The Ashes 2023: England v Australia, fourth Test, day four – live | Ashes 2023

57th over: Australia 163-4 (Labuschagne 73, Marsh 21) Mostly short stuff. Marsh lets Broad’s first pass harmlessly behind his backside. He pulls another, and the ball hits Brook on the half volley and bounces up, whereupon Stokes scrambles to catch it but slips on the grass. A man in a badger suit stands up and engages the crowd, as Woakes returns to the field.

56th over: Australia 161-4 (Labuschagne 72, Marsh 20) Anderson continues the bumper plan, Bairstow standing back, fielders in position. Short and stubby and Australia are largely unbothered.

“Hello, Tanya.” Hello Andrew Benton!

”Those six wickets, it’s like waiting for a kettle to boil knowing that the electricity could cut off at any moment – might not get a cup of tea all day. Hope England regains yesterday’s momentum soon.”

I know how you feel, I’m trying to move my daughter towards the kettle with the power of my mind, but to no avail.

55th over: Australia 159-4 (Labuschagne 71, Marsh 19) Four balls through Broad’s over, a four for Labuschagne in the swag bag, we get a field change for the short ball plan. Two bouncers, Marnus pulls one, and Marsh ignores the next. And we take drinks, the first hour safely negotiated by Australia.

54th over: Australia 152-4 (Labuschagne 64, Marsh 19) Stokes and his bristling beard clap enthusiastically at Anderson. Marsh is watchful, and blocks, just like the good captain told him to. Anderson looks the same, but there isn’t quite the spark of his 7-19 here against Kent two years ago.

53rd over Australia 152-4 (Labuschagne 64, Marsh 19) Now Duckett is off the field too. No news on Woakes. Broad runs through his repertoire, but Labuschagne is in the grove now.

Martin Gamage writes in answer to David Melhuish. “Not sure of the record. But the first test match I went to (England v Pakistan at Edgbaston in 1978, my late dad drove us up from Amersham in the days when one could buy a ticket at the gate), Chris Old took four wickets in four legal balls (W-W-NB-W-W). Possibly the most exciting thing I saw in my cricket-watching youth.”

52nd over: Australia 150-4 (Labuschagne 62, Marsh 19) The camera pans to our sub fielder (on for Woakes) whose crisp but vast sunhat may have belonged to Mr Chatterbox in a previous life. Anderson is steady as she goes, but we’re waiting for the Australians to make a mistake here. Labuschagne drives, the ball squeezes through the covers but slows as it approaches the rope, and ole man Stokes chases it down.

51st over: Australia 146-4 (Labuschagne 59, Marsh 18) Stuart Broad adjusts the white bandana and, with a roar, sprints in. Marsh watches a couple but then pulls out the club and whops away a cover drive for four. Outside my window, the wind has got up.

“Merhaba from Köyceğiz, Turkey,” Merhaba Paul Angus!

“Feels odd sitting in 44 C heat watching the cricket on my phone knowing my 3-year-old Spanish niece, Violeta, on her first ever visit to her ancestral home of Salford is damply playing on a pub slide a few miles from the action. Sort of amusing and depressing at the same time.”

Maybe she’ll get lucky with some pork scratchings?

50th over: Australia 141-4 (Labuschagne 59, Marsh 13) We watch as Woakes climbs the steps back to the dressing room, and the ball is thrown to Anderson. He starts that familiar neat run and delivers familiar neat balls, full and on target with a touch of movement. A couple of singles.

49th over: Australia 139-4 (Labuschagne 58, Marsh 12) A soupcon of reverse-swing at 93mph, as Marsh goes to drive but gets an inside edge towards the stumps instead, and doesn’t have a clue where it has gone (fine leg). The crowd like that, suddenly zipping into life.

An email from Tom van der Gucht. “Although it’s not entirely cricket related, would it be possible to share a message of thanks to George Ball for making the journey from East Anglia to North Yorkshire to attend my dad’s funeral celebration last week? He happened to mention he’d spotted some of my comments on the OBO, so hopefully he’ll read this.

“My dad was a lifelong Essex supporter who combined a yin-yang style hatred of Boycott and love of Gooch as well as an avid Guardian reader in its traditional paper format. So would have appreciated being name-checked in the commentary. “

Hello George and rest in peace Peter Van der Gucht, may you have a comfortable front-row celestial seat for today’s play.

48th over: Australia 137-4 (Labuschagne 57, Marsh 11) Labuschagne sends Woakes through third man for four, and the balls roll obediently away soaking up water as it travels. Labuschagne lets the next go, wisely, though you wouldn’t have guessed that from Bairstow who puts his hands on his head and makes deep heavy breathing noises. Cat and mouse for a few balls.

47th over Australia 133-4 (Labuschagne 52, Marsh 11) Wood isn’t as stubbled as he sometimes is, but it doesn’t seem to affect his speed which is hitting 90mph. Brook creeps in under the lid. Labuschagne steals a run from the last ball. And we move on.

