All the updates, news and stats from day three of the first Test at Lord’s
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4.35pm: Play abandoned
And with one final squelch, they’ve pulled the plug. The umpires came out for a good look around, but it seems too much rain has fallen even for the Lord’s drainage to cope with. We’ll try again tomorrow, with 98 overs to be bowled from 11am. The English summer of cricket has well and truly landed, folks.
4.15pm: Tick tock
Okay, let’s stay patient. Seems like there’s not a whole lot of rain around, though equally no sign of the groundstaff out in the middle. If we can still theoretically get going by 6pm, then the covers probably need to be peeled off by 5pm. So we’re heading towards decision time.
3.25pm: Splish, splash
2.45pm: All filler, no killer
2.20pm: Be more Neil Wagner
If Neil Wagner tells the ball to get over the rope, you know it’s happening.
2pm: Cats, dogs, etc
If this was anywhere else but Lord’s, you’d think they might have called it now. The rain is coming down steadily, and you could probably find Nemo in one of the larger puddles forming on the edge of the square. However, there’s still a chance it’ll brighten up in an hour or two, and *Lord’s Drainage Klaxon* the groundstaff will have things mopped up and ready to go by 5pm.
1pm: Lunch
Let’s get all meta and embed a self-referential tweet, because why not? There is a whole heap of not a lot happening here, though the rain may have slackened off a touch. Lunch was officially kept to 1pm, so the players will banging their cutlery on the tables by now, demanding chow. Hopefully Devon Conway will take his overloaded plate off to sit below the away dressing room honours board and look smug.
12.15pm: And the band played on
Still very dreich and drear at Lord’s – though, on the plus side for Kane Williamson, the players will probably be let loose on the catering pretty soon.
Do tweet us using the #LiveReport hashtag with your best idle pastimes and wet weather bantz, by the way, since doom-scrolling is all we’ve got right now. Strikes me there’s something familiar about the fella modelling Nottingham Forest’s new kit, but I can’t quite be sure…
11.30am: Southee speaks, we listen
Tim Southee had a chat with Sky before, ahem, play this morning. As you would imagine, he had plenty of praise for Conway, who score more than half of New Zealand’s total – but suggested the fact their innings fell away after England dug out Henry Nicholls gave them hope that there was a bit in the surface for the bowlers, especially against batters new to the crease.
“His [Conway’s] innings was incredible when you look at the rest of the innings. We needed someone to go big and he was the guy to go big. Henry Nicholls [also] showed once you get in [you could score], and they formed a crucial partnership, we were just over 100 for 3 and the game was teetering on the edge and they were able to put a partnership together.
“Yes we probably didn’t kick on through the middle and lower order as we would have liked but I think that shows as well that, if you get in you can make runs, but if you can break that partnership and open up an end it is tough to start on. So hopefully we can capitalise on that this morning, with two guys that are in and forming a nice partnership – but we know if we can break that and put some pressure on the guys coming in, it’s not that easy to start on.”
Obviously, there’s been no chance for the New Zealand seamers to have a crack so far, but you’d imagine that a bit of weather around won’t harm their chances of breaking the Burns-Root stand and getting a look at England’s green middle order.
“We started nice with the two early wickets but we’ve got two guys now that are set. If you get in, you can get used to the pace of the wicket and go big, like Devon did. So as a bowling group, we know we’re going to have to execute our plans for a long period of time and when we do make that breakthrough hopefully we can make the most of that and grab a couple of wickets at a time. We know it’s not going to be easy, we saw a little bit of variable bounce yesterday afternoon so hopefully we can exploit that.
“Keep it simple, there’s talk about when the clouds are around here the ball tends to a little bit more [so] it’s just about putting the ball in the right areas for long periods of time, asking questions for long period of time. Nothing changes from our point of view, we’ve just got to do it better for long. I think we did it okay at times yesterday but it’s about being better for longer as a group and hopefully we can make some early inroads.”
11am: Nothing to see here
10.30am: Morning call
Alan Gardner is a deputy editor at ESPNcricinfo. @alanroderick
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