Skipper's declaration wasn't the only blip in Test of ages

Hosts must be more clinical at Lord's after a raft of errors help Australia grab victory

- Malik Ouzia Cricket Correspondent at Edgbaston

So, how good was that? At 4.10pm yesterday afternoon, more than four and-a-half days into this classic Ashes opening salvo, England needed five wickets for victory, Australia 114 runs and the bookmakers simply could not split them.

It was the natural point of convergence for a game that, from Zak Crawley's boundary off the first ball to Pat Cummins's off the last, answered to no true master, a swing-voter of a contest that well into its thrilling finale was still coming down on the side of abstain.

"It felt like from the first session of day one it was 50-50 the whole way," Cummins said after finally, decisively, hauling it his side's way with the bat. "I reckon that was the same until about 15 or 20 minutes to go."

On that last point, Australia's captain was wrong. When the final hour was called at 6.24pm, Australia were eight down still needing 51 runs for victory and it was England with the game in the palm of their hands - almost literally when Ben Stokes came within a stickier mitt of one of the all-time great catches, which would have spelled the end of Cummins's heroic partner, Nathan Lyon, and left last man Josh Hazlewood exposed.

Stokes himself joined the narrative dots to Headingley 2019, when Lyon's fumble had kept England's chase alive. The symmetry was nice, even if the openings were, in terms of difficulty, about as far apart as Tipping Point and University Challenge.