England v West Indies: second Test, day one – live!

Good ball from Chase, straightening and beating Burns’ push; the ball would’ve hit the top of middle stump, which is to say that review was not so good.

Bumble knows! England review!

14th over: England 29-0 (Burns 15, Sibley 8) Holder goes with Bumble, introducing Roston Chase; Sibley nudges yet another on-side single.

13th over: England 28-0 (Burns 15, Sibley 7) Burns is looking comfy out there, and he drives three to point before Joseph finds some bounce at 85mph; the ball dies en route to Dowrich, bouncing in front, then Sibley adds another single. There’s something about this pitch that screams Stuart Broad, on which point perhaps West Indies are running last week out of their legs (Broad was dropped last week, apparently).

“If we’re going for album tracks by great 90s US indie rock bands, how about Ballarat from the Lemonheads’ 1990 album Lovey, in honour of the Eastern Oval, Ballarat, Victoria, where cricket has been played since 1862.”

How about it!

12th over: England 24-0 (Burns 12, Sibley 6) Holder gives Burns one on his pads, which he gleefully turns around the corner for the innings’ first boundary off the bat. So next up, Holder gives width outside off, and Burns craftily paddles him towards the point fence, not hitting too hard, and they run three.

Meanwhile, Felix Cross has a sentence for us: “Root Brooks the Broad Buttler Holder Chase and Stokes Burns Hope.”

Do we need Burns to be in the singular for this, and a semi-colon before Holder? ?

11th over: England 17-0 (Burns 5, Sibley 6) We see a diagram showing that West Indies have bowled very few deliveries full of length – it’s not easy batting out there, as you’ll know if you’ve played the game, but it could also be a lot harder. The batsmen haven’t had to play enough, but more than that, haven’t had to play forward enough – especially on a track offering little help for the short stuff. Joseph rattles through a maiden, but it’s not an especially threatening one.

10th over: England 17-0 (Burns 5, Sibley 6) Holder coaxes a bit of bounce from the pitch, but Sibley gets over it, knocking it down into the pitch. He then finalges a single behind, after which Burns waves at a wide one, which leaves him.

“Vic Marks says that Joe Root will ‘be fresh and invigorated’ after returning from paternity

duty
leave”, emails George in Brisbane. What does Joe know that we don’t?

Nothing; it’s the rejuvenating elixir of escape.

9th over: England 16-0 (Burns 5, Sibley 5) Sibley nurdles another one off his legs, then Burns forces two to mid off, while in commentary, Bumble advises Holder that it’s worth trying a spinner at OT, when it’s overcast and there’s some juice in the pitch.

“The maroon caps look splendid today!” tweets Gary Naylor. “Such symbols might matter more in a team that is an amalgamation of nations and cultures. As Clive Lloyd showed, harnessing a pan-Caribbean team spirit within which individual expression flourishes, is a winning combination.”

They’re not maroon, they’re magenta!

8th over: England 13-0 (Burns 3, Sibley 4) Holder tosses himself the ball, and Burns quickly turns him into the on side for two. They’re the only runs from the over, and England will be pleased with this – they good balls have troubled the batsmen, but there haven’t been many of them, nor enough ok ones to build pressure.

“A little suggestion from Tracey Ullman via Kirsty MacColl,” says Neil Kearsley. “Appropriate for Jofra Archer and most of our batsmen.”

7th over: England 11-0 (Burns 1, Sibley 4) Alzarri Joseph replaces Roach – I wonder if he’ll come back at the other end, whole Gabriel comes correct. Anyhow, there’s a bit of swing for Joseph but he’s not quite there either, ceding a single to each batsmen. West Indies are in danger of wasting this first session.

“Can I nominate ‘Chevy Chase’ by Blyth Power,” asks Richard O’Hagan, “a whole historical tale woven around the progress of a cricket match. Curiously, it doesn’t feature on the band’s seminal album ‘Wicked Men, Wicked Women and Wicketkeepers’.”

6th over: England 9-0 (Burns 0, Sibley 3) It’s hard work batting out there, but Gabriel isn’t quite there yet – when he is, look out. And here comes a better effort, flung from wide of the crease and hitting Burns in the top right corner of his pad. There’s a shout, but that looked high and wide to me. Maiden.

