Nathan Lyon in ‘filthy’ mood after Test omission as Crawley hails ‘phenomenal’ Root
Nathan Lyon admitted he was furious after being dropped by Australia for the first time in 13 years of home Tests as the battle for the Ashes got back under way in Brisbane on Thursday.In his absence Joe Root plundered the home side’s all-seam attack for an unbeaten 135 on the opening day at the Gabba, his 40th Test century and his first on Australian soil, an effort teammate Zak Crawley acclaimed as “one of his best”.Lyon, Australia’s all-time third-highest Test wicket-taker, described his mood as “absolutely filthy” as he came to terms with being snubbed.“I’m letting things settle down in my own head and trying to make sure that I’m doing whatever I can to make sure the guys representing Australia do the right thing and get the right result for us,” he said.“I’m not the first player to miss a Test match and I won’t be the last.
But I’m obviously pretty gutted because I know the role that I can play, and especially at a venue like this.”Australia’s chair of selectors, George Bailey, attempted to assuage Lyon’s fury by guaranteeing him a place in the XI for the third Test.Bailey described the move as a “one-Test decision”, adding: “Nath will disagree with the decision, and that’s perfectly OK.I have no qualms about players feeling like they can impact the game and the fact of the matter is he could have.Very much it’s a one-Test decision, Nath will play in Adelaide.
”Crawley admitted that England had been surprised by the decision to leave Lyon out while Mitchell Starc, who added six first-innings wickets to the 10 he took in Perth, said: “It’s a tough one for Nath,Everyone wants to play every game and I’m sure he’ll be disappointed,It’s certainly not a reflection of his skills,They looked at conditions and made the choice of this attack for these conditions,”Root came to the crease in the third over with England reeling at five for two, after both Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope had been dismissed without scoring, and was unbeaten at stumps with England 325 for nine.
“He played fantastically well, assessed the conditions, sucked up some pressure and got the result,” Starc said.“We’ve had a lot of good battles – he’s won a few of them and I won a few and today we both got some runs and wickets so we’ll call it even.”Crawley, who scored 76 and combined with Root in a third-wicket partnership of 117, said the Yorkshireman’s performance had been “brilliant”.“I forget some of his hundreds, that’s how many he’s got,” the England opener said.“But it’s a phenomenal knock.
It was doing plenty when he first came in and he was so calm and he was so clear about how he wanted to go about it.It has to be right up there.If you put everything into consideration, it’s got to be one of his best.”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 promotionAfter England lost three wickets for 13 runs and five for 54, Root and Jofra Archer added a quickfire, 44-ball 61 in an unbroken last-wicket stand to leave the tourists happy with their position at stumps.“We were saying go really hard and it was a win-win: if it comes off then we get quick runs, or if they get out we could have a crack at them under lights,” Crawley said.
“So it was a perfect situation for us,They’re valuable runs but it would have worked out either way,We were pretty happy with 260 and having an hour at them to be honest, but I think we definitely won that last hour, so we’re positive going into tomorrow,”
The AI boom is heralding a new gold rush in the American west
Driving down the interstate through the dry Nevada desert, there are few signs that a vast expanse of new construction is hiding behind the sagebrush-covered hills. But just beyond a massive power plant and transmission towers that march up into the dusty brown mountains lies one of the world’s biggest buildouts of datacenters – miles of new concrete buildings that house millions of computer servers.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more
Hundreds of Australians complain of wrongful social media account closures but ombudsman can’t help
More than 1,500 Australians in the past two-and-a-half years have complained to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman about digital platforms, with a third complaining about wrongful account terminations.But the TIO – which is responsible for complaints about mobile phone service, land lines and internet services – has no powers to do anything about it.The TIO’s report, released on Wednesday, comes before Australia’s social media ban, which will see teenagers under 16 banned from about 12 social media platforms from 10 December. The federal government has set out that the platforms must have quick appeals processes in place for people who have been wrongly assessed as being under 16 to regain access to their accounts.In the report, the TIO referred to Karen – not her real name – whose business page on social media was linked to her personal account
Doom, gloom … and Belle Gibson? The top Google searches in Australia in 2025
We may, indeed, be living in the end of times, with natural disasters, death and politics dominating Google searches in Australia in 2025.Cyclone Alfred was the number one overall Google search term by Australians in 2024, according to the annual search results list released by the tech company on Thursday.It was followed by American political activist Charlie Kirk, who also topped Wikipedia’s list of the year’s most-read articles after being fatally shot in September, and in third place was Australian federal election 2025.When we weren’t voting or doomscrolling, we were watching television. Belle Gibson, the Australian wellness scammer and subject of the hit show Apple Cider Vinegar, made it into the overall top 10 list, as did serial killer Ed Gein from the series Monster
Amazon and the tightening grip of capitalism | Letters
Yanis Varoufakis argues that Amazon marks a shift to “technofeudalism”, claiming its ownership of digital infrastructure forces capitalists, governments and users to pay it economic rents (How Amazon turned our capitalist era of free markets into the age of technofeudalism, 27 November). This rests on an idealised view of capitalism. Early capitalism saw similar dynamics: the East India Company, backed by the British state, controlled trade routes, exploited resources and wielded political power, enabling it to charge above-market prices for commodities such as tea and spices.In Capital, Karl Marx noted that English landlords helped establish capitalism by dispossessing peasants and commodifying land. They earned monopoly rents from their exclusive control of this productive resource – a portion of surplus value originally created by exploited labour and first appropriated by industrial capitalists before being transferred to landowners
Anti-immigrant material among AI-generated content getting billions of views on TikTok
Hundreds of accounts on TikTok are garnering billions of views by pumping out AI-generated content, including anti-immigrant and sexualised material, according to a report.Researchers said they had uncovered 354 AI-focused accounts pushing 43,000 posts made with generative AI tools and accumulating 4.5bn views over a month-long period.According to AI Forensics, a Paris-based non-profit, some of these accounts attempt to game TikTok’s algorithm – which decides what content users see – by posting large amounts of content in the hope that it goes viral.One posted up to 70 times a day or at the same time of day, an indication of an automated account, and most of the accounts were launched at the beginning of the year
Tesla privately warned UK that weakening EV rules would hit sales
Tesla privately warned the UK government that weakening electric vehicle rules would hit battery car sales and risk the country missing its carbon dioxide targets, according to newly revealed documents.The US electric carmaker, run by Elon Musk, also called for “support for the used-car market”, according to submissions to a government consultation earlier this year obtained by the Fast Charge, a newsletter covering electric cars.The Labour government in April worried some electric carmakers by weakening rules, known as the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate. The mandate forces increased sales of EVs each year, but new loopholes allowed carmakers to sell more petrol and diesel cars.New taxes on electric cars in last week’s budget could further undermine demand, critics have said
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