The best I have seen him bowl in a while: Stand-in skipper Smith showers praise on Starc

Mitchell Starc claimed a few records on his way to a match twinning figures of 6 for 80 from 43.1 overs in the second Test of the Ashes 2021-22 in Adelaide. Bowling with the pink ball, he became the first bowler to get past the 50 wicket mark in Day-Night Tests as he took four wickets in the English first innings.

Steve Smith, the stand-in skipper of the Australian team for the Day-Night Test was mighty pleased with the way, the senior-most fast bowler in the playing XI in absence of Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood took over and controlled the attack.

"I think that's the best I've seen him bowl in a while. He summed up the conditions well, he realised it wasn't swinging and was just able to hit a nice line and length and did it all game. [I] Thought he bowled exceptionally well and led the attack,” Smith said in the post-match press conference.

Starc removed opposition skipper Joe Root in the wee hours of the fourth day’s play and the way this Test panned out with Jos Buttler fighting till the end, it might have been the biggest wicket of the match. Agreeing to it, Smith said, "To have got [Root] out last night was huge for us; he was obviously in a fair amount of pain, but I won't take anything away from how Starcy bowled either. He set him up nicely, came round the wicket because he was leaving him pretty well."

In this very game, the 31-year-old left-arm pacer also went past Australian legend Jason Gillespie into eighth on Australia's all-time list and now has 264 wickets at an average of 27.35. Starc would have removed Buttler as well if the wicketkeeper held on to catch when Jos was on nought early on day five.

"He's a class bowler; he has been for a long time," Smith said. "His strike rate is up there with some of the best who have played Test cricket. I just really liked the way he went about his business this week,” Smith said about the quality of Starc’s bowling.

Though he was captain for this game and enjoyed the opportunity to lead after quite some time, Smith said that it is Cummins’ team and he would be more than happy to help him in any way possible.

"It's been an enjoyable week leading the team in Pat's absence and carrying on what we started at the Gabba. It brought back some old memories, I guess, I had fun out there. It's Patty's team and I'm the vice-captain and I'll help Patrick in any way I can. That's my job, and I'll continue to hopefully lead with the bat,” he said.

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BBL 11 | Kurtis Patterson, Ashton Agar shine in Perth Scorchers dominating win over Hurricanes

In their last two meetings, Perth Scorchers have literally muscled their way past Hobart Hurricanes to climb to the top of the Big Bash League’s points table. In their recent meeting which took place on December 20, Monday, the Scorchers beat Hurricanes by a huge margin of 42 runs. Kurtis Patterson and Ashton Agar were the heroes for Scorchers as Patterson scored a brilliant fifty with the bat while Agar scored a quick thirty and also picked two crucial wickets. Chasing a target of 168, the Hurricanes didn’t get a good enough start as any of its top batters were able to get a flying start and could not convert their slow starts into a big score either and by the end of the first half of their innings, the men in purple were reeling under pressure at 58-5. Soon they were reduced to 83-8. But, before they could be bowled out for under 100, Wil Parker, who came to bat number 10 and was the top scorer for the Hurricanes with his efforts of unbeaten 25, managed to provide some respectability to the dwindling scorecard. Apart from Parker, Nathan Ellis scored 20 off 15 balls as Hurricanes reached 125-9 at the end of their 20 overs. Earlier in the evening, after winning the toss and deciding to bat first at the Optus Stadium in Perth, the Scorchers had a very troublesome start as they lost Josh Inglis in the very first over. However, Patterson was on a roll and had a 71 run stand with Micthell Marsh in which Marsh could score only 21 runs. Even as Marsh got out, the 28-year-old carried on, scoring 78 off just 48 balls. He hit six fours and five sixes before being eventually trapped by Jordan Thompson. Agar, who came to bat at number seven was the second-highest run-scorer with 30 unbeaten off just 11 balls, hitting three fours and two sixes to take his team past 150 and eventually to 167.

The Ashes | Joe Root blames bowlers for Adelaide loss, says they repeated same mistakes

