A great joy to head up to NW8 yesterday. Ended up in the Lower Edrich as couldn’t put in the queue hours to land a seat in any of the other stands. Lord’s was as Blowers would say ‘Brimmers’. Spied some of the greats ~ Botham, Gower, Warne, Henry in his yellow trews, and Nasser, who was marching around like a Sargeant Major.

England utterly dominated the entire day. The poor old Aussies couldn’t even dismiss our nightwatchman Bresnan before the luncheon interval. Clarke was running out of options fast.

The day belonged to Root. He put some down! Moving onto 178* by the close of play, he demonstrated he’s got what it takes to apply the concentration to stick around on the test arena. If he reaches a double ton today he will be the youngest player ever to do so. Also passing 1000 first class runs this season, and taking his test average up to within a millimetre of 50, he’s the man-of-the-moment.

Root was helped along the way by in-form Bell, who played well for his 74 before slotting an easy catch to mid on from a less than average ball.

Enter Bairstow, who stuck around until stumps. Never an easy time to bat when everyone else has made batting look so easy. The scene is set for an early declaration and with the pitch slowly starting to show some cracks, perhaps Swann will put us 2-0 up some time on Monday. But I’ve given up predicting in this Ashes series. Let’s just wait and see.