“Ggood to see Pavement get a mention,” says Norval Scott. “After their break-up, in about 2000/2001 I went to see a show in Edinburgh by Scott Kannberg/Spiral Stairs, the guitarist, and ending up having a drink with him afterwards. He had no interest in talking about Pavement and was much more interested in discussing Bolton Wanderers, who had won their first three games of the season and were near or at the top of the Premier League at the time. However, he did tell me that Stephen Malkmus was a *redacted*”.

Bolton have always been big in the 209.

5th over: England 9-0 (Burns 0, Sibley 3) Roach finds a booming inswinger which clatters Sibley’s extremely obtrusive pad; there’s a shout but it was going down. Some outswingers follow, then another attempted in-ducker goes for a wide, the only run of the over.

“Probably done this before,” says Andrew Porter, “but using only punctuation, ‘and’ and ‘the’ what’s the longest grammatically correct sentence that can be made from the team lineups? Lots of verbs and nouns in there – Burns, Root, Stokes, Buttler, Broad, Hope, Brooks, Chase, Holder…”

You know what to do!

4th over: England 8-0 (Burns 0, Sibley 3) Gabriel is into it now, Sibley turning a single behind square on the on side, his brief flirtation with the off nothing but a memory – it’s the only run form the over.

“For the remainder of this series,” says Rhiannon Garth Jones, “overseas users will be able to listen to Test Match Special commentary on the BBC Sport website and app (I know people ask for the overseas link quite often).”

Thanks a lot – I humbly supplicate we add this to the playlist as a mark of our collective appreciation. Incidentally, i recently learnt that it’s almost impossible to play this song properly, unless you happen tp be able to semi-dislocate your as Lindsey Buckingham can. Perhaps one for old Poppadom Fingers himself.

3rd over: England 7-0 (Burns 0, Sibley 2) Athers chuckles at the memory of Ian Bishop smashing Robin Smith’s cheekbone; what larks, dear old Pip , dear old chap. Sportsfolk are brilliant. Anyhow, Sibley shoves a single through cover; do not adjust your sets, he really does.

“You revealed yourself to be a bit a raver during the last Test match,” says Matt Huxley, “so might I submit this. Not sure how well it would go off in the members stand, but sure to blow away any cobwebs Rooty might have (and probably that beard too).”

I’ve no doubt that the egg and bacon would be bobbing all over the show.

2nd over: England 6-0 (Burns 0, Sibley 1) Gabriel is struggling with his run up, aborting one and going through with another even though he clearly wanted to stop again; consequently, he flings one miles down the leg side, which beats Dowrich’s dive and goes for five wides. Like the bazzer he is, Gabriel comes back well, ceding a no ball but looking much more comfortable in general.

“If Jesse goes to the BBC site here,” says Chris Drew, “and clicks on ‘Natural Sounds’ , it works overseas.”

Well in – thanks.

1st over: England 0-0 (Burns 0, Sibley 0) Roach has the ball, and it’s already clear there’s not much pace in the pitch – there’s only been one sunny day in the last three weeks, and that moisture is a bit part of why Jason Holder opted to field. Immediately, Roach goes around to the left-handed Burns, and his fifth ball to him is beauty, seaming away from the bat. Maiden.

“Would you mind posting the TMS overseas link in the OBO?” asks Jesse Galdston.

Can anyone help, please?

The players take a knee. What a world.

There’s a lot for England to lose in the next hour. Lovely stuff.

Right then, eyes down: here we go!

“Great to see the likes of your REMs and your Pavements in the list,” tweets your @AsNaturalAsRains, but may I submit the pure Proustian rush of Lou Bega.”

That reminds me a lot of cricket and a lot of a bar in Ios, in which you don a helmet, perform a dentist chair, then have someone hit you over the head with a mallet. It’s extremely invigorating.

“Perhaps the most obvious choice of music would be The Third Man theme,” returns Geoff Wignall, “preferably a cover version of course. But also how about Jurassic 5’s Swing Set?”

