England vs Australia, second T20: score and latest updates from Cardiff

Overton drops a goober at cow corner, running in and then sliding on his knees which may have caused him to lose his balance. Then Mahmood, instead of having Green’s wicket next to his name, is hammered next ball for six through square leg. He fights back with a brute of an inswinging yorker that Hardie chisels out but England send upstairs thinking it was toe before bat but the replay/review shows an inside edge. He hobbles a single.

Green has a swing and a miss at a fullish, reverse swinging delivery outside off and flaps the low full toss that completes the over through midwicket for two. 

Inglis has got his eye in and ramps Carse for four, more edge than meat but that’s the nature of the game. he shows his strengths and ripped biceps by pumping a fullish ball for four. But Carse has the last laugh to remove David with the last ball of his spell and Curran gulls Inglis the next ball with a slow cutter outside off that Inglis decided to flip but it stuck in the pitch, as it was designed to do, and he couldn’t get enough force on it to take it over the fielder. 

Inglis c Carse b Curran 42  Flicks the off-cutter round the corner and Carse runs in from deep backward-square to catch it.  FOW 157/6

David c Salt b Carse 1  Came off the bottom of the bat off the last ball of Carse’s spell, giving him figures of 4-0-26-2. No idea why he reviewed it. He knew it was out and was walking off before deciding to chance his arm. FOW 157/5

David c Salt b Carse  Bat or trousers as he shaped to pull? 

Finally Rashid takes some tap, Inglis taking him for 6-2-2-4. The ‘maximum’ comes when Rashid takes all the pace off and flights it up above the eyes but the line is too middle and leg and he flays it over mid-off for six. He punches two through cover and works two through midwicket before reverse sweeping off middle for the four. 

Australia are lions against pace and mice against spin. Inglis reverse sweeps, a deft little lap, for four. Livingstone appeals, thinking it was pad first but it wasn’t. No matter, he lures Stoinis to his doom with tantalising flight. Stoinis falls for it and holes out. 

Stoinis c Overton b Livingstone 2  A replica of Fraser-McGurk’s dismissal. Livingstone slid it into leg-stump and toes his drive to long-on.  FOW 131/4

Rashid comes back on for Stoinis’s arrival at the crease. The Yorkshireman has taken his wicket eight times in ODIs and T20Is. Another canny over of skid, turn and variations in flight protect the boundary and they flick and nudge five singles and a clumped two. 

Fraser McGurk brings up a 29-ball half-century with a two, whisked into the legside but four fot balls and a wicket complete an excellent over for the versatile spinner. 

Fraser-McGurk c Overton b Livingstone 50  Another victory for an England leg-spinner with the googly. Fraser-McGurk aims for cow corner but imparts more vertical than horizontal distance on it and Overton runs in to grab it. FOW 119/3

Salt trusts Topley to come back and he deserves the responsibility given his fine contributions since overcoming that litany of injuries. But Fraser-McGurk attacks him with those cocked wrists, backing off to a short ball and thumping it with withering power over wide mid-off with a flat bat. Bethell backpedals and dives over the rope but couldn’t hang on. Fraser-McGurk works a single off middle and leg and Inglis hits his first boundary with  pull fine for four as Topley finds the middle of the pitch once too often. 

Livingstone replaces Rashid and starts with a drag down leg break that Fraser-McGurk cuffs on the pull for two. The next ball is fuller and flighted and Double-Banger plays a lovely hockey shot, pinging the ball with the power of his breaking wrists through cover for two more. Three singles follow as Livingstone gets away without a boundary off his first over, all of them leg-breaks. 

Sensational stroke from Fraser-McGurk to shuffle to the legside to make some room before square driving Carse for four. The bowler fights back with pace on for the cost of only two singles from four balls until Fraser-McGurk backs off again and chips a drive over cover for a hard-run three. Drinks. Carse has 3-0-17-1. 

Carse should be a good fit for this ground: bowling short-of-a-length, he is hard to hit straight – and Cardiff has particularly large square boundaries, as Liam Plunkett often exploited to good effect. So it is proving so far, combining 91mph bowling with some slower balls.

Fraser-McGurk is a dandy highwayman, all stand and deliver. When Rashid overpitches Fraser-McGurk levers a drive over mid-off for six. Rashid berates himself more next ball when he drops short and the right-hander pulls for two. But he befuddles Short two balls later and continues to prove why he has become irreplaceable.  

Short b Rashid 28  Diddles him with the googly. He didn’t read it and went for a massive swipe aiming for long on and is bowled middle stump.  FOW 87/2

Change of ends for Carse and he varies his pace from 77 to 90mph in the over which stops the boundaries by playing with the batsmen’s timing. Short’s hesitancy in coming back for two after Harrow driving down to fine leg almost costs him his wicket but he beats the throw. Five singles off the over, cuffed, scuffed and heaved. 

The sly old fox Rashid ties Fraser-McGurk in knots with variations in pace, pushing it up and getting it to drift and drop alarmingly. He finally gets off strike with a thick inside edge when driving and Short bookends the over with singles to cover and midwicket. 

England trust Sam Curran with a powerplay over again and he starts with a cutter that Fraser-McGurk doesn’t pick and swings and misses as it nips away. But then he follows it with another and Fraser-McGurk shovels it over mid-off. No foot movement. Just a swinger, a proper slugger with a baseball stance. Curran tries a short ball and the right-hander swats it over mid-on for four and makes it a hat-trick of boundaries with as crisp an extra-cover drive as you would wish to see. He is all eyes and hand speed with tungsten wrists. 

