By Nick Hoult at Lord’s
Australia limbered up for the Ashes with a training session in south east London on Friday while England had a net practice of their own out in the middle at Lord’s.
This is a game masquerading as a Test match, such is the one-sided nature of the cricket so far. England will win on Saturday with Ireland 97 for three (effectively four down with an injured opener James McCollom retired hurt) and 255 behind. England will head off on their golf trip in Scotland with confidence high and their averages boosted from mauling Ireland, but it has not told us much about their Ashes chances.
You cannot blame the players from either side. England were clinical and professional against a poor attack and entertained while doing so. There has been a healthy contingent of youngsters in the crowd over the last two days, this being half term and MCC, unlike last summer, offering concessions, and they will have loved seeing Ollie Pope score the fastest ever double hundred in England and Ben Duckett the quickest 150 at Lord’s. Who needs the Hundred?
Duckett did not care about the uneven contest. It was a big day for him – his first innings in a home Test seven years after his debut. “It feels pretty special to be honest. It hasn’t really sunk in yet. Batting with Popey today… it was a breeze really. I think Rooty’s put me on the honours board already because he asked me for my middle name!”
England batted at 6.33 an over before declaring at 524 for four from 82.4 overs, Joe Root making 56 off 59 balls going past 11,000 runs in the process and two players scored a 100 runs in a session on the same day (Duckett 101 before lunch, Pope 100 between lunch and tea) for only the second time in Test history.
Pope and Root scored the third fastest hundred stand for England but the most valuable development for the coaching staff was the performance of Josh Tongue with his first three wickets in Test cricket. He bowled better than in the first innings and justified McCullum’s punt on him after seeing him bowl just once in the nets. He will now keep his place in the squad for the first Ashes Test.
Duckett made a career best 182 and Pope 207, his Test highest score as well, as two players nurtured by McCullum and Ben Stokes took this golden opportunity on a flat pitch. They put on 173 in 29 overs in the first session, and 252 for the second wicket from 261 balls without ever being gung ho.
At least it was a quick beating for the Irish bowlers, England did not even bat a day’s play. Stokes declared when Pope was dismissed the ball after reaching his double hundred, instead of giving himself and Jonny Bairstow a bat and Harry Brook some time in the middle. The next time they face a ball will be in an Ashes Test but it is debatable how much they would have gained from smacking Ireland around anyway.
Ireland have been served up on a platter by the system. They cannot afford to host Test cricket at home – they have played just one in Dublin and lost a seven figure sum on the match – so their only games are on the road; in England or Asia which is a hiding to nothing.
They have not run a first-class competition since the pandemic. They had hoped to do so this year but cannot afford it. England have not helped by counting their players as overseas signings, preventing valuable experience in county cricket.
Duckett has always been strong on the off side but he has added to his game on the leg side and down the ground too. He is attacking but not reckless: he has left only one ball per 100 deliveries since coming back in the side but there are few hard swishes outside off stump a la Zak Crawley. He raced from his overnight 60 to 100 in only 35 balls. His next fifty required only another 44 deliveries, reaching his 150 at a run a ball. When Duckett played on for 182, England were close to a 200 run lead already.
Whacking the ball so hard comes at a cost and Ireland had the ball changed after 59 overs because it had gone out of shape and all of a sudden batting became tougher. Root must have been cursing his luck at going in when it had suddenly become a bit tougher. He saw it through well given this was his first innings outside the IPL since the end of February.
Pope was imperious at the start of what is a big summer for him personally. Now is the time to really establish himself in the Test game. He moved to 150 off 166 balls and was 197 at tea with England itching to declare. He brought up 200 with a six, naturally, off the spinner Andy McBrine and was bowled next ball trying another.
With 30 overs to the close, Stokes had a crack at a two day finish. Tongue bowled fuller and forced Ireland to play at more balls. His bouncer was better too, following the right handers down the slope and he bopped a couple of blows on the head. He had Peter Moore lbw with his first ball of the innings and Andy Balbirnie caught behind cutting in the same over. McCollom collapsed with an ankle injury and was carted off to hospital in an ambulance when he got in a tangle to Tongue’s short ball and Paul Stirling gloved a leg side catch as the leg theory worked again but it was all a bit too easy.
