🏏 Tourists take 40-run lead into second innings in Perth
🏏 Day one report | Ashes top 100 | Series omens | Mail Geoff
12th over: England 54-1 (Duckett 24, Pope 23) The Duck drives The Dog nicely through mid off, but again the grass saves a couple of runs.
“Delighted to see Crawley’s pair, despite being English - not because of any dislike or ill will, but because I am so desperate that England reconsider whatever gnostic rites they’ve bound themselves to in the name of the Undroppable. Please, give the boy a rest. A big innings now and then is all very nice, but his average is unforgivable.”
I’m broadly with you, H. North, but I think they’ve kept him for so long almost entirely because they think his booming style might harvest them a match-winning knock somewhere along the line in this series, on hard pitches against properly fast bowling. So it would waste all that previous angst by abandoning the gamble now. I say give him the next four Tests, then we’ll call the farm up-country.
