“As a kid growing up I dreamt of being on that honours board. It’s as good as it gets for a cricketer”
● Irish journeyman is chief destroyer as hosts bowled out for 85 before lunch in first-innings debacle
TIM MURTAGH on his five-wicket haul as Ireland skittled out England for 85 on an extraordinary day at Lord’s.
It is often difficult to rate the scale of sporting humiliations. But getting bowled out for 85 before lunch on day one of a Test match against Ireland must be close to Mount Everest levels of ignominy.
Ten days after their barely believable World Cup final victory against New Zealand, England returned to Lord’s and offered up another performance that left everyone struggling to process what they had just witnessed. Only this time the scenes of joy were exclusively Irish.
World Cup hangover or not, there can be no excuse for a batting display in which Joe Root’s team were routed in 23.4 overs seven minutes before the scheduled lunch break. It was embarrassing.
This is meant to be a four-day Test, yet we will be lucky to go into day three. Whether or not Root’s team can still win this match remains to be seen.
At the close they were nought without loss after one over of their second innings, trailing by 122, having restricted Ireland to 207 in their reply. It was at least some kind of response after the horror soft he morning.
The nature of this batting performance against opponents playing only their third Test would be worrying enough. Yet the fact there is only a week before the start of the Ashes makes this downright alarming for England.
England’s destroyer was Tim Murtagh, a 37-year-old journeyman whose medium-pacers helped him grab five for 13 and a place on the Lord’s honours board. Murtagh, born in Lambeth, has spent his entire career at Middlesex and he used his intimate knowledge of Lord’s to full effect as he moved the ball both ways to cause mayhem. Mid-summer Murtagh if you will.
But if England are so inept in the face of a county trundler, however skilled Murtagh’s spell was, how are they going to cope against the likes of Australia’s Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc?
The only saving grace for England is that Australia’s batsmen appear equally flaky facing the moving ball. Indeed, to those who have tickets to day four of any of the Ashes Tests, it might be prudent to make alternative arrangements.
England’s prioritisation of white-ball cricket over the past four years was rewarded with the World Cup. But it has clearly come at the cost of their performances in Tests. That is starkly illustrated by the fact that this was the fourth time in three years they have been bowled out inside a session.
Most worrying is the continuing frailty of the top order. Jason Roy was making
his Test debut here and after a fine World Cup at the top of the order for England, hopes were high he could reproduce that form in this match ahead of the Ashes.
No such luck, in the first innings at least. Roy, pictured, flirted with danger before he edged Murtagh behind on five. Joe Denly, lbw to Mark Adair, and Rory Burns, also caught behind off Murtagh, followed as England’s top three fell inside 11 overs.
The middle order soon followed, Root trapped lbw by Adair before Jonny Bairstow, Chris Woakes and Moeen Ali were all dismissed for ducks by Murtagh as England slipped to 43 for seven. The five members of the World Cup squad playing here had made a combined total of seven runs. At least England passed their record low Test total of 45, established in Sydney in 1887, before the innings came to an end.
In reply, Ireland were only two wickets down when they took the lead after a wayward start by England’s bowlers.
But Sam Curran, debutant Olly Stone and, eventually, Stuart Broad all chipped in to drag their team back into contention.
Stone and Curran in particular, the pair sharing six wickets, did their Ashes chances no harm.
The same cannot be said of the batsmen.