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Can't believe the Australian luck today, particularly Smith who has been beaten quite a few times and survived.
Gets his hundred and hoists one up in the air off Leach only to bisect two fielders.
Smith and Paine make England pay by smashing Stokes for a couple of boundaries.
Next Leach over, Leach finally gets his man, only for Smith to be re-instated, from a Leach no ball! A no ball from a spinner
Game slipping away from England?
Many were saying that in the last year but we all know what happened there.
Crazy stuff.
That Leach no ball was when Smith was on 108. He just got his 200.
He has rode his luck today but it is no coincidence that the "Stokes test" which England won, Smith was not playing.
At this stage with Aussies 420 for 7, the best England can hope for is a draw and win the last test.
Pretty unlikely I'd say.
Smith odds on for man of the series already, unless Stokes has something else up his sleeve.
England have had so many bad sessions this series. This afternoon's looks like the one that's going to count. One of Stokes or Root needs a big innings, again.
The commentators are now saying it is a very comfortable batting pitch so England should easily get the draw.Originally Posted by MacAdder
Have they seen England bat ?kind
I think over the course of the three and a half matches so far, Australia have shown themselves to be a much stronger team than England who have had to rely on inspired individual contributions to stay in contention. I know that the biggest individual contribution of the lot has come from Steve Smith,but, although not great, I would say Australia's other specialist batsmen have been better than England's, only Broad out of the home bowlers has been consistently good (Archer has been very good at times, but he has got progressively slower after being given a very heavy workload at Edgbaston for a player who has played so little red ball cricket in his career) and Australia have a lot more depth to their attack.
Today looks like being an on and off type of day with showers forecast, but the weekend looks set fare and it'll require England's best batting as a team of the series to save the game - the evidence so far says they won't be up to it.
Unfortunately I think the England top order has misfired so far this series (so far!) Never going to win a series with so many batsmen out of form. Roy, Root, Denly, Butler and to a lesser extent Bairstow have all had a disappointing series. There is no doubt that Smith has been the player of the series.
It's been Smith and Labuschagne with the bat for Australia, and Stokes for England. Australia have managed to contribute at times for them whereas Roy, Denly, Buttler etc are struggling to get it off the square. Also, their tail has wagged far more than England's.
First sighting of Starc this summer, and if he bowls anything like he did yesterday, it'll be his last showing too. He was horrendous.
England need to get to lunchtime tomorrow at the bare minimum.
Agree so far, but the Aussies need to retain the ashes for the player of the series to be an Australian. That hasn't happened yet. It's looking probable, but surely if we have learned anything this series it is that nothing is decided on day 2. It's only a few matches ago that we were praising England's ability to put together a proper test match batting performance. England have 19 wickets and as much rain as they can pray for to save this one and go to the oval with every chance of winning it.
This is how I see it.
Now if they're 6 down by lunch, I might revise that!
Manchester weather to the rescue
Sadly no rain forecast on Sat or Sun.Manchester weather to the rescue
It's not a great spectacle but I do think we need to initially play for the draw. Start batting with the mindset we had at the start of the second innings in the last test. Primary focus should be to not get out.
Aim to slowly avoid the follow on. Every batsman should be told before going in that boycott himself gets to hit them as hard as he can, square in the balls with his bat, if they give their wicket away because there has been a hell of a lot of that since the first innings of the first test. Anyone batting for two or more full sessions gets to play in the last test.
Just bat properly. England have probably got 2 and a bit days, and if they bat properly, they'll draw. If England get near 400 in the first innings, which shouldn't be seen as an impossible task, then the game will be drawn.
They started to do this in the second innings at Headingley.
First hour, no wickets gone. Good start.
Root in already, second over of the day.
I know it was only the nightwatchman gone but Burns hasn't looked particularly comfortable.
If yesterday was anything to go by, I know the pitch is supposed to get better, but if the England bowlers could get something out of it then this Aussie attack, which I think is better, will surely do similar.
Aussie tails are up.
A lot of pressure on these two now to try and hang around and hopefully the weather will do the rest.
.... Which they are doing. Root tactically taking one in the nuts to kill a bit more time too. Excellent clock management
England are batting properly. Keep going lads!
Un-****ing believable.https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/49587317
Everything that's wrong in sport and UK.
He's at it again. Must have killed 30 mins in total today.
Bugger.
Problem with being so far behind is that you can bat brilliantly most of the day, but if you lose a few wickets at the end it sort of undoes all of that. Pressure's on Roy here.
Not exactly a great day so far
Not watching today but following on th e radio. Sounds like, archer aside, we've got out to excellent bowling this morning. Can't really complain about that.
Follow on narrowly avoided. Bowled out 196 runs adrift though. England with a huge job to save the test.
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