Anderson Swings England into the Ascendancy

A thrilling display of swing bowling by James Anderson and Graeme Onions has given England the upper-hand going into the third day of this 3rd Ashes test.

Andrew Strauss scored an unbeaten 64, but both Ravi Bopara and Alastair Cook failed to make an impact for the third successive test.

Cook’s 95 at Lord’s is his only significant score to date in this series, while Bopara has continually failed throughout this summer.

But Anderson, who record his best figures of the summer (5 for 80), and Onions who was called into the side for the previous test at Lord’s have performed admirably throughout the series, and today’s performance was the confirmation of the hard work the seam duo have done.

Both were on hat-tricks at some point of the Australian innings, with the latter blasting through the tourists middle order with impressive ease.

Australia rarely got into the day’s play, with wickets tumbling at regular intervals and during the England innings they failed to get hold of the England captain, with Mitch Johnson struggling again.

Johnson will see himself unlucky not to have pickup the wicket of the returning Ian Bell however, especially after his own lbw dismissal seemed to miss the stumps entirely.

Bell looked a little nervous at the crease, and he’ll be susceptible to an early dismissal tomorrow morning if he doesn’t up his game.

Strauss however will be looking to improve on his impressive century conversion rate, and help England push ahead of the poor Australia total.

Resuming on 123 for 1, Ricky Ponting’s side would have had ambitions of batting on for the rest of day two, and having a go at England for half an hour before the close.

Those aspirations were dashed shortly after lunch with a clutch of wickets, with the afore mentioned swing duo creating havoc from the first ball of the day onwards.

Onions picked up two wickets in successive balls, and then the prized scalp of Ponting for just 38, but not before the Australian captain became his countries leading test match run scorer.

As for tomorrow, if Ben Hilfenhaus, the pick of the Australia bowlers again, can find some much needed swing then England could experience the same problems they created for the Australian’s today- if there opponents can utilise it then we could be in for another thriller in Birmingham.