whose face changes with angle and light. The first day of the Edgbaston Ashes Test was one mood, the bucolic English summery kind that justifies the work of pastoral poets. On the second, jaunty scoring gave way to a half-overcast grind under high cloud. The third, after England had bowled to a seven‑run lead, a sudden darker mood flashed at the home side in a window before rain.

Rain, cloud, darkness. Few sports make you think so much about light. All countries have sun, but there is a hard clear sunshine that only derives from an Australian summer, streams of photons hurtling on their long trip through space and smashing into cricket fields, bouncing back with such force that you’d swear you can hear them ping like stones off glass. Turn on a television anywhere in the world and see Australia’s summer, so bright it washes out the blue of sky and green of grass into variations of white.