Lord's Test: Top three moments from Day 2
On what looked like a batting-friendly day at Lord's, Australian bowlers put in the hard yards to dismiss the hosts for a meager first-innings total. A fascinating day's play followed as the returning Josh Hazlewood extracted a leaf out of Glenn McGrath's "How to bowl at Lord's" book to dismantle the English top-order. Rory Burns settled in and compiled yet another well-made half-century.
But successive wickets put Australia back on top before Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon wrapped up the lower middle-order and the tail to send England packing for 258.
From Hazlewood's scintillating spell at the start to Cameron Bancroft's breathtaking catch at short-leg, and to Stuart Broad's peach to defeat David Warner, here are the three most iconic moments from the second day's play.
Hazlewood's sizzling spell
Josh Hazlewood marked his comeback to the national team with a brilliant opening spell on the 2nd Day at Lord's. After Tim Paine chose to bowl first on a good-looking wicket at the Home of Cricket, Hazlewood opened his account with his third delivery. Jason Roy fished outside off and nicked it behind without troubling the scorers.
The right-arm pacer, who was returning from a prolonged injury and had a point or two to prove, kept persevering in the corridor of uncertainty. Proving himself as a wonderful exponent of the Lord's slope, Hazlewood entangled Joe Root in an old-fashioned manner.
After feeding the English skipper a number of outswingers, Hazlewood had one jagging in from a length that rapped Root right in front of the wickets and was rightfully adjudged plumb.
The 28-year-old pacer from New South Wales wasn't done just yet as he came back from the other end to dismantle a flourishing partnership between Joe Denly and Rory Burns.
Denly had looked technically sound until he received an absolute jaffa from the right-armer. Pitched in the fourth-stump channel, the ball nipped away a touch to kiss the outside edge of his bat and was caught behind the wickets.
Bancroft's brilliance at short-leg
Cameron Bancroft hasn't had a good run with the willow, thus far, but he has been simply superb in the short-leg position. He caught a relatively hard chance off Nathan Lyon's bowling to dismiss Root in the 3rd innings of the Edgbaston Test. But the one he held on to today easily knocks out the previous and is already one of the iconic moments that will come out of this match.
A couple of overs earlier, Burns had been dropped behind the wicket by the Australian skipper: a difficult chance diving low to his left but on another day he could have clung on to it. Burns was looking quite steady at the crease despite the short-ball barrage by the Aussies.
Cummins, though, kept persisting with some old chin music and finally his efforts paid off as one rose off a length and Burns had to fend it from the handle of the bat. Despite his efforts to keep it down, it carried to the left of Bancroft, positioned at bat-pad.
The Aussie flung to his leg to get a hand on that but it slipped out and was heading towards the deck when Bancroft lunged forward to clasp it some millimeters off the ground.
A stunning fielding effort that provided Australia with another open door into England's misfiring middle-order.
Three-in-three for Broad
As the subtitle of this section suggests, it's the third time Broad has got his name emblazoned on Warner's wicket in as many occasions in the series. Warner's technical expertise in the longest format is getting challenged by fast-bowling from the top-most draw.
Before coming into this series, Warner had faced 500-plus Stuart Broad deliveries and had been dismissed only five times by the latter. In this series alone, however, the English seamer has had the better of him thrice. And every time, the Southpaw has strolled off the field with a single-digit to his name.
Today, Warner looked fidgety on the crease with a scrambled, very unlike-Warner kind of feet movement. Broad with his treacherous round-the-wicket angle was always going to cause headaches to a nervy Warner.
When you see Warner pushing hard at the ball and being unable to thread the offside, you know he is not in the mood.
And with the continuous plays-and-misses outside off, one eventually had to nip back down the slope and pierce the gap between bat and pad. It was a vicious inswinger from the maestro as he got that zipping into the left-hander and had him castled.
There was little Warner could have done about that apart from trying not to fall a bit too much to his off-stump as he looked to play everything on the front-foot to avoid getting pinned on the pads.
In any case, Broad had the last laugh again and Warner now finds himself in a massive pit to climb out from to find renaissance in this series.
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