STOKES HITS 100
England’s young middle order batsman, Ben Stokes, scored his first test century on the 5th day of the third Ashes test match which was played at Perth, Western Australia. However, despite his brilliant knock, his team couldn’t chase down the huge target of 504 posted by the Aussies. England lost the game by 150 runs.
Stokes’ knock was really a big positive for England. The young man was under huge pressure when he had walked out at the crease, but, he maintained his composure and played good, aggressive cricket. He took on the short balls dished out my Mitchell Johnson and also went after Nathan Lyon whenever he tried to give the ball some loop.
Nobody had expected the English team to get even close to that huge target and rightly so because of the consistently deteriorating Perth surface. But, Stokes by building a couple of big partnerships with Ian Bell and Matt Prior respectively had threatened to take the game away from the Aussies at one point of time.
At lunch on day 5, England required just 170 odd runs to win and they had 4 wickets in hand. Anything could have happened from that stage. England just needed Stokes to be there in the middle, but, that didn’t happen. While trying to sweep Nathan Lyon, the Durham left hander under edged one to the wicker keeper and returned back to the changing room.
The Aussies didn’t take much time in knocking over the England tail after that. Mitchell Johnson with his hostile fast bowling claimed 2 out of the last 3 wickets and helped his team regain the little urn after a long period of time.
There are two games still remaining in the ongoing Ashes series. They will be played at Melbourne and Sydney respectively.