Batter’s quickfire century hauls Australia out of trouble and silences criticism of Bellerive Oval’s emerald green pitch
On the first afternoon of Hobart’s Ashes debut, the knives were out for Bellerive Oval. Australia had lost David Warner, Usman Khawaja and Steve Smith for a combined six runs, while Australia as a team had scored 12. The pitch looked like it belonged to the Emerald City. Accordingly, people online started getting stuck into the surface as no good, a lottery, a disgrace, or anything else they could think of, proclaiming that Hobart had blown its entree to big-league Test cricket and that the city should never get a Test again.
Except that over the next hour or so, Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne produced a passage that featured 71 runs in 69 balls, repeatedly taking on the bowling to great effect. Stuart Broad and Ollie Robinson had been difficult to face at the start of the innings with jagging seam movement, but as soon as Mark Wood came on, his extra pace disappeared to the fence with corresponding speed. Chris Woakes got battered in conditions that should have suited him. The life went out of the pink ball, and began to leak out of England too.
Continue reading...