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Key events
7th over: Australia 60-0 (Marsh 20, Head 32) Travis Head gets stuck into Brydon Carse! A short ball is marmalised for SIX over the Mound Stand and out of the ground. New balls please! Ricky Ponting reckons that is the biggest six of the series so far. It made a frighteningly satisfying sound off the bat and soared into the London night sky. Head hits three more fours off a nervous looking Carse to make it 19 runs off the over. Australia are ticking.
6th over: Australia 41-0 (Marsh 19, Head 14) Marsh flays for four through point and the two batters run extremely well to make it eight runs off the over. England are still on the attack with two slips in place, no breakthrough yet and Australia looking dangerous. Brydon Carse is coming on to replace Potts, he was the pick of the England bowlers in Durham but got plenty of tap the match before at Trent Bridge. What’ll it be this evening from the big man? We’re about to find out.
5th over: Australia 33-0 (Marsh 14, Head 11) Shot! Mitch Marsh whips a short ball off his hips with Swiss clock timing and the ball soars into the stands at midwicket for SIX. Two more off the over with a dab to third. The sun has set at Lord’s and the floodlights are now casting their spindly shadows.
4th over: Australia 25-0 (Marsh 6, Head 11) The ball is moving around and late off the surface, Archer has both Head and Marsh beaten outside the off stump. A full ball is muscled down the ground from Head to keep Australia up with the run rate. Excellent contest this.
3rd over: Australia 19-0 (Marsh 6, Head 6) Potts bowls a tidy maiden but four runs come from another leg side ball that flicks Marsh’s pad and runs away fine to the fence.
2nd over: Australia 15-0 (Marsh 6, Head 6) DROP! Archer bangs one in short and Marsh’s pull shot is later than a Spanish supper. The ball hangs in the air and and should have been Jamie Smith’s catch with the gloves but he let Will Jacks make the attempt running round from slip and Jacks could only get fingers to it. Archer looks displeased as well he might. That should have been taken.
Salt meet wound… Marsh scampered a single off the drop to bring Head on strike and the Walrus tache’d one clips his first ball off a length for SIX into the Mound Stand. Close! Archer responds by beating Head with a beauty that pitched and jagged like an off spinner to leave the left-hander groping. An eventful over ends with seven runs taken off it.
1st over: Australia 8-0 (Marsh 5, Head 0) Matt Potts and his King Edgar hair cut to start for England. His line is a bit awry to begin with with three leg side wides gifted to Australia. Marsh flicks a straight ball for two to get off the mark and then guides off the back foot for two more down to deep point. Jofra Archer is going to bowl the next at the ground where he has had his most memorable moments in an England shirt.
With the sun setting behind Old Father Time the players emerge into the last dregs of a summer golden hour. Marsh and Travis Head stride out. I have a sneaky feeling this is going to be eventful from the beginning. Nasser Hussain’ channels the Manic Street Preachers on the Sky commentary. “Everything must go…”
Lalit Modi has been having some fun on social media with the Hundred sale firmly in his keyboard crosshairs:
The Hundred has been described as “a big fat Ponzi scheme” by the former chairman of the Indian Premier League as he doubled down on criticisms of the competition’s revenue projections after leaking key sections of the confidential document drafted by the England and Wales Cricket Board to pitch the tournament to foreign investors.
In a series of posts across 24 hours on X, Lalit Modi, who also founded the IPL, published the ECB’s financial projections for the tournament as a whole and for each of its eight franchises, calling them “overly optimistic”. Modi described the Hundred as “a struggling non-starter league” and said “the numbers put in document [sic] are definitely not achievable”. Projected sponsorship growth, he said, “seems more like wishful thinking than a realistic forecast”.
Do send us a missive if you are tuning in. The OBO mailbag is open. That was a confident display from England with the bat, captain Harry Brook and Liam Livingstone the standout performers after Australia put early pressure on with the ball. The home side have given themselves a decent chance of getting the win they need to level the series at 2-2 and take it to a decider at Bristol on Sunday.
We’ll have a twenty minute break and be back with the Aussie run chase.
Tuck into this final over, Liam Livingstone certainly did.
England score 312-5 off 39 overs
Liam Livingstone peppers the stands at Lord’s!
