What a Waste

GH can't help wondering

The stakes of these Ashes have been diminishing since their eleventh day, when custody was decided. With ten minutes to lunch today, the cricket reached the level of bald men fighting over a comb.

For the seventy-fifth over of England’s innings, Steve Smith tossed the ball to Marnus Labuschagne - a win for pester power if ever there was. Time was when Labuschagne bowled passable leggies that occasionally took crucial wickets; now he bowls parabolic dross landing closer to his own feet than the batters’; Smith was no more than killing time with four overs to the second new ball. Labuschagne’s first four deliveries to Joe Root and Jamie Smith were all duly short, pointlessly, the last called wide as it comfortably cleared Smith’s head.

Earlier Smith had shovelled a half volley from Cameron Green to short cover, only to be posthumously reprieved by a no ball - a piquant moment, it seemed, for two young cricketers who have struggled to impact on this summer, turning on a millimetre. Smith appeared to have been gifted a chance of partial redress, as Green’s torment worsened. But gifts have been treated frivolously these Ashes, and so it proved again - squirming inside the line to biff another short ball over the off side, Smith corkscrewed a top edge to deep cover. Labuschagne’s celebration? Well, it’s probably still going on.