Fifth Test Day 2. Sydney Cricket Ground: Roooot gets his 41st Test century and his second in Australia

 So we have at least seen Root Score a couple of brilliant centuries on this tour

Root celebrating his second century of the tour.

That proved to be the highlight of the day for England fans. As fellow tourer Mike Bailey (from Bury not Burnley - ed) predicted, Brook got giddy and got out within touching distance of his maiden Ashes century, with Root going on to complete his.

And mostly for my loyal reader at home here is an edited video of the moment, captured by fellow tourer Kitty Perry. (the full version is too big to load on the blog)

Root gets his 100 (video shot by Kitty Perry)


Root lost batting support eventually with Jamie Smith getting out to the worst shot of the tour holeing out to cover to a half tracker from of all people Marnus Labushagne.

So all out for 384 easily our best total in the series, and we needed a good bowling performance to reinforce our position. What is wrong with this sentence? "England opened the bowling with Carse and Potts". The bowling was quite simply rubbish Potts going for over 8 an over. Stokes shouldve opened with Tongue in my view (Stokes' 2-30 once he'd come on with Tongue to replace the wretched Potts/Carse combo).
The last session today has, I think, with Australia on 166-2 (with Head once again choosing the 'All you can eat' menu option from the cafeteria bowling) cost us the match so we are looking at 4-1 not 3-2. Given that Australia are some bowlers short, a draw is still a possibility so maybe 3-1. We will know more at the end of Day 3.

I needed some light relief after the carnage of the last session



The author in a Luigi hat. which was being 
thrown around the seating in Bay 30

It was also fun to see a 600 strong crowd of Richie Benaud lookalikes (known as 'Richies') Apparently this is the last Test they are going to do this because it is organised by one guy and its just got too big for him to  organise

A sample of the 600 'Richies' in the ground today
As Benaud himself would say "Good effort that"



Comments

  1. Ian Dutton6 January 2026 at 01:46

    We all need some light relief. I can’t even bear to watch the “highlights”.

    ReplyDelete

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