SIX.DOT.SIX.SIX.SIX.FOUR.
28 runs pummelled off the final over as Starc goes full and is clobbered back over his head. The bowler then goes short and is whipped into the stands on the leg side. This is utter carnage in the early evening North London sunshine!
39th over: England 312-5 (Livingstone 62, Bethell 12) Wow. Livingstone finishes unbeaten on 62 off just 27 balls with three fours and seven sixes, he hits the fastest fifty at Lord’s and then strolls off with the crowd on their feet.
38th over: England 284-5 (Livingstone 34, Bethell 12) Ricky Ponting on the Sky comms suggests Liam Livingstone should farm the strike now, nothing against Jacob Bethell but due to the fact Livingstone is seeing it like a spacehopper. Bethell does as Punter says and scampers a leg bye off the first ball. Hazlewood gets one in the blockhole and then outfoxes Livingstone with a wide yorker that lands right on the tramlines. Full again… and four – Livingstone muscles down the ground and then takes a single off the final ball to be on strike for the last. Mitchell Starc will bowl it.
37th over: England 278-5 (Livingstone 29, Bethell 12) Starc returns and Bethell drives for one down the ground. BOFF! Next ball Starc misses his yorker and Livingstone clubs down the ground and into the stands for SIX. Starc did not like that, stomping back to his mark with the frown of a man chewing on a fistful of nettles. He calls on all experience to get out of the over for the cost of nine runs, slower ball bouncers and wide yorkers the order of the day. Two overs to go, can England get to 300?
36th over: England 269-5 (Livingstone 23, Bethell 10) Mitch Marsh goes to Josh Hazlewood who immediately hits a yorker length and Livingstone dose well to jam his bat down and keep it out, in fact the ball squirts past point and they scamper a single. Bethell clips a full ball to square leg to return the favour. In the slot and mullered into the stands over midwicket by Livingstone. That was slot slot slot and duly dispatched. Ouch! Hazlewood hits Bethell on the lid with a slower ball bouncer. Foxed the youngster with the change of pace but he’s checked over and good to continue. 11 off the over in the end – three overs to go, Livingstone chomping at the bit/with the bat.
35th over: England 258-5 (Livingstone 16, Bethell 8) What a shot! Jacob Bethell times the undercrackers off a leg side ball from Zampa, reverse sweeping flicking away with real style and the ball just ploops over the boundary sponge by an inch or two. A similar tale as the last over as Zampa does well to limit the damage with England looking to get after every ball. In fact it is five dots, feast and famine. England aiming to get up to 300, Australia doing well to keep them tied down.
34th over: England 252-5 (Livingstone 16, Bethell 2) Livingstone slog sweeps Glenn Maxwell for SIX over the short boundary on the leg side. The bowler fights back with a couple of darts that Barrow’s finest can’t get away. Cat and mouse stuff. Just two more singles off the over as Maxwell does well to limit the damage after the first ball six. Five overs to go.
James Wallace
Cheers Daniel, top stint. Straight down to brass tacks with Adam Zampa in his Zoo era Bono shades rattling through the 33rd over. Three singles worked off it as Jacob Bethell joins Liam Livingstone for the culmination of the England innings. There are six overs to go, could be plenty of boundaries… or wickets – buckle up knuckle heads.
33rd over: England 244-5 (Livingstone 9, Bethell 1)
WICKET! Smith c Hazlewood b Maxwell 39 (England 241-4)
One brings two! Smith leans back and tries to slice Maxwell past backward point. But he picks out the tall timber of Hazlewood who holds on. It looked soft but I think that was fair enough. He had to try and force it.
With that I’ll leave with you the great Jimbo Wallace. Over to you Jim
32nd over: England 241-5 (Livingstone 7)
31st over: England 232-4 (Smith 36, Livingstone 1) Australia have the wicket they were after but England still on the up. Three twos – all for Smith – as well as a pair of singles either side of the Brook wicket means its a decent haul. Some sharp fielding from Australians in the deep. They’re not giving up.
