Left-armer brought intensity to an England side that have lacked bite in the face of Steve Smith’s remorseless brillianceAs the shadows stretched out at the Oval on a lovely soft, drowsy Friday afternoon, something strange happened. Sam Curran took the ball from the Vauxhall end, paced out his comically furious run-up, and began to whistle up an unfamiliar kind of energy.Curran, with his 81mph full-pitch swingers, is an unlikely enforcer. But his outstanding quality is his intensity of purpose. Steve Smith fenced and was dropped by Joe Root. Tim Paine drove at an away-nibbler. Pat Cummins went lbw to another full, drifty hand grenade. Each time Curran came leaping down the pitch punching the air. Related: Jofra Archer’s six wickets...
All-rounder is always a controversial pick but he swung the ball more than any bowler in the series to grab four England wicketsWhenever a team sheet appears featuring the name “Marsh” these days, you can hear a distant rumbling begin. It gathers pace across the Australian continent, growing in volume and intensity, as the voice of cricket followers swells into a storm of discontent. Bloody Marsh again, is the general tenor. How many times? What dirt does he have on the selectors? And so on, and so on.Whether the selection in question involves Mitchell, as in the fifth Ashes Test here at the Oval, or his older brother Shaun, who was part of Australia’s World Cup campaign, the response isn’t...
Root entered his own Bermuda triangle, once again, after passing 50 before getting out to a fearsome Pat Cummins ballTo receive one stump‑splaying, seam‑fizzing, late‑afternoon miracle ball from Pat Cummins might be considered a misfortune. To get two in five days starts to look like … well, what exactly?Bad luck for Joe Root, certainly, whose misfortune it was to face the opening ball of Cummins’s 15th over on the first day of this Oval Test. It was Cummins who had brought Root to the crease half an hour into the day, luring Joe Denly into a doomed push-drive against the new ball. Related: Jos Buttler rescues England after familiar collapse against Australia Continue reading...
This game has meaning, for history shows the ‘dead’ rubber in a series can have lasting significance – not least on the captaincyThe Ashes may be gone but the notion of a dead rubber seldom applies when England meet Australia. A Test match between these two nations has a life of its own. There is now the added incentive of points in the Test Championship (no irony intended here, let’s give it a go) and a drawn series would be a welcome rarity in Ashes cricket.Moreover the supposedly “dead” game can often have lasting significance – there are several precedents for that. In 1987 England arrived in Sydney for the final Test 2-0 up, which was a bit of a...
The England Test captain’s tiredness exposes modern cricket’s faultline – a packed schedule is brilliant for fans but brutal for playersThe weather seemed to turn last week, and the conversation with it. All of a sudden it was autumn and, since what it’s like out is one of the few reliable topics of conversation in this country, friends sent despairing messages from Old Trafford complaining about how bitterly cold it was in the stands. The cricket season’s still got another fortnight‑and‑some to run, there’s this last Test at the Oval, and two more rounds of County Championship matches after the current one. They’ll be sweeping great piles of dead leaves from the outfield by the time it finishes on 26...