Dubai: One of the best fourth innings knocks ever from Ben Stokes wasn’t enough to stop Australia from going 2-0 up in the series at Lord’s in a cliffhanger of a fifth day at Lord’s on Sunday.
It took a monumental bowling effort from Australia, without Nathan Lyon, to stop a rampaging Ben Stokes in a riveting day of Test match cricket at Lord’s on day five.
The England skipper was in ravishing form, unleashing his aggressive avatar when stranded with the tail, and taking the attack to the Australian bowling attack with the game seemingly out of England’s grasp.
A century stand with Stuart Broad saw Stokes bludgeon the Aussie attack with disdain, picking and choosing the short boundaries to push England closer to the target.
But Stokes’ dismissal on 155, with England 70 runs away signalled the end of the fight. The rest of the line-up hung around for a while, but Starc sent Josh Tongue back with a searing yorker to hand Australia a memorable win and a 2-0 lead in the series after two Tests.
Earlier, Stokes and Ben Duckett resumed from where they had left off, nurdling the ball around and getting on top of the bounce.
The Australians persisted with the short-ball ploy without much success early in the session with the uneven bounce that was on display late on day four not popping up very often.
Stokes survived an LBW review off Mitchell Starc’s sharp yorker and the century stand was up soon. Just as England seemed to be on course to push Australia into panic mode, Josh Hazlewood struck. The pacer found Duckett’s top-edge as the batter tried to pull away a short ball.
Jonny Bairstow joined Stokes in the middle as England’s last recognised pair with the visitors continue to barrage them with short balls.
However, the wicket came in quite unexpected fashion when Bairstow wandered outside the crease after leaving a delivery with an alert Alex Carey throwing down the stumps to catch the England batter well short.
The bizarre dismissal was Stokes’ cue to tee off and the captain went into ultra-aggressive mode, taking on the short ball with relentless pull shits through mid-wicket.
In the 54th over, he smashed Cameron Green for three fours, all off pull shots, and treated him to another four followed by a hat-trick of sixes in his next over to reach his hundred in quite dramatic fashion.
The subdued celebration from the skipper sent the message that there was work in plenty still to be done with more than 130 runs to chase down and only four wickets in the bank.
Stokes wasn’t done, and England weren’t either. Stuart Broad held his end firm as Stokes continued to flay the Aussie attack. What appeared to be well outside England’s reach suddenly seemed possible with the skipper’s unrelenting onslaught.
Two sixes came in the 60th over bowled by Hazlewood and two more followed in the 65th over from Mitchell Starc with the left-arm seamer resorting to T20 tactics to outfox Stokes.
The duo soon brought up the century stand at more than run-a-ball, with Broad contributing only 11 runs to it at that point of time.
Stokes, targeting bowlers from only one end to evade the deep fielders, raced past 150, but Headingley 2019 was not to be repeated as Hazlewood eventually bounced Stokes out – the batter edging one to the keeper off a short delivery with 155 remarkable runs to his tally.
Courtesy: ICC