First Ashes Test. Edgbaston.

[Donny]

8/129. Smith 49*.

[Donny]

8/154. Rain. Players off.

Smith 66*, Sids 7*.

[Donny]

Back on.

8/163.

Smith 66*, Sids 16*.

[Donny]

8/168.

Sids batting very well. 20 n.o.

[Donny]

8/201.

Smith 78*, Sids 42*.

[Donny]

Sids (44) snapped up at short leg.

9/210. Smith 85*.

[Donny]

Smith goes to 98* with a six.

Takes a single and Lyon plays out the over.

Smith facing Stokes. Dot.

Second ball. Dot.

Third. Dot.

4th. Cover drive. Four.

[Donny]

9/240.

Smith 109*, Lyon 4*.

[Donny]

Defiant Smith stand stall in first Ashes Test.

When England took 8/122, in the first Test, It looked like the Aussies could be skittled for 120 odd. Peter Siddle (44) joined Steve Smith and they added 88 priceless runs. Smith went on to a fantastic century.

9/273. Smith 133*. Nathan Lyon 8*.

https://www.facebook.com/AussieCricket-278637879094/

[Donny]

All out 284.

Smith out for 144. Outstanding innings.

Broad took 5/86.

[Pies4shaw]

Bit of a pity that the middle order was opened up by a failure to review Warner’s not out lbw. Still, that’s a good return after a poor start. It’s not often that the 9th and 10th wicket partnerships produce nearly 60% of the runs. Fabulous knock from Smith but wonderful support from Sids and Lyon, too.

[K]

Warne reckons non-strikers should do much more to help their batting partners, by standing as close to the umpire as possible to be able to judge those LBW decisions.

Nasser reckons Warner forgot how far down the pitch he was batting. Hawkeye said it was another two metres to the stumps, which on that angle, Nassers says, means it was always going to be struggling to be on line.

[K]

Odds:

England 54%
Oz 39%
Draw 7%.

The money says both teams' chances have gone up.

[K]

Which of those wickets do you reckon were very good deliveries?

Not many, I'd say. None was unplayable. There were a couple of incorrect LBW decisions. (Blame the non-striker?) The nicks of Bancroft and Khawaja looked like examples of inferior technique. (Bancroft was squared up a number of times. Khawaja likes wafting away from his body with locked front knee, which always looks flaky. M. Knox says Khawaja "flattered to deceive", but we've watched him enough that we shouldn't be deceived any more.)

Maybe a couple of the correct LBW decisions were good balls. I need to see in slo mo. M. Knox again: "Tim Paine, the captain, was out playing the worst shot of the day. Batsman after batsman became tangled in their footwork... Smith aside, it was a dismal day for the Australians, who made even more errors than the comically mistake-prone umpires." (On the umpires, both England and Oz were clueless in their reviews, so they can hardly complain about the umpiring.)

[Donny]

Fulsome accolades for Smith's amazing innings.

Ricky Ponting: "To be able to do that speaks volumes of him as a person” and "It just goes to show how strong he is mentally and how good a Test match player he is."

Michael Vaughan: "Today I thought we saw one of the great, great Test innings."