27 wickets fell in 4 hours, Test match ended in one and a half day, when Lord’s pitch proved to be the graveyard of batsmen
Image Credit source: MCC
In this Test match between England and Australia, England’s batsmen could not match Australia’s first innings score even in two innings.
The Ashes (England vs Australia Ashes Test) series clash between England and Australia has a long history. This series has given cricket history some very memorable, spectacular, shocking and at times embarrassing matches and moments. The clash of this series between the two teams is considered to be the biggest competition of Test cricket. Historical grounds like Lord’s Cricket Ground and Melbourne Cricket Ground add to the importance of this series, which have witnessed many interesting matches. One such match 134 years ago on this day (On This Day in Cricket) was played at Lord’s, where it became like walking on water for the batsmen to stay at the crease.
Rain created atmosphere for bowlers
This thing is from 1888. The first Ashes match was played between England and Australia at Lord’s. Although the match had started on 16th July and a lot of drama happened on that day, but the real game took place on the second day of the match i.e. 17th July. The rain had already wreaked havoc on this match, due to which there was not much play on the first day. Till then, it was not a practice to cover the pitch to protect it from rain. Obviously the result was to be horrifying.
Tamasha on the first day, havoc on the second day
On the first day of the match, Australia’s first innings was reduced to just 116 runs, while England also lost 3 wickets for 18 runs. Overall 13 wickets fell on the first day. The second day of the match proved to be havoc for the batsmen as the wickets continued to fall from the start till the end of the match and it took only a little more than 4 hours for the match to end. England lost their remaining 7 wickets in the first innings by scoring just 35 runs and thus the team was bundled out for just 53 runs.
Australia had a lead of 63 runs, but their second innings did not last long. George Lohman and Bobby Peel took 4-4 wickets to bundle Australia for just 60 runs.
Match over in 4-5 hours
In this way, England needed 124 runs to win, while they also had the next 2-3 days left. But far from playing 2-3 days, in about 2 hours the whole team was once again all out. Australia’s Charlie Turner and JJ Ferris took 5-5 wickets to bowl England out for just 62 runs and beat them by 61 runs. That is, even if Australia did not score a single run in the second innings, England would have lost by 1 run. In this way, 27 wickets fell in less than five hours and the match was over in about one and a half days’ play. Out of the 40 wickets that fell in this match, the account of 9 batsmen did not even open. Turner took 10 wickets and Ferris took 8 wickets in the match.
