The stands around Trent Bridge were looking pretty thin by the time England’s opening batters made it out to the middle. Not that there were any spare tickets going, the first three days of the game are sold out, only plenty of the people who had bought them had beaten a retreat to the shady parts round the back of the ground. It was a pitiless day for cricket, and the back alleys were packed with people who had been defeated by the heat. They were stooped over the railings of the stairways, slouched along the walls of the indoor school and slumped in the shadow of the Radcliffe Road Stand.
There’s no shelter out in the middle. This is a hard Test, played for high stakes on an unforgiving wicket and under intense scrutiny. Some matches are defined by the deeds people achieve in them, others by the mistakes they make during them. And on a pitch like this, where the runs flow like melted butter, everyone watching is glaringly aware of every last little mistake made on the field. The errors are being measured in centuries.
England had two bad ones during the morning session. The first was by Jamie Smith, who missed a straightforward catch off Will O’Rourke when Ben Stokes was bowling. The other was by Shoaib Bashir, who came sprinting in from deep square leg to try to take a looping top edge that popped off Tom Blundell’s bat when Jofra Archer tried to bounce him out. The chances were too hard-earned to be so easily spurned, and both bowlers snapped in anger. This weather will do that to you. High temperatures bring high tempers.
Stokes threw his hands up, shouted out loud and spun on his heels when he saw that first catch go down. Archer refused to come in from the boundary to celebrate when Bashir got Nathan Smith out caught and bowled in the very next over after he had spilled that catch in the deep. He had to be called in to join the rest of the team. Luckily for England, Stokes is the sort who plays better when he’s angry. He dragged England through that morning session and back into the match in the course of one long spell, eight overs, three for 13 from the Stuart Broad End.
The day’s defining moment came early in England’s own innings. O’Rourke had already dismissed Emilio Gay during a superb opening over in which he whistled three balls past the outside edge of his bat then had him caught behind off one that was angled straight back in across him. He had just smacked Jacob Bethell on the hand with his very first delivery to him. At the other end, Ben Duckett was in a duel with Nathan Smith, who was working the ball around off the seam, straining to use every little bit of movement from the new ball.
Duckett tucked one four through cover, another through leg, so England were eight for one. Smith bowled three length deliveries on off stump, then managed to persuade a shorter ball to break off the pitch just enough so it caught the edge of Duckett’s bat and flew through to third slip, where Henry Nicholls was waiting. It came waist high, just to his right. Nicholls snatched at it, spilled it and stumbled down on to all fours. Smith tried the same ball again, and this time Duckett stood up and punched it through the covers.
It was the break Duckett needed. It had been more than a year since his last Test century, against India at Headingley in the first Test last summer; his last Test fifty, at the Oval, was in the last Test of that same series. There have been little glimmers of his best this year. He looked in good touch at Lord’s until he was caught in the gully playing at a short ball, and even better at the Oval, where his sprightly 36 in the first innings was cut short when he was run out after Gay called him for a misguided single. This England team needed more from him.
In the next over, Smith beat Duckett again with one that moved off the seam. Again, Duckett stood up to the next delivery and slashed it through cover for four. Then Smith found his edge, again, and this time the ball passed just too wide for Nicholls to reach, through the fourth slip space away to his left. A leg bye meant he finally made it to the other end. O’Rourke seemed to have trouble adjusting his length to suit the new batter, and Duckett walloped a pull away for his fifth boundary.
He was off and running now. His fifty came off just 40 balls, his hundred off 88, and England’s uneasy start was well behind them by the time he was finally out for 113.
