Josh Hazlewood happy to pray for rain as Australia’s Ashes lead hangs in the balance

Australia’s lead within the Ashes sequence has been left hanging by a thread after two horrendous days at Previous Trafford. Now they’re praying that rain helps them escape with a draw, even when it will be a hole approach to retain the urn.

Totally different forecasts are offering various prediction as to how a lot rain will come over the following two days, however Saturday seems to be universally bleak with a bit extra uncertainty over Sunday’s remaining day. Both method, it seems England might solely get a slender window to power the end result that will preserve them on monitor to be solely the second staff to return from 2-0 all the way down to win an Ashes sequence.

It was Bairstow who compounded Australia’s woes on the third day as he plundered an unbeaten 99 to swell England’s result in 275. Though the guests had a modicum of success in stemming the scoring earlier than lunch, general it was a debilitating innings for the much-vaunted assault with Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc going for 392 runs between them at 5.22 per over. It was simply the second time the trio had every conceded 100 in the identical innings.

“I think about just a few video games in opposition to India on some flat wickets we have gone the journey as nicely. So it is nothing too new for us, I suppose [it] was in all probability simply the run charge,” Hazlewood, who claimed a five-wicket haul, stated. “It was a fairly particular knock from Zak [Crawley] and…clearly Jonny and Rooty as nicely. Undoubtedly, we might have been higher in patches all through the innings and confidently we would have, however that is not the case. So we’ll take a look at that and study from it once more.”

Hazlewood additionally defended Australia’s techniques in opposition to Bairstow within the final-wicket stand of 66 with James Anderson, throughout which the pair ran byes to Alex Carey on three event, in order that Bairstow might get the strike again.

“Do you simply bowl large and down leg and actually cease him from scoring? Or do you try to roll the cube and bounce him and try to get a wicket that method, or preserve bowling laborious size and hopefully one goes up the chute?” he stated. “However there instances we probably might simply bowl away from him the entire time.

“We noticed in all probability a brand new tactic once more at the moment of working on bouncers or working by way of to the keeper. It is simply making an attempt to restrict his scoring and [trying] various things to attempt with two balls left, one ball left, preserving the tailender on strike for subsequent over and issues like that, so I believed we did moderately nicely.”