Excellent from Brydon Carse, manipulating line and length to cramp all three batsmen, Head, Short and the incoming Fraser-McGurk who gets off the mark in jammy fashion with an edge off a pull.

Brydon the brakeman. 

Head c Rashid b Carse 31  Spooned a drive to point. Ugly innings peppered with three glorious strokes. FOW 52/1

Head short-arm pulls hard for four and pulls a single just out of reach of square leg. Short streakily nicks four over the slips and a single behind square on the offside when targeting midwicket. Head retreats to leg and uppercuts a short ball over vacant gully for four more. 

Head holds the pose when he straight drives Topley’s first, full ball on leg and middle for six. The sound off his bat was as sweet as a Stradivarius. England’s inability not only to take powerplay wickets but to prevent boundaries has been killing them since October 2022. Topley, abandons bowling into Head’s body, drops short and Head slaps it for four on the cut. 

The left-arm quick finds some composure and consistency by targeting Head’s ribs and shaping it into Short’s off stump and leaks only a single from the next four balls. 

Saqib Mahmood is also entrusted with the new pill and starts with a dot ball, cramping him around middle and leg. A fast short ball outside off rises sharply on Head who commits to the pull and top-edges it over the keeper for four. Saqib gets one to nibble off the seam and beat the outside edge and then cramps him up for another dot ball. Unperturbed, Head lashes a full delivery over mid on for six. Outrageous power.  

Another powerplay mauling here. 

Topley starts with a big inswinger, full and hooping in. It pinned Short on the top of the knee but did too much. Pitched outside leg too. The next ball arcs down legside and is rightly signalled wide. Topley strays back of a length and Short pulls it hard off the front foot and out of the ground for six. New ball, please. 

Topley reverts to full and outside off and Short drives, nicking it over short third man for four. Short muscles the next full ball down the ground for four more but swishes at air when trying to replicate his pull for six. The left-armer ends the over with a full inswinger and Short can’t get it past mid-on. 

Never a great sign when the captain/keeper has to run over to the bowler after only two balls. The next two balls went for boundaries too.

Reece Topley went for 15 in his only over last game; this time, he concedes 15 again.

And Matt Short takes strike. Kumar Sangakkara wanted them to start with spin but they have not been so bold. 

Archer, who has been rested to manage his workload, opened the bowling but bowled too short though it was Sam Curran who was taken for three sixes and three fours by Travis Head in his opening over. Reece Topley was also tonked if not so damagingly. England have five pace bowling options in Carse, Curran, Overton, Topley and Saqib and Nasser Hussain urges them to try and hit the top of Head’s off stump rather than dragging it back as they did on Wednesday. Don’t try to buy a mistake by playing to his strength of cross-batted shots. Try to take a wicket rather than wait for him to give it to you in other words. 

England Phil Salt (capt and wk), Will Jacks, Jordan Cox, Liam Livingstone, Jacob Bethell, Sam Curran, Jamie Overton, Brydon Carse, Adil Rashid, Saqib Mahmood, Reece Topley.

Australia Travis Head (captain), Matt Short, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Josh Inglis (wk), Marcus Stoinis, Tim David, Cam Green, Aaron Hardie, Cooper Connolly, Sean Abbott, Adam Zampa. 

Carse replaces the rested Archer; Fraser-McGurk, Hardie and Connolly in for Australia. 

They want to chase again, as they failed to do successfully on Wednesday night. 

So Travis Head will captain Australia tonight, we are told. 

Good evening from Cardiff – a lovely one here, though it is chilly. The Aussies certainly think so, wearing their beanie hats as they strolled from the city through Bute Park. Looks like Jofra Archer will be rested for England tonight.

Good evening and welcome to live coverage of the second of three T20s between England and Australia, this one in Cardiff where the forecast is for no rain but autumnal chill of 10C once the sun sets on Sophia Gardens. England’s new white-ball side started the series badly in Australia’s batting powerplay, improved by virtue of the guile and nerve of Adil Rashid, Liam Livingstone and some canny, quick bowling at the death from Jofra Archer and Saqib Mahmood, dug themselves a hole with their flakiness in their own powerplay, a hole from which they could not escape despite a decent cameo from Livingstone, some signs of Sam Curran’s Hundred excellence and a dose of jaunty, meaty biffing from Jamie Overton.

None of that should come as a surprise given the quality of Australia’s Travis Head, Adam Zampa and Josh Hazlewood, all of whom made significant contributions to the 28-run victory. Head has batted with such fearlessness and skill for the past 18 months that it makes Australia’s mockery of ‘Bazball’ ring hollow. Head has not been influenced by England’s approach, but he has fundamentally changed in similar ways in red- and white-ball cricket. I can understand why Brendon McCullum hates the reductive term because it’s just another label used to simplify something as ‘slogging’ that is really about changing a player’s state of mind, giving them the confidence to express themselves honestly, to free their thinking. Head is a purer example of the latter than anyone in the England team, Jonny Bairstow in the summer of 2022 before his horror injury apart.

Tonight, with an interim head coach, lack of experience and a line-up by design stuffed full of all-rounders, England have to show that they can make enough runs to beat Mitchell Marsh’s side. Will Jacks is 25 now and averaging 16.18 in 16 innings and a highest score of 40. This is a man who has made four T20 centuries in club/franchise cricket, one in the IPL, had a £300K contract with RCB this year and has a strike rate of 190 averaging 32 over two seasons in the SA20. Now would be a good time to come up with an international innings worthy of the great expectations English cricket has had for him over the past five years.