IT’S A PAIN GAME FOR BAIRSTOW, BUT HE ESCAPES WITH A BRUISED FINGER
FOR a few worrying minutes, when Jonny Bairstow kicked the turf in frustration and had to leave the field after a nasty blow on the middle finger of his left hand, England appeared to have suffered yet another Ashes setback. An England side already without their principal all-rounder, Ben Stokes, could ill-afford to lose another key member of the lower middle-order engine room just a week before the start of the series in Brisbane. Thankfully, after Ben Foakes had spent an hour deputising tidily behind the stumps, Bairstow was back — the diagnosis just bruising — and a show that has stuttered so far was back on the road. The incident came just after lunch on a slow first day of England’s last warm-up game against a Cricket Australia XI when a ball from the outstanding Chris Woakes bounced just in front of Bairstow and hit his hand. Bairstow, who had found the pink ball last week very hard on his hands, was treated by physio Craig de Weymarn both on and off the field before a break or dislocation was ruled out. The day had started on a bad note for Bairstow when the scoreboard at the Riverway Stadium had Matt Prior keeping for England instead of him, a mistake quickly corrected. Then, after Bairstow had been forced to make his temporary exit, there was a near ten-minute wait for Surrey’s Foakes to be summoned from the nets for his first appearance for the full England team. How England needed Bairstow to be given a clean bill of health, losing Steven Finn and then seeing Jake Ball suffer an ankle injury that kept him out of this game. Even Jimmy Anderson was added to the casualty list when laid low for two days with a virus, but the leader of England’s attack was never due to play here anyway and was back bowling in the nets. As too, was Ball, who could yet play in the first Test. The bowling in the middle was again dominated by Woakes, who followed his match-winning spell of four for 12 in Adelaide with an even better one here, taking four for eight at one stage and ending with six wickets. It left another weak-looking Cricket Australia XI ending on a below-par score of 249 for nine. Woakes looked England’s best bowler here after a poor first spell encouraged him to switch ends. ‘It’s a fairly slow pitch and we felt we had to be patient and force the opposition to make mistakes,’ he said. ‘I think the Test wickets will be a bit quicker.’