Et Al Pics: The Morning After The Night Before

GH wonders how day two can top day one

Here is Philip Brown’s image of the day. And it feels like we need photographic evidence of events so extraordinary as the opening of the 2025-26 Ashes, which encompassed the most wickets in an Anglo-Australian Test day since Old Trafford in 1909, and in England’s innings the third greatest scoring rate of any team bowled out for less than 200.

It began, with Zak Crawley’s wild drive, as recklessly as it continued. Pete’s report is here and mine here. The unexpected aspect was that Australia gradually fell in with England’s headlong intent, hospitably gifting Ben Stokes a six-over five-for and an advantage too easily surrendered.. It’s not clear we know the entirety of Usman Khawaja’s indisposition, which seemed to pitch the home top order into chaos. But good cricket teams should be capable of dealing with such challenges - after all, white ball teams habitually rejig and reorder. This was also exactly the way that Australia did not want Khawaja to begin this series, confined to the dressing room, then quickly back in it after batting. Our apologies are in order for the sound quality on today’s podcast, roughly on par with this - apparently an AI filter has at least partly remedied the mess.

But nothing’s going to dampen my mood right now because here’s my image of the day.

They say you should never meet your heroes, but in Craig Serjeant’s case I’ll cheerfully make an exception. During a couple of hours of blissful reminiscence, Cricket Et Al was pleased to present the former Australian vice-captain with a sample of the T-shirt that honours him. He’s at the cricket now; so are we; it’s all set for a cracking day two.