{"id":179731,"date":"2025-06-13T00:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T00:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/179731\/"},"modified":"2025-06-13T00:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T00:32:09","slug":"australia-vs-south-africa-world-test-championship-in-balance-as-wickets-tumble-at-lords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/179731\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia vs South Africa: World Test Championship in balance as wickets tumble at Lord&#8217;s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The steward at the bottom of the steps in front of the Lord&#8217;s pavilion must have been in danger of suffering from repetitive strain injury.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Every time he settled back into his seat after lifting the latch to open and close the gate to allow an Australian batter out to the middle he was soon repeating it to welcome him back again not long after.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Australia had reached 28 without loss just before tea when their tormentor from the first day, Rabada, lit the blue-touch paper.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">First he dismissed Usman Khawaja in a similar vein to the first innings, inducing a nick to the wicketkeeper from the left-hander with a delivery which squared him up.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Then two balls later Cameron Green departed after a defensive prod flew to Mulder at third slip.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The majority of the English &#8216;neutrals&#8217; in the crowd are supporting South Africa, and they were whipped into a frenzy by the Australian capitulation which followed in the evening.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Labuschagne was guilty of poor shot selection when he edged a loose drive off Jansen to the diving Kyle Verreynne.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Australia were 48-4 when Ngidi lulled Smith into stepping across his stumps and was struck on the pad, the crowd erupting when Bavuma&#8217;s review overturned the original decision of not out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Beau Webster had no such fortune with DRS after being given out lbw to a nip-backer from Ngidi before Mulder thudded one into Head&#8217;s off stump from round the wicket.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A yorker from Ngidi into Cummins&#8217; pads deflected on to the stumps and Australia were in tatters at 73-7 before Carey&#8217;s knock.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Those with tickets for fourth day of this contest would be well advised to start making alternative plans if the first two days of this match are anything to go by.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Barring any interjections from the weather it would be a minor miracle if this contest now stretches through until Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Day three, however, could be a nerve-shredding humdinger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The steward at the bottom of the steps in front of the Lord&#8217;s pavilion must have been in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4101],"tags":[1406,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-179731","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114673244273267249","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}