File image of Stuart Broad© AFP
England had an upper hand over Australia on Day 2 of the ongoing second Ashes Test at The Oval. The Ben Stoked-led side bundled out the visitors for 295, giving them a lead by 12 runs. It was a dominant show from the entire bowling unit of England as Chris Woakes took three wickets while the likes of Stuart Broad, Joe Root, and Mark Wood took two wickets each. Apart from the controversial run-out survival of Steve Smith, the day also had a hilarious moment, when pacer Broad took the credit for Marnus Labuschagne‘s dismissal on Mark Wood’s delivery.
Labuschagne utterly irked the English bowlers with his slow knock of 9 runs off 81 balls. In the 43rd over when Wood was preparing to bowl to Labuschagne, Broad came towards the striker’s end and rearranged the bails. Nobody knew what was going on in the English pacer’s mind and the game resumed.
However, on the very next ball, England got their breakthrough as Labuschagne ended up edging a good-length ball from Wood and Joe Root took an excellent catch at the first slip. The Australia batter departed after scoring 9 runs off 82 balls.
After the day ended, Broad opened up on the incident and said, “I’ve heard it’s an Aussie change of luck thing. I’ve seen Nathan Lyon do it. We had a few play and misses in the morning session and we needed to make a breakthrough and I thought: ‘I’ll have a little change of the bails.'”
“It just worked out pretty magically that he nicked the next ball and Rooty took a great catch. I randomly went and celebrated with Uzzy for some reason. ‘If you touch my bails I’m flipping them straight back.’ So he gave me an immediate warning,” he added.
Talking about the match, Smith’s 71 helped Australia recover from a batting collapse as the tourists frustrated England by establishing a first-innings lead in the fifth and final Ashes Test at The Oval on Friday.
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