After the euphoria of Cardiff, it was a day of drudgery for England. Payback time, as Australia batted through the first day to create a position from which already they cannot lose the match and, if there is anything in the pitch for high pace, may very well win it.
Mick Hunt, the veteran Lord’s groundsman, had set the mower blades rather lower than he had for the New Zealand match earlier in the summer and the result was as near-perfect a surface – flat as yesterday’s pint, a light brown strip scarred across the verdant outfield and square– as any self-respecting batsman could expect.
There was some pace in it, not too much on this first day, but sufficient for shots all round the wicket both violent and deliciously delicate, exquisite at times, but no movement off the seam or turn for the spinner (although it is far too early in proceedings to expect any different until the footmarks of left and right arm seamers come into play). Only in the first session, when there was a little gentle swing for Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad, and later, much later, when Broad, for a brief period of time, perhaps two overs, found some reverse swing that enabled him twice to beat the bat (a rare occurrence all day) was there any help for bowlers.
The outfield appeared to have the capacity not just to let the ball run freely across the grass, but actually to impart gentle acceleration to it, even up the slope to the Grandstand, seducing chasing fielders into believing they could chase it down only for it to pull tantalisingly away at the last second.
England dragged themselves from the field at the close of play having taken the single wicket of David Warner all day, and that down to the batsman hitting the self-destruct button immediately after the first drinks break, after an opening partnership of 78. Beyond that there was little hope for the toiling England attack as Chris Rogers, who knows this ground better than anyone else in the match, and Steve Smith, whose familiarity is limited, racked up centuries of high quality, producing an unbroken second-wicket partnership of 259 from 75 overs to leave Australia 337 for one, a total that with the batting to come, will almost certainly ensure England will be playing catch-up for the rest of the match.
Smith, who reached his hundred after tea, two overs before Rogers, was undefeated on 129 from 217 balls, with 13 fours and a six. It was an innings that helped him regain his position as the world’s No1-ranked batsman just as quickly as he lost it after the first Test. This was his eighth Test match hundred, all of which have come in the first Australian innings.
For Rogers, the elder statesman in the match, it is further justification for the decision two years ago to bring him into the team at a time when there was a clamour for a change towards youth. He will resume on 158 from 282 balls with precisely 100 coming in boundaries, having leapt ahead of Smith after both had reached three figures, Smith by pulling an Anderson loosener through midwicket, to the ropes, and Rogers push-driving the same bowler down the ground to the Nursery.
Chances were few. In Anderson’s opening over of the match Rogers’ nervy edge flew fast, just beyond the fingertips of Ian Bell at second slip. In the first over after lunch, when 43, he almost ran himself out attempting to take a sharpish post-prandial single to Moeen Ali at mid-wicket, but the fielder’s shy, off balance, at what he could see of the bowler’s wicket was off target with the batsman still well short of his ground.
Beyond that, Rogers was chanceless. Smith’s only blemish in an otherwise chanceless innings came when he had just reached his half-century and edged Ben Stokes low, very low, to Bell, at second slip once more. It was real fingerstinger that may or may not quite have carried, but of a kind that had he caught the ball, would have had the batsman standing his ground to await adjudication on its legitimacy. That was, as it happened, an irrelevance.
Despite the thin cloud cover and a little humidity at the start, this was never, as some optimists would have it, a good toss to lose and Michael Clarke duly won it for Australia. The early swing created a tough first half-hour or so, particularly and unusually for Warner, who was pinned down while Rogers was able to gallop ahead with his use of the angles and pace on the ball. But the bowling was not of a quality that won the match in Cardiff, inconsistent in line and often in length so that the challenging fields that Alastair Cook set all day were readily breached. It is hard to plug the field when there are leaks everywhere.
Given the subsequent success of Rogers and Smith it may have been with envy that Warner sat on the balcony of the visitors’ dressing room and watched the glut of runs. It could, perhaps should, have been him who, like Rogers, batted through the day as had Mark Taylor and Geoff Marsh at Trent Bridge in 1989.
Warner had broken free of his early shackles by picking off some wayward short stuff from Mark Wood, when first he bowled from the Pavilion end, and had started to bristle with intent. So Cook played his trump card, the one that had disposed of Warner at Cardiff to kickstart the second-innings decline, by calling up Moeen Ali. Warner cudgelled a full toss opener over widish mid-on and then, with an offside field set and wide open space on the leg side, muscled a slog sweep to the vacant mid-wicket boundary.
A brace of singles meant that 10 had come from the first five deliveries, which ought to have satisfied the craving. Instead Warner launched at the final ball of the over and sent it steepling and spiralling to wide mid-off where Anderson, none better to be under it, made ground, steadied himself and took the catch.
Warner had made 38, the last 34 of which came from 18 balls. The damage he could have done.
Guardian Service
