England’s Joe Root and Harry Brook splutter on ‘flat wicket’ in Ashes warmup
Joe Root’s attempt to lay to rest the ghost of Australian failures past started with the addition of a fresh one, as his fourth Test series tour of the country started in brief and inglorious style.The world’s No 1 batter, the subject of much pre-series chatter because of his poor average in previous Ashes trips, was the most notable failure as many of his teammates inflated their confidence along with their scores across another day of breezy cricket and indeed weather against the Lions at Lilac Hill, which the senior side ended, having been bowled out moments before the scheduled close, with 426, a lead of 51.Zak Crawley described it as “a flat wicket for sure” and with the atmosphere provided by the few dozen spectators similar, but intense heat expected from the stands and pitch when the real action starts next Friday, it is not clear to what extent anyone is markedly more prepared now than they were a couple of days ago.“Cricket’s cricket, it’s time in the middle,” Crawley said.“We’re doing everything we can with what we’ve got and we feel like we’re going to be ready.
As far as I’m concerned, I think it’s good that we’re getting used to the weather, getting used to the [intensely irritating] flies so yeah, it’s good prep, I think.”On the eve of this game Ben Stokes reasoned that success for Root in the Ashes was inevitable given that “he’s the greatest English batter that the nation has seen” and “has been in phenomenal form over the last two, three years”.Neither phrase has frequently been applied to Ollie Pope but it was England’s No 3 who looked most assured and got most reward, scoring a century before immediately, perhaps even suspiciously, allowing a Shoaib Bashir delivery to hit his stumps.He thereby won the top three’s private game of one-upmanship, with Zak Crawley dismissed in the 80s and Ben Duckett in the 90s before Pope made it to triple figures.Ben Stokes, having starred with the ball on Thursday, made 84 before top-edging a Will Jacks delivery, which arced neatly to Bashir.
Root had faced a dozen balls and scored just a single run when he miscued a pull to midwicket off Matt Potts as England, having swaggered through the opening session, lost three wickets for three runs soon after the restart, stumbling from 182 without loss to 185 for three.Harry Brook followed soon after having doubled Root’s score, a dismissal of garish hideousness as he hared forward on the attack but made contact only with air, allowing Nathan Gilchrist’s delivery to clatter into the stumps.At this point England were 198 for four, but Pope and Stokes steered them away from the humiliation of being outscored by their understudies.But for the moment, an hour from the close, when Bashir pulled up with a cry while fielding, fell to the ground, stayed there for perhaps a minute and then simply got up again and carried on, there were at least no injury scares this time.Brydon Carse had recovered from the stomach upset that ruled him out of the opening day, and though he refrained from bowling as a precautionary measure he did make a brief appearance with the bat, replacing Mark Wood in England’s lineup against the team he was initially named in.
He lasted only three deliveries.Wood watched much of the action, left leg heavily strapped from just below the knee, while he awaited a scan on a hamstring which was scheduled for the late afternoon.The resulting images will be checked by a specialist in the UK before a decision is made about his future.Sign up to The SpinSubscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers' thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week’s actionafter newsletter promotionFully nine players bowled for the Lions, four of them members of the Ashes squad.After five overs Potts had conceded 40 runs and was enduring something of a nightmare, though his primary problem was not poor quality but bad luck as Duckett in particular scored a succession of boundaries with the edge of his bat – including one, when he was on six, that might have been caught by Ben McKinney in the slips (44 of Duckett’s first 50 runs came in boundaries).
Thereafter Potts went at just 2.36 per over and ended the day as the outstanding bowler even if his haul of two wickets was matched by Gilchrist and bettered by Jacob Bethell, who took three in just 4.3 overs as the batters grew carefree towards the close.
Global markets fall after tech sell-off and fears over Chinese economy
Global markets have fallen after a tech sell-off that fuelled Wall Street’s worst day in a month and weak economic data from China showed an unprecedented slump in investment.The FTSE 100 fell by 1.1% on opening, losing about 100 points, as bellwether banking stocks tumbled. Barclays, Lloyds and NatWest slumped by between 3% and 3.5%
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EU investigates Google over ‘demotion’ of commercial content from news media
The EU has opened an investigation into Google Search over concerns the US tech company has been “demoting” commercial content from news media sites.The bloc’s executive arm announced the move after monitoring found that certain content created with advertisers and sponsors was being given such a low priority by Google that it was in effect no longer visible in search results.European Commission officials said this potentially unfair “loss of visibility and of revenue” to media owners could be a result of an anti-spam policy Google operates.Under the rules of the Digital Market Act (DMA), which governs competition in the tech sectors, Google must apply “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory conditions of access to publishers’ websites on Google Search”.Commission officials said the investigation was not into the overall indexing of newspapers or their reporting on Google Search, just into commercial content provided by third parties
Anthropic announces $50bn plan for datacenter construction in US
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced a $50bn investment in computing infrastructure on Wednesday that will include new datacenters in Texas and New York.“We’re getting closer to AI that can accelerate scientific discovery and help solve complex problems in ways that weren’t possible before,” Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, said in a press release.Building the massive information warehouses takes an average of two years in the US and requires copious amounts of energy to fuel the facilities. The company, maker of the AI chatbot Claude, popular with businesses adopting AI, said in a statement that the “scale of this investment is necessary to meet the growing demand for Claude from hundreds of thousands of businesses while keeping our research at the frontier”. Anthropic said its projects will create about 800 permanent jobs and 2,400 construction jobs
Bomb squads on stacked benches are making it even more crucial to control rugby’s aerial battle | Ugo Monye
Rugby union is a sport of trends and of unintended consequences and what I expect to be the two most decisive factors in England’s clash with the All Blacks on Saturday are inextricably linked. Much has been made of England’s firepower on their bench – New Zealand’s isn’t bad either – and when coaches are able to call upon such quality replacements, often en masse, then the kicking battle becomes all the more important.Because the international game is not currently as fluid as it has been. That isn’t necessarily a criticism, it’s just the way things are at present; a little bit like the Premier League where set pieces and long throws are dominating. Of course we would all love to see flowing, attacking rugby but it’s really difficult because all elite sides favour having 13 or 14 men in the line, they all seem to adopt a blitz defence and the sheer level of physicality means it can be hard to have possession
From conscience to platforming Trump: inside the slow death of ‘woke’ ESPN
“What happened to the Redskins, by the way?” Donald Trump asked in an interview on the Pat McAfee Show that notably did not stick to sports. His call-in appearance on Tuesday’s program to mark Veterans Day was meant to be a major coup for ESPN, the first time Trump had been interviewed on the network as a sitting president. But viewers could have just as easily been mistaken into believing they were watching Fox News.Trump took his usual shots at Joe Biden, claimed credit for the Department for Veteran Affairs’ high approval ratings and declared victory over the Democrats in a government shut down that dragged on for a depressing 43 days. Rather than push back against the political self-promotion, McAfee cheered Trump on before opening the floor to his lackeys to ask him which NFL coach would make a great president
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