Captain Ben Stokes took five wickets as England’s fast bowlers sensationally tore into Australia on an electrifying opening day of the Ashes.<\/p>\n
In a captivating slugfest on a fast and bouncy pitch in Perth, England were bundled out for 172, only to reduce Australia to 123-9.<\/p>\n
The ferocious action lived up to the hype of the most anticipated Ashes series in recent memory.<\/p>\n
Surprisingly batting first on winning the toss, England ‘Bazballed’ their way into trouble. Zak Crawley was out for a duck from the sixth ball of the series to Mitchell Starc, who was irrepressible in taking 7-58.<\/p>\n
Harry Brook swiped 52 and Ollie Pope batted nicely for 46, but England lost their last five wickets for 12 runs to be bowled out in 32.5 overs – the shortest first innings of an Ashes Test in this country for 123 years.<\/p>\n
The tourists’ five-man pace attack responded with the fastest display of bowling by an England team since such data was first collected 18 years ago.<\/p>\n
Jofra Archer was magnificent and deserved more than two wickets. Any time there was a lull, England had a fresh paceman to turn to. Brydon Carse removed Australia captain and Monty Panesar’s nemesis Steve Smith.<\/p>\n
Stokes used himself as the fifth bowler, firstly snuffing out any suggestion of an Australia fightback then running through the long tail. Playing for the first time since suffering a shoulder injury in July, the skipper claimed his second five-wicket haul in as many Tests.<\/p>\n
At the end of a breathless and unforgettable day, 19 wickets have fallen, England lead by 49 and have a golden opportunity to go 1-0 up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Captain Ben Stokes took five wickets as England’s fast bowlers sensationally tore into Australia on an electrifying opening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-275234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}