Ashes: Here’s what Vaughan, Brook and Gillespie think about bad light ending day one play at SCG
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Ashes: Here’s what Vaughan, Brook and Gillespie think about bad light ending day one play at SCG")
Here’s what Vaughan, Gillespie think about bad light ending day one play at SCG Photograph: (AFP)
Frustrations piled up as rain interruption and bad light abruptly ended proceedings on day one at the SCG.
Former England captain Michael Vaughan, current Test vice-captain Harry Brook and multi-time Ashes winner with Australia Jason Gillespie – all Test cricket lovers - shared their views on bad light causing interruptions during a day’s play. A similar sight was on display during the first day of the final Ashes Test at the SCG in Sydney, when bad light and later rain abruptly ended proceedings. Although Brook admitted waiting for that decision to come at some point late on day one, Vaughan and Gillespie need a shift in mindset towards Test cricket.
Earlier, Stokes won the toss and elected to bat first, with England losing their top three inside the first session. Joe Root and Brook, the top two-ranked Test batters, began doing the recovery work and did well, adding 154 and counting for the fourth wicket. Both struck respective fifties, with Brook ending the day as England’s highest scorer (78 off 92 balls).
Meanwhile, just when both looked like taming the Aussie quicks with momentum on their side, bad light interrupted play just 15 minutes before the scheduled tea.
The record attendance of 49,574 - the highest for a Test at the SCG since 1975-76, could only watch 45 overs being bowled, with England scoring 211 for three. Later, light showers took over the SCG before the play was finally abandoned just after 5 PM local time – half an hour before the scheduled close of play, with the crowd booing the officials out of the ground.
"From what I've seen in terms of the rain, the light and the conditions in the last hour or so, I think we've probably sawn off the public, who have paid their money in the ground today by a couple of hours at least," Vaughan, the former England captain, said on BBC's Test Match Special.
"Through our time watching Test match cricket, this is the one format that we keep talking about [how] we need to do something to make sure that we're protecting it.
Trending Stories
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
&im=FitAndFill=(700,400))
)
)
)
&im=FitAndFill=(700,400))
)
&im=FitAndFill=(700,400))
&im=FitAndFill=(700,400))
)
"In T20 cricket, you play in this. Test cricket is the one format that we do everything we possibly can to get off the pitch. The other two formats, we do everything we possibly can to get on the pitch. I just don't understand why we don't have that same mindset in Test match cricket,” he continued.
Sharing similar sentiments, his former on-field foe Gillespie said (on ABC Radio), “Our game shoots itself in the foot time and time and time again.”
Brook could predict this
Speaking of rain interruptions and bad light and how it impacted proceedings on day one, Brook said, "We could hardly see the ball when I was batting at the end. Me and Rooty just said to [the umpires], 'It's so dark out here'. The Aussie boys were saying, 'Are we going off?' so everybody was pretty much in the same boat. It was dark, and then obviously we had that rain, so we were just sat around waiting for it to be called off, really.
"We kind of knew that it was going to rain today, and obviously, we came off for bad light. At that point, we knew the rain was going to come,” he continued.