WICKET! Brook c Maxwell b Zampa 87 (England 225-4)
A brilliant grab in the deep ends a stunning knock! Zampa fired it in and Brook obliged by whacking it over his head with some force. But he didn’t quite get the elevation he was after which meant Maxwell was in the game. The ball dipped as it approached him at long-on and almost over-ran it. he adjusted and got his hands down low to grab it before it hit the deck.
30th over: England 224-3 (Brook 87, Smith 29) Marsh has chucked the ball to Hazlewood to wrestle back some control. He can’t find it. Brook welcomes the big man back into the attack with a premeditated scoop that finds the fine-leg fence. Two balls later Brook spins as he pulls to find the big gap at deep square leg and pings it perfectly. Hazlewood fights back well by finding a tricky length and a bit of nip back into the right hander and keeps a free-hit tidy after over-stepping.
29th over: England 213-3 (Brook 78. Smith 28) It’s all going England’s way. Brook, who kicked off this Zampa over by pulling another boundary to the square leg fence, hits one down to fine leg an easy two. But Inglis took aim at the stumps, hit them and was helpless as the ball continued on its way to the opposite boundary for ‘six’ overthrows. Australia look ragged.
28th over: England 201-3 (Brook 31, Smith 23) Labuschagne into the attack now which is a sign of Australia’s inability to keep things tight. His second ball is in the slot and Smith spanks him back over his head for six. A full toss is smeared into deep cover for two and after a decent response from Marnus, Smith dinks a single from a sweep.
27th over: 191-3 (Brook 70, Smith 14) There’s a boundary every over now. This time it’s from another short ball from Zampa and Brook cuts hard past Head at deep cover. Four more runs are collecting through good running and accurate placement.
26th over: England 184-3 (Brook 64, Smith 12) Abbott again and he’s just not having his best day out. In fact, he’s not had the best series, has he? There’a a wide down the leg side that trickles past Inglis and costs three runs. Then there’s a slower ball bumper that catches Brook’s top edge but there’s enough wood on it to see it skip down to the fine leg boundary. Otherwise the England duo are in complete control, milking five additional runs from that Abbott set worth 12 to the total.
25th over: England 171-3 (Brook 59, Smith 8) England have targeted Zampa and it’s worked. Both Smith and Brook blast sixes on the on-side. Brook’s was a drag-down from Zampa and deserved what it got, but Smith’s was a stroke of pure class as he pounced on a fuller delivery and sweetly timed it over wide long-on. A quickly run two for Brook closes out the over.
24th over: England 156-3 (Brook 50, Smith 1) The England skipper follows up a tone in the last match with a half-century here. He’s been brilliant, facing only 37 balls and clattering seven fours. Smith, the new man, shows his intent by charging Marsh but the slog only catches the inside edge and he gets a single off his pads. Brook takes five off the over as he runs two twos, and a single that’s tucked into the leg side.
23rd over: England 150-3 (Brook 46, Smith 0) Over to Brook after Duckett falls for a well earned 63. The ball before he spooned Zampa to fine leg, he drilled a boundary through the covers. Zampa was getting some tap but that wicket could prove to be a turning point. We shall see.
WICKET! Ducket c Abbott b Zampa 63 (England 150-3)
The change of ends works for Zampa! That was a fantastic knock from Duckett who played the right shot but for once couldn’t execute. It was there to be swept, so Duckett got low and went for the big ‘un. Perhaps a bit of extra bounce played a role here as the ball caught the top edge of the swishing bat and Abbott at fine leg had the simple task of running in and pouching it.
22nd over: England 145-2 (Duckett 59, Brook 45) Maxwell comes into the attack and his first over costs 13. Australia just can’t get a grip on this. The over starts with a wide and soon enough Brook is whacking two boundaries in two balls. One is a drag down and smacked through the covers. The next is clipped through square leg where the fielders in the deep make a bit of a mess of things. There’s another wide and a single apiece. What a platform England have now. The last five overs have gone for 9.4 an over.
21st over: England 132-2 (Duckett 58, Brook 35) Ducket grts out the ramp and executes to perfection. He’s in position so early and watches it all the way as he dinks Abbott’s full ball away to the fine leg boundary. Five more runs that were ran (know what I mean) adds up to nine from the over. It’s been one of those innings where you look up and suddenly England are 132-2 after 21 overs.