Ashes day 1: Analysis

Date released: 17 July 2009

After day one of the Ashes Test at Lord's we analyse the day's play and look back at some of the highlights.

General Strauss left looking for reinforcements

Where's the back-up? Strauss looks for support England will look back on day one as a missed opportunity.

Ashes Test come around only so often - every two years; Ashes Tests at Lord's still less often and the chance to bury a misfiring Australia attack is barely unheard of.

With 196 runs on the board and both Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook looking imperious that was the opportunity which faced England - and yet the opportunity was lost.

Cook fell on 95, agonisingly short of another entry on the Lord's Honours Boards but still England should have been untroubled. Only moments earlier Australia's Nathan Hauritz had left the field, his middle finger at a horrible angle after a miscued catch from a rasping Strauss drive.

With Hauritz off the field Australia were operating at 50% capacity at best - their four man attack of Hauritz, Ben Hilfenhaus, Peter Siddle and Mitchell Johnson was effectly just two men. To describe Johnson's bowling as "wayward" would have been generous.

And yet England stopped, stuttered and gave their wickets away when it seemed the only trouble could be self inflicted.

Declaration style

Pietersen's bizarre innings included one moment where he almost caught the ball First Ravi Bopara and then Kevin Pietersen fell, both needlessly. It seems too simplistic to say both were "still in Twenty20 mode" but Bopara's 18 runs from 19 balls - before he was tempted across his stumps and trapped LBW by Hilfenhaus - tells its own story.

Much is made of Pietersen's dismissals whether on one or one-hundred. If that's unfair it's only because we are all too aware of Pietersen's ability.

Whatever you say about his efforts in Cardiff and here in the first innings - Cook and Strauss aside he still top-scored with 32. His batting was almost declaration style - as if England had 500+ on the board and were looking to gild the lilly.

His erratic, chance-filled, suicide-single-running innings should not disguise the failings of Bopara, Paul Collingwood and Matt Prior - all Test Match batsmen who should have been well capable of occupying the crease and frustrating the already downhearted Aussie bowlers.

Instead four wickets fell for fewer than 70 runs and the spring was well and truly returned to the Australian's step.

Milestone man: Strauss notched a slew of career landmarks Strauss passed landmark after milestone: his 100 (his fourth at Lord's); 1,000 runs at Lord's; 5,000 Test Match runs; even his 150. At times it looked as if he were batting on a different pitch to his team-mates as he looked around helplessly for someone to do the classic job of "holding up an end". One almost wanted to call for Monty Panesar - almost.

Still - England find themselves in a strong position, if not the one of utter dominance it could and possibly should have been.

With 364 runs on the board, the skipper still at the crease and four more wickets in hand they should be able to notch an enviable first innings score.

How enviable it will be depends on if England's bowling battery can make more of the pitch which has made the Australia attack look, at times, so lifeless.