I’m not sure if Geoff has already noted this but… if the weather holds off…the timings for today are as follows:

Afternoon session 14:45 – 17:00 Tea 17:00 – 17:20 Evening session 17:20 – 19:00 Extra 30 mins available to bowl the overs (19:30) 59 overs to be bowled.

46th over: Australia 132-4 (Labuschagne 52, Marsh 11) Out comes the physio to prod at Labuschagne’s hand to the chorus of boos from a suspicious cloud-watching crowd. He seems to be ok, and we continue. Woakes sends down the first maiden of the day, and a testing one it is too, with a helmeted Bairstow coming up to the stumps halfway through.

David Melhuish thinks he’s sending an email to Rob Smyth but it accidentally gets redirected to me. “Greetings from Urdaneta, The Philippines, from where the rain is pounding down relentlessly. (rainy season).” Hello!

“Mark Wood was asked, how long it would take to finish the Aussies. He bullishly responded, ‘Six balls!’

“As Atherton remarked on comms, typically optimistic Mark Wood. This exchange got me pondering, Tanya, ‘Has there ever been a double hat-trick in first-class cricket? What’s the record for the number of consecutive wickets in test cricket?’

“Might well be on Top G but am too busy sending this email out. Any OBOers know?”

45th over: Australia 132-4 (Labuschagne 52, Marsh 11) Labuschagne tries to pull the first ball from Wood and gets in a bit of a tangle, then takes off his glove at the non-striker’s end and stares at it, and his finger, suspiciously. A leg bye, then another single brings Labuschagne fifty – his second of the match. But Australia would like a big one, please. A rapid bouncer which stretches Bairstow ends the over.

44th over: Australia 126-4 (Labuschagne 47, Marsh 11) Just the one over for Anderson, as Woakes takes over from the Brian Statham end. Can’t tell you why. In the crowd T-shirts for the optimistic, cagoules for the rest. And the first boundary of the day, as Marsh plays a whippy square drive for four and then a reckless flick high the air just short of a sprinting Moeen, the ball falling inches from the rope.

Hello John Starbuck! “A reader suggested we can’t play cricket when it’s raining, but actually, you can. It wouldn’t last very long as the ball becomes waterlogged, so we need another version of it. Version 1: Use a slightly larger inflatable ball, players have wellingtons, so run-ups are shorter and the ground would have to be a lot smaller to maintain doable fielding. Batters’ pads would have to be much larger to accommodate the wellies -in other words, Clown Cricket. Just as baseball was based on rounders and water polo reflects a different origin (though water polo players don’t sit on teammates’ shoulders – why is that?). Version 2: take a leaf out of the tennis match in ‘Blow Up’ and pretend there’s a ball: lots of potential for intellectual theorizing there, which will appeal to some cricket fans.”

43rd over: Australia 117-4 (Labuschagne 46, Marsh 3) It’s yesterday’s danger man, Mark Wood, sprinting in from the James Anderson end, as fearless of the potentially damp grass as a Tour rider racing over the cobbles. A strangled appeal, but there’s an inside edge to Labuschagne’s pad. Marnus ducks the next, and Stuart Broad sprinkles sawdust into the footmarks at the bowler’s end.

42nd over: Australia 115-4 (Labuschagne 45, Marsh 2) A single squeezed off the first leaves Marsh at the dangerous end, and he lets one pass safely by. For how long can he force responsibility to beat nature? Another single. The skies outside my window, about a mile and a bit from the ground, are relatively bright.

Here we go! Jimmy Anderson from the Statham end.

Thanks, Geoff! And sorry for hogging all the action. To Jerusalem, England swagger out with great purpose followed by Mitch Marsh and, a little later, Marnus Labuschagne.

Geoff Lemon

And you know what? Play starts at 14:45, and my handover time on the OBO is 14:40. So with that said, it’s time to end the rain OBO and commence the cricket OBO. Stuart Broad is already on the practice strip warming up, the hovercraft is coming off the field, Ben Stokes is wandering out, and Tanya Aldred is ready to take you through whatever will constitute the day’s play.

Thanks for your company.

“Do we know why play will (hopefully) only start in 38 minutes? I can’t imagine the ground is going to dry out much in that time, why don’t they start in 8 minutes? The players should be ready to go, people have paid a lot of money for their tickets and presumably want every minute of play that’s possible.”

Impatient as I am, Alex Henderson, it is because the players conventionally get 30 minutes of lead time so they can warm up and prepare. The bowlers especially. They can’t simmer along being ready to go for the whole day. And the ground does need time to dry out after all the tractors have finished their thing. That length of delay is pretty standard.

