A pumped-up Australia ripped through England\u2019s fragile batting Thursday to leave the tourists staring down the barrel of a third Test defeat with their Ashes campaign on the brink, barring a miracle.<\/p>\n
At stumps on a sweltering day two, the visitors had ground to 213-8, trailing by 158 after Australia added 45 to their overnight 326-8 as temperatures soared to 40 Celsius.<\/p>\n
A gutsy Ben Stokes was not out 45 after facing 151 balls with Jofra Archer on 30 in a Test England must win and on a pitch ideal for batting.<\/p>\n
They were not helped by another suspect decision by the Snicko technology, but at least avoided the follow-on.<\/p>\n
Australia lead the five-match series 2-0 and will retain the urn if they win or draw after back-to-back eight-wicket thumpings in Perth and Brisbane.<\/p>\n
Opening pair Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley saw off the early overs from Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins.<\/p>\n
But it was a mirage with England losing three wickets for five runs in a 15-ball blitz, the latest chapter in a familiar tale.<\/p>\n
Cummins first tempted an edge from Crawley, on nine, to wicketkeeper Alex Carey in the Australian skipper\u2019s first Test since July after lower back issues.<\/p>\n
Lyon strikes
\nThen in a stroke of genius, he brought on spin king Nathan Lyon, who was controversially left out for the pink-ball second Test at the Gabba.<\/p>\n
Lyon grabbed two wickets in a sensational opening over with a hapless Ollie Pope (3) flicking to Josh Inglis at midwicket before he bowled Duckett for 29.<\/p>\n
Joe Root was fortunate to survive in the next over when he edged Scott Boland to Carey, but a review showed it did not carry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A pumped-up Australia ripped through England\u2019s fragile batting Thursday to leave the tourists staring down the barrel of a third Test defeat with their Ashes campaign on the brink, barring a miracle. At stumps on a sweltering day two, the visitors had ground to 213-8, trailing by 158 after Australia added 45 to their overnight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14275,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14273\/revisions\/14275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}