CRICKET
Day 2: Khawaja sparkles with ton
Usman Khawaja scored a brilliant hundred in his comeback match to put Australia in a commanding position once again in this Ashes.
Steve Smith also scored an excellent knock of 67 runs.
Australia declared their 1st innings when their score reached 416-8.
Stuart Broad picked up 5 wickets in his returning match.
Australia 1st innings 416-8
Khawaja 137 Broad 5-101 Smith 67 Root 1-36 Harris 38 Anderson 1-54
England 1st innings 13-0
Hameed 2* Crawley 2*
England survived the 5 overs given to them to bat without losing a single wicket.
Both the English openers are unbeaten on 2 runs each.
Earlier, Australia declared their innings after scoring 416 runs with the loss of 8 wickets.
Usman Khawaja scored a brilliant hundred in his comeback match.
Smith also scored a half-century while Mitchell Starc remained unbeaten on 34 runs.
Stuart Broad picked up a magnificent 5 wicket haul.
Usman Khawaja’s superb century
Usman Khawaja played a superb knock against the experienced English bowling lineup.
He was playing his first game since 2019. He scored 137 runs off 260 balls including 13 brilliant boundaries.
This was Khawaja’s 9th Test hundred in the 45th Test match of his career.
He was clean bowled on 137 runs by Stuart Broad on an excellent pitched-up delivery that got an inside-edged of Khawaja’s bat into the stumps.
This was the first Ashes ton for Khawaja since that superb knock of 171 in the Ashes that was played 4 years ago.
Khawaja and Smith started the day by scoring a superb partnership of 115 runs.
Smith was caught behind by Broad on a good length delivery that angled into the right-hander and he got a slight edge while trying to leave the ball.
Cameron Green and the wicketkeeper Alex Carey failed to perform as both of them got out on 5 and 13 runs respectively.
Australia was 6 down on 285 runs but Khawaja dragged the score over 400 runs with the help of tail-enders.
He first shared a 46 runs stand with the skipper Pat Cummins and then he had another superb partnership of 67 runs with Mitchell Starc.
Pat Cummins scored 28 runs before getting dismissed by Stuart Broad.
Mitchell Starc remained unbeaten on 34 runs and this was his 3rd score of 30 plus runs in this series.
Nathan Lyon also scored a quickfire 16 runs off 7 balls including 2 fours and six.
Broad’s magnificent 5-wicket haul
Stuart Broad who is playing his 151st Test match today wasn’t a part of England’s playing 11 in the last game but he came back with a superb 5 wicket haul in this match.
Broad bowled brilliantly against the Australian batters and this was his 19th five-wicket haul of his career.
He picked up the wickets of Warner, Smith, Khawaja, Green, and Cummins.
England openers patiently played in the 5 overs that were given to them to survive before stumps.
Crawley almost lost his wicket but luckily he was caught on a no-ball.
England scored 13 runs without losing any wicket before stumps on day 2.
Both Haseeb and Crawley remained unbeaten on 2 runs.