“Just starting to get hungover here in monsoon-ish Seoul,” says Marcus Shaffer, “pouring buckets at 10:13 PM, insane humidity, where the race against time is always how late can I stay awake reading cricket updates on the Guardian’s site. Questions: Why don’t they just make up games spoiled by rain? Why let the weather determine the test when Australia has traveled so far?”

I’d love to see 450-over matches, played over however long it takes.

Howard Gray has not specified whether or not he is hungover. Could be. He’s passing on some admirable Teutonic directness.

“My wife, who’s German, is surprised you can’t play cricket when it’s raining. ‘So why did the British invent a game that’s difficult to play in an English summer?’, she asks. Good point. I tell her it’s a sign of our inherent optimism. Greetings from a lovely warm and dry southern Germany!”

That’s 38 minutes away.

Joel Wilson has wandered to the middle. All umpires must carry a rolled-up umbrella at all times. Saggers has one. He is wearing a white umpire jacket. Wilson is wearing a black umpire kit. They are the Spy vs Spy of umpires. Their umbrellas contain many weapons.

Joel gives his decree. The remaining precautionary covers come off. Warm-up gear is being hauled onto the ground.

“I’m in Kerala, waiting for the weather at Old Trafford to break so I can lounge about and watch the match. Not much to report, except that in your honor I will squeeze lemons onto my sizzling prawns tonight. I left the shells on the steps to the river in case the white-necked eagles, which visit my almond tree and cry balefully, feel peckish. I’m with you in spirit, my white-flannelled cricket pal.”

Cheers, Guy Perry. Squeeze some into some soda water with ice, that’s the thing for the climate.

Rocket is thankfully not being distracted by the Ashes from our Sri Lankan theme.

“As a Victorian, I loved it when Dav Whatmore went back to Sri Lanka, where he was born, and coached them. In their 1995/96 tour of Australia, I could see a massive improvement, especially in the fielding and aggressive one-day batting. I wasn’t surprised when those same players won the World Cup soon afterward. And Dav later coached Bangladesh to their first Test and series win.”

“In the absence of any actual cricket, have been checking Wikipedia and worked out that this England side has (approximately) 1970 Test wickets and 36,000 Test runs, between them. That’s got to be a record, right?”

On the wickets, Simon, yes. On the runs, not even close. Tendulkar and Dravid would have had most of that covered without needing any other teammates, near the end.

This is Saggers’ Ashes.

I don’t even know if TMS is on, but here’s the link.

More Australians arrive. Khawaja, Smith, Carey, Murphy, Starc. Who is nearly sopped up by the super sopper? Must have been a chilled-out day so far.

It’s rope time. The rope! That’s a big moment in a rain delay. They drag a rope around between two buggies to dislodge water from the grass. Huge. Huge.

Fourth official Martin Saggers is wandering about out there. He’s just jammed his umbrella into the turf out at deep cover and left it there. This contradictorily means that he’s confident enough in the dry weather to leave his umbrella behind and that the turf is sufficiently waterlogged that he can stick an umbrella in so easily. It shouldn’t slide in like a skewer into an adequately baked cake.

Now the umbrella is in the way of the rope buggies. Good work, Saggers.

“I’m a new convert to cricket, I’ve been working nights and have got hooked on this series, the perfect antidote for my sleep-deprived brain while I wait for nighttime to roll around again,” writes Tim Greer. “So forgive my ignorance but could you spell out exactly what needs to happen with the weather/England/Australia so that we get to the Oval with a chance of winning the Ashes.”

Assuming that the ‘we’ is England in this case, they need enough time to take six more Australian wickets for fewer than 162 runs. If Australia adds 162 or more before being bowled out, England will then also need time to chase however many have been added.

So it could all be done in an hour, or if Australia’s batting puts up a fight then it might need a day. If the rain wipes out enough of the remaining play, then it’s a draw. The series result would not yet be decided, but the trophy would stay with Australia.

“Kandukuru Nagarjun’s comparison is a good one,” writes Sam Clark. “Nicholas Brooke’s brilliant ‘An Island’s Eleven: The Story of Sri Lankan Cricket’ recently brought home just what a transformational impact that Arjuna had on the mindset of Sri Lanka cricket. He was a brilliant captain of a team that had an impact well beyond cricket. I don’t think he ever had a Baz-like figure to help him.”

Inspection at 2 pm if there’s no further rain. The pitches to the side of the main pitch all have puddles and muddy patches on them. The main pitch is still wearing its big white hat.

Is it gonna rain again?

There’s more movement with the covers. More people have emerged from cover to sit in their seats, too. The two mopping tractors are doing their thing. Some guys with brooms are leaning on them, they’re good for leaning. We might be rolling up a discarded cover in a minute. It’s exciting stuff.

One of the covers has come off. They’ve tipped an absolute lake of water onto the ground towards deep midwicket if the bowler from the Statham End had a right-hander on strike. Now the tractor is heading over to soak up the water.