The Ashes now moves to Lord’s the home of cricket for second test match. Here England have announced their playing XI making one change from 1st Test, Moeen Ali is replaced by Josh Tongue. Tongue made his Test debut here at Lord’s last month against Ireland. Australia too made one change Scott Boland makes way for Mitchell Starc. There could be two reason for this
1- Slope at one end which Starc will have some advantage being a left arm pace bowler.
2- The other reason would be gap between 2nd and 3rd Test is only 3 days. This would be mean Josh Hazlewood might be rested for 3rd test after playing consecutive tests(1st/2nd)
The first Test went at brisk speed and would assume it would remain same throughout Ashes, atleast with England’s batsmen. Hence let us look at how often they score runs from balls faced by both teams.
Below gfx has comparision of two indices
Marker and balls/scoring shots
- Marker – it means #of balls faced to get off the mark in an innings. Below is average balls batsmen have taken to get off the mark in both series in two columns
- Balls /scoring shots – freuqencey of balls taken to score a run(from bat)in an innings. Below is average taken in both series in two columns
The fascinating fact below is 2019 series went at normal test speed hence both teams scoring rate was similar to say. However we all know since Ben Stokes became the England’s captain, they are playing different brand of Test cricket,i.e proactive!.
The scoring rate for England is 2.42 balls per runs scored from the bat, and on average their batsmen take similar amount(2.42) of balls to get off the mark. However interestingly both Joe Root and Ollie Pope marker is very high, on average they take more time (#of balls) to get off the mark
Below is stats comparison of last Lord's Ashes test which was played in 2019. It was a low-scoring, rain-hit drawn test!. The run rate marginally over 3 with England having better rate, but boundary rate was high!.