England skipper Joe Root blamed bowlers for making the same mistakes in the second Ashes Test at Adelaide, which they had committed four years ago. Saying that his bowlers bowled pretty length and compromised on wickets by going for fewer runs, Root emphasised what actually went wrong for his team. “When we look at the ball in hand, I don't think we bowled the right lengths, we needed to bowl fuller. As soon as we did that in the second innings, we made it harder for them,” Root said in the post-match presentation. “It’s disappointing because we made the same mistakes that we made four years ago. We could have bowled better and should have batted better,” he added. Talking about how he and the team can work on turning the tides around which look very difficult at the moment given that the English are already 0-2 down, Root said that they need to remain confident and take leaf out of Jos Buttler’s book who showed exactly what resistance means. “We have to be (confident) about turning things around. I’m confident that we have all that we need to win here. [We] Just need to stop repeating the same mistakes. We have to get through that first 20 minutes and then go greedy, need to leave better as well. Need to also manage certain passages of play better,” said the 30-year-old. The English captain, who is just short by 159 runs to become the highest run-scorer in Tests in a calendar year said that his team is certainly capable of turning things around they would have got a draw in this game itself, had they applied themselves more. "Yes, that's the attitude (Buttler's defiance) we needed to harness through the whole game. I feel we competed in patches, but we need to fight the whole game. That’s what is needed to win here. The attitude today was brilliant. We just need to do more of it. I expect us to have that mentality for the rest of the series,” he said. Root now has two innings in the Boxing Day Test to score the 159 runs and get past Mohammad Yusuf’s 1788 runs in a calendar year record. If he scores those runs, it is almost certain that England will remain alive in the series till at least the 4th Test.

The Ashes | Day-Night Test: Relentless Australia crush England's dream of revival, go 2-0 up

There was no way England were going for the chase of 468 runs and the best they could have hoped coming to the fifth and final day of the second Test was a draw which too seemed to be a distant target, especially, after the dismissal of their overworking skipper Joe Root late on the fourth day. The target seemed a monumental one with Australia having gained the impetus on the fourth day and the form of batsmen left to bat on the final day. England had Ben Stokes, who looked scratchy at best in the first innings and the likes of Ollie Pope, Jos Buttler and Chris Woakes to follow, who can’t be relied upon heavily to bat with their head down. The day started off on the worst possible note with Pope learning no lessons from Buttler’s faltering against Mitchell Starc and he played at an angled delivery that would have left him and missed the off stump by a big margin. He paid the price and perished in the process to leave England in a deeper slump and Australia in ecstasy. Stokes was too eager to cover the stumps with his pads in order to not play inside of the line of Nathan Lyon’s delivery and backed himself to cover for any delivery coming back or straight on with the arm. However, Lyon is not a rookie spinner to be spooked by that tactic and he had in him to still faux the left-hander by straightening his line of attack. Stokes was backing himself to use his bat when balls were to come towards him but an act of natural variation when he expected the ball to turn more found him trapped in front of the stumps. With Stokes gone, chances of England’s magical revival such as the one at Headingley in the second Test of the Ashes series in 2019 was all but buried. The task got more steeper for the duo of Buttler and Woakes, both of whom have had a terrible match until their union in the middle on the final day. Buttler would not have survived to take the fight deeper and engrossing for the hosts had Alex Carey not left one edge of his bat for David Warner at first slip even before the wicketkeeper could get off the mark. Buttler could not believe his luck but made the most of the return gifts from his Australian rivals. He batted with an uncharacteristic temperament and did not offer any shot even to wide half volleys to keep England in the reckoning till the final session of the day. The duo formed a formidable wall to protect England from a collapse and batted with all their heart and defence to deny Australia an easy victory. Woakes was more aggressive of the two and played some crisp shots. Their efforts led to some tiring legs in Australia and Smith needed the likes of Jhye Richardson and Michael Neser to step up and provide cover to Starc and Nathan Lyon. Richardson was up to the task and produced a jaffa that finally found a gap between Woakes’ pads and bat to lift the hosts. Lyon took over from him and played the game of angles perfectly with Ollie Robinson to have him edging to Steve Smith at slip and Australia started to get the feel of a 2-0 lead. Buttler carried on and took away a further 86 balls from Australia’s hands to have a win. However, his vigil had to come to an end in one of the most unlikely fashions as he ran onto his stumps while playing a fullish delivery from Richardson. Buttler made the most of his good luck when Carey dropped him at zero but a moment of extreme misfortune cost him his wicket and England a chance of rare escape. The last pair of James Anderson, who has a fair bit of experience to calm such storms for England and Stuart Broad, was at it again jumping and hopping against the short-pitched stuffs of Starc and Richardson. Broad was more enterprising than Anderson with the bat in a bizarre sequence of events when he was leaving his stumps to attempt drives. However, Anderson was the last man to go as he could not fend off too many balls away from the fielders and Cameron Green caught his edge and ended England’s dream of saving the game. Australia have proved England an average Test side so far in the first two Tests of the series and the skipper Joe Root was not defensive of the fact that his boys have been outplayed by the hosts. The admission was pretty apt but he would need his players to stand up to yet another Australian juggernaut and it won’t be easy at the MCG when the whole of Australia will burst at the venue on the occasion of the Boxing Day Test.