Josh Tongue shows his range – and why he could play in the Ashes
By Tim Wigmore at Lord’s
For English fast bowlers, the start of the summer of 2023 has felt a little like Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. First, Olly Stone suffered a hamstring injury, ruling him out of the first couple of Ashes Tests. Then, Jofra Archer suffered a recurrence of the stress fracture in his right elbow, ruling him out of the entire series. Then, concerns about James Anderson and Ollie Robinson led to them both being absent for England’s Test against Ireland too.
And so Josh Tongue found himself unexpectedly elevated to England’s squad – and then, even more surprisingly, into the 11, leapfrogging Chris Woakes. In many ways, it was a curious pick: Woakes has an extraordinary record at Lord’s, while Tongue had taken only 11 wickets at 41.5 apiece for Worcestershire in Division Two so far this summer. Sam Cook, another 25-year-old seamer, is averaging 18.3 this season and has a far more impressive County Championship record than Tongue.
But England have long learned that assembling a Test side is not simply an exercise in picking the best County Championship players. The county game is profoundly different to Test cricket: Under one per cent of deliveries from pace bowlers in the Championship are over 87mph, compared to 17 per cent in Test cricket, as documented in the book Hitting Against the Spin.
A good Test attack does not just entail having the best bowlers, but assembling the best fit of bowlers. The question about Woakes or Tongue was not about ranking the two bowlers; it was about assessing who could best complement the rest of the attack, both against Ireland and in the Ashes. In Anderson, Robinson, Stuart Broad and Matthew Potts, England have an abundance of bowlers who can replicate Woakes’s essential qualities: Seam, swing and accuracy. With Archer and Stone injured, the supply of fit bowlers who can offer a point of difference is altogether less abundant, not stretching beyond Mark Wood.
Since he emerged in 2017, taking 47 first-class wickets, England have been aware of Tongue’s capabilities: 6ft 4in height, combined with sharp pace. In the Championship, these are not always gifts that are more effective than hammering out a good line and length and relying on seam movement to do the rest. But they are the traits that are coveted in Test cricket: An impression, for England, reinforced by Tongue taking 12 wickets in two Tests for England Lions in Sri Lanka earlier this year. While his first day as a Test cricketer had given a glimpse of his talents, Tongue’s second day showed a bowler with range.
Ireland’s second innings was only six overs old when Tongue replaced Stuart Broad. With the ball so new, there was no need for Tongue to revert to the short bowling that marked his first innings display. Instead, Tongue pitched the ball up: His very first delivery speared in, trapping Peter Moor on the front pad to win him his maiden Test wicket. By the over’s end, Tongue had his second: Andy Balbirnie wafted at a good-length ball outside off stump. His success with conventional new-ball bowling showed a bowler with more roundness than, say, Jamie Overton – who played a Test against New Zealand last year as the designated enforcer, but did not look at ease playing in a different key.
After this initial success, Tongue rapidly shifted to the approach for which he has been selected. The slip fielders were replaced by men on the leg side, telegraphing what was to come. One bouncer outside off stump led James McCollom to twist his ankle as he attempted to evade the ball; Harry Tector was fortunate to top-edge a six over the wicketkeeper for six.
In Tongue’s sixth over, by now bowling with no slips at all, a delivery followed Paul Stirling, like a particularly incessant mosquito, and got a thin sliver of glove en route to Jonny Bairstow. Lorcan Tucker was then hit on the helmet first ball.
It illustrated the threat that Tongue’s short ball can cause, to wicket and body alike. His pace has reached 90mph this Test, averaging 85mph. This is combined with his height and a slightly idiosyncratic action: He leans towards the off-side as he releases the ball, creating an angle that makes him hard to leave.
Tongue showed that he has stamina, too: There was the sense that his eight-over spell, and early shift from classical new-ball bowling to the bouncers that England normally revert to when the ball has gone soft, was only partly with Ireland in mind. It doubled as a way of testing Tongue’s suitability for later Tests this summer – and, with both elements of his bowling in sync, he could now well be seen against Australia too.