“Maybe not in the first eleven of Who songs,” says Richard Woods, “but a decent tribute to our game all the same.”

I’m no doubt attracting opprobrium when I say this, but I don’t get the Who.

“There would be two great things about having Sarah Taylor as the OBO XI wicketkeeper,” says Geoff Wignall. “First would be having Sarah Taylor keeping wicket. Second would be having Kumar Sangakkara playing as a specialist batsman.”

I’d also have Sanga in – partly for his dub-K, and partly for his misfortune in having his phone hacked” in the middle of a county game”.

Looking at the England XI, it lacks pace, but it does not lack batting (in theory). Every player has a first-class century, and all of them has a Test fifty.

England: Burns, Sibley, Crawley, Root, Stokes, Pope, Buttler, Curran, Woakes, Bess, Broad.

West Indies: Brathwaite, Campbell, Hope, Brooks, Chase, Blackwood, Dowrich, Holder, Joseph, Roach, Gabriel.

Tell you what, it’ll take some colossal runs to redeem this.

Joe Root, then, sporting a bumfluff beard. He says what’s been said about Archer has been said, and it’d be high-risk to play Anderson or Wood, who’ve come back from bad injuries – though England need to win. Instead, the attack is Broad, Woakes, Curran, Stokes and Bess; he goes on to say that he appreciated what Broad said during the last Test and notes that he’s played a lot less and Anderson so isn’t close to the end. He’s pleased that, following a bad start, his team got into a position to win at Southampton, and says it looks a good wicket here. It feels a little bit softer than usual, he reckons, but doesn’t say what he’d have done had he won the toss.

He goes on to say that people are smiling in West Indies and it’s for the team to keep things that way.

They’re attracted by the overhead conditions, and whatever’s in the surface, they want first go at extracting. They’re unchanged.

“In India, Disco Dancer is a movie from the previous century which became an instant cult classic owing to its display of a dancer trying to live the big life,” says Abhijato Sensarma. “It’s one of those movies from the past which will not win the award for the best movie in any year, but it’s also one of those movies which you’re always down to see on a free evening. I provide the link below to one of the songs from this enduring film. After hearing it, I can only hope that despite being released in the 20th century, the song must have been written with a cricket player kept in mind – Mr Anderson!”

“Can I nominate Pavement’s “…and Carrot Rope” from their underrated final album Terror Twilight,” says Thomas Atkins, “with its chorus of ‘the Wicketkeeper is down’. An apt summary of Jos Buttler’s travails with the red ball over the last year or so.”

You’ve really hoofed ther hornet’s nest there, I’m afraid! Here’s Wiki!

“Carrot Rope” is a song from Pavement’s 1999 album Terror Twilight. It is erroneously known as ‘…and Carrot Rope’, the ‘…and’ was added to the stylized track listing on the back of Terror Twilight signifying that it is the final song on the album and not actually a part of the title.”

Someone in the studio had clearly been watching ITN news at 10.

“Whatever is going on in the England dressing room,” says Graeme Thorn, “it can’t be as big a scandal as Watergate-gate.”

“Sam Curran would create a nice bit of rough for Mr Bess,” tweets @jackofatrade. That’s true, though West Indies only have one lefty. I’ve actually been wondering if I was too hasty last week, when I wrote that England seemed to have found their spinner – someone to take the ball away from the bat might’ve been helpful in the fourth innings. But Bess seems to have greater potential upside than Jack Leach, so I’d persevere with him.

“Got to say, I’m finding the whole bowler rotation thing a bit hilarious,” chortles Peter Salmon. “Last Ashes, Australia gave a masterclass in rotating their bowling stock across the five Tests. Here we are on day six of the policy and we’ve already had Broad-gate, Archer-gate and we are half an hour after the toss and names are still being moved around the whiteboard. Glorious, English, stuff.”

It’s superb isn’t it. Tangentially, when Alec Stewart was stopped entering the Oval through the Alec Stewart gate, was it called Gate-gate?

While we’re here, shall we do an OBOers playlist? Feel free to send in your rules, but how about we go for things we think other people won’t know, and if we can find a tenuous cricket connection, so much the better. I’ll get us underway with this paean to English batting collapses.