Eight days before the curtain rises on the Ashes in the sold-out enormodome that is Perth’s Optus Stadium, England’s campaign began in semi-earnest a few actual kilometres and a million metaphorical miles away in front of a few dozen spectators in leafy, sedate Lilac Hill.
What followed was intriguing, at times even encouraging, but for news of a potentially significant injury, and, while Ben Stokes had promised “balls-to-the-wall” action, it was more jaws to the floor as news of Mark Wood’s stiff left hamstring filtered through in mid-afternoon.
England had revealed their blueprint for the first Test in naming a lineup featuring five seam options including Stokes himself and no full-time spinner, with Shoaib Bashir relegated to the Lions XI. But however carefully it is prepared, sometimes a blueprint is destined to become nothing but shredder-fodder.
With Wood’s participation in next Friday’s opening Test now in doubt and Bashir’s suddenly looking more likely, certainty has slipped through English fingers much as a few catches did across a breezy day by the Swan River. Brendon McCullum might have been expecting to be given food for thought here, but these will not have been the thoughts he was looking for.
While one England player was sparking fitness concerns another was dispelling them. Stokes was the most successful as well as, alongside Gus Atkinson, the hardest-working of England’s bowlers and looked in impeccable fettle in bowling 16 overs and taking six wickets, all of them with short-pitched deliveries, all but one caught behind the wicket on the legside.
“I think he was a little bit surprised,” Harry Brook said, “that everybody got out the same way.” Jofra Archer, the third of England’s trifecta of fragile fast bowlers alongside Wood and Stokes, was less impactful but seemed no less fluent, and was midway through his 13th over when he ended the innings by dismissing Matt Potts.
Beyond Stokes and the wicketless Wood every England bowler snared a single victim as a Lions XI including five members of the Ashes squad – Bashir joined by Jacob Bethell, Will Jacks, Potts and, notionally at least, Brydon Carse (who sat out the first day, presumably much of it literally, with a stomach upset but is expected to contribute on Friday) – ended their innings on 382, a few minutes before the scheduled close.
Against England’s strongest available bowlers but on a pitch Brook described as “a little bit slow” the Lions finished with five half-centurions. But perhaps the most notable contribution with the bat was brief and undistinguished, as another short innings extended Bethell’s odds of elbowing Ollie Pope out of the first team.
Of Bethell’s past 10 knocks for England only one has lasted more than the 17 balls he rather awkwardly faced on his way to scoring two runs here before becoming Stokes’s second victim, and none has yielded more than 26 runs. He may not currently be in the first team but if any No 3 ended the day with their position in peril it was Bethell himself, as the rising star of England’s young batting constellation.
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The Lions’ top-scorers included Durham’s Ben McKinney, who turned 21 a few weeks ago and opened the innings in assured style before becoming Josh Tongue’s only scalp having scored 67, and Somerset’s Thomas Rew, who turns 18 in a couple of weeks and scored 55 before becoming Gus Atkinson’s. Jordan Cox, whose place in the Test side Bethell snaffled after the Essex player broke a thumb in New Zealand a year ago – during another one-off warm-up game, as it happens – scored 53 before being tempted to tuck in to one of Stokes’s diet of short balls.
While England may decide, should picking Wood ultimately represent too much of a risk, to maintain the balance in their blueprint by simply replacing him with Carse, Bashir may look more appealing given the frequent marmalising that Joe Root’s part-time spin received here.
Jacks scored 84 off 85 balls with three sixes, all of them off Root’s bowling, while Potts produced an eye-catching late-innings cameo, motoring to his half-century in 40 balls by hitting Root for four successive sixes and then, in the following over, pulling Archer for another. Suitably encouraged he made no attempt to decelerate and duly top-edged Archer’s next delivery with a wildly swinging bat to a back-pedalling Zak Crawley at slip.
“We obviously haven’t spent much time together in the recent few months, so just to get back together as a group and get out on the pitch, it was a successful day,” said Brook. “Hopefully tomorrow will be another gorgeous day in Perth, and hopefully we can pile the runs on. It’s not just going to be easy – we’ve got some awesome bowlers and the Lions boys too, there’s a lot of their players here and some bowl rockets as well. It’s not going to be light work out there. It’s going to be a challenge and they’re going to want to prove a point. So it’s going to be a test and hopefully we can get some decent runs.”
