Third Test

85/5, excellent bowling so far.

I'm starting to get nervous about England batting on this! 99/7 Jimmy has 5/23

136 all out, Anderson 6/47.

Awesome effort.

Bell at last showing he can bat, this time under a bit of pressure after the relatively early wicket of Lythe, he is rather infuriating

last 4 words of my previous post!!!! silly way to get out,

151-5.

70/80 looks like it would be a good lead on this wicket

I was there yesterday.  Blimey what a day I chose to go to my only day's Test cricket of the year! I wasn't very optimistic heading to the ground and hearing the Aussies had won the Toss and batted.  I thought I'd be watching a fairly dull day - all the interesting narratives seemed to be with England's batting.  Instead it clearly did a bit, the Aussies didn't bat well at all and Edgbaston really does have something of an x factor on days like that.  It clearly is the most partisan and loud crowd when England are going well.  I have no idea why, but you can see the England players respond to that in their body language and I honestly think the Aussies were a bit rattled by it all.  They became fixated on tiny little issues like movement behind the sightscreen's.  Everything seemed to go our way - even the way the rain breaks fell suited us.  Forced Australia to constantly have to restart and then saved us a potentially nasty little session at the end.  Anderson did bowl superbly but Finn was the sparkplug - again you could feel the crowd and his teammates willing him on and they really responded.  This is a guy who has a dreadful time of it and that 1st wicket just seemed to remove a monkey off everyone's back.  The selectors look quite inspired there.

On the batting side.  It was very difficult conditions but Lyth did very little to relieve the doubts.  Just scratched horribly, barely surviving and eventually the pressure seemed to tell and he had a go at a wide one.  I think sometimes batsman are actually most vulnerable just after they've hit their first real runs of the innings cos they relax too much and think 'I'm in now I can play'.  He'd just started opening up a bit when he chased that one.  Not helped by the fact that Cook played the conditions absolutely perfectly.  It was a masterful performance and I think it played a role in lowering Aussie morale.  He was staggeringly unlucky to be out to Lyon, everyone was looking at the boundary, and dragged himself off.  Bell also made a mockery of those who thought he was finished and that he can't play 3.  He came in with the ball moving about and proceeded to boss the bowling all around Edgbaston.  However, being Ian Bell having made the hard work look easy he then gave it away in a daft fashion to Lyon.  Again, I think it was overconfidence.  He just didn't get to the pitch of the ball but was too committed to the shot to pull out.  Shame, cos he was looking glorious.  Root batted very well too.  Indicative for the Aussies that the spinner was the pick of their bowlers on an overcast day where it was moving about.  Hazlewood bowled quite well, Starc had an off day and I think they were using Johnson wrongly.  I think they saw what England did and told him to pitch it up more and it didn't work.

In fact it's interesting that the Aussie fightback this morning has been led by Johnson pulling it back bowling nasty bouncers.  To be fair, questions will be asked but I don't think our guys did a lot wrong there - it was just outstanding bowling.  Root's dismissal just now though was poor.  If we don't get a 100 run lead it will be criminally missed opportunity.

Yes, disappointing,  when Root was there I felt pretty confident we could get a 150+ lead.  Would take a lead of 100 now.

Yes - that was a crazy decision.  I'm not sure he realised the previous one had gone over the top though.  The LBW review seemed like an afterthought and he may not have been paying attention after it was clear he didn't hit it.  But he should have reviewed it irrespective of that anyway - he was a long way down.  Lyon bowled worryingly well at the end of that session though.

Good if slightly streaky recovery from Moeen and Broad.  If they can get going after lunch 150 lead may be back on the cards here but equally we could be skittled without adding anything more if one of them goes straight away.