The Ashes
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The Third Test
After the horror that was Day 4 of the
2nd Ashes Test at Lords I headed to
Birmingham with a level of trepidation.
It was highly unlikely that we’d see a
repeat of England capitulating in an
afternoon, but could they bounce back
from a record defeat?
The two captains came to the wicket
and again Michael Clarke won the toss;
there’s an expectation
for this series that
the
team
winning
10 Issue 42
the toss will win the match - so that was a
big blow! Michael Clarke elected to bat as
he did at Lords - would we see the same
superb batting display by his team?
Chris Rogers and David Warner
opened the batting - Rogers had retired
‘hurt’ at Lords, going down very
suddenly early in the day, it was a huge
concern that he was back at the crease so
quickly. In spite of the fact that the
Australian camp are adamant
that his symptoms have
not been caused by
concussion
it’s
hard to see
past that.
England had made one well publicised
change to their lineup, with Gary Ballance
taking the brunt of the criticism for a
whole team failure and being dropped Jonny Bairstow a fellow Yorkshireman
replaced him.
I was surprised, yet pleased to see
the towering figure of Steven Finn in the
field in place of Mark Wood, that change
I hadn’t heard of. He’d been treated very
badly in Australia in 2013, with his action
being messed about with, he saw no
Ashes play at all! In this ‘New England’
set up it would be inter \