Australia tightened their grip on the fourth Ashes Test as Scott Boland shattered Jamie Smith\u2019s stumps, leaving England six down and sliding deeper into trouble on Day 1 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.<\/p>\n
Bowling on a testing length, Boland produced a delivery that jagged back just enough to beat Smith\u2019s bat and go straight through the gate. The England batter had no answer as the off stump was sent cartwheeling, while Ben Stokes could only watch helplessly from the non-striker\u2019s end. Jamie Smith departed for 2 off 3 balls, extending England\u2019s dramatic collapse.<\/p>\n
This wicket follows a brutal passage of play for the visitors. Earlier, England lost their top four cheaply inside the first five overs, with Mitchell Starc and Michael Neser doing early damage. Harry Brook attempted to counterattack with a brisk 41, but Boland trapped him lbw to swing momentum firmly back Australia\u2019s way. Moments later, Boland struck again to remove Smith, underlining Australia\u2019s dominance with the ball.<\/p>\n
At the fall of the sixth wicket, England were 68\/6 in 18.2 overs<\/strong>, still trailing Australia\u2019s first-innings total of 152 by 84 runs<\/strong>, with the lower order now under pressure against an in-form Australian pace attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Australia tightened their grip on the fourth Ashes Test as Scott Boland shattered Jamie Smith\u2019s stumps, leaving England six down\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":250,"featured_media":32924,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cricket"],"reading_time":"1 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}