The elephant in the room
Jake Lehmann, son of “Boof”, has shot into Ashes contention in recent days after 103 and 93 for South Australia against Victoria. Darren said last year he would leave any selection meetings where his boy was mentioned and now, with some exceptionally Australian patois, Jake has said they are skirting the issue privately too.
“I saw the old man last night,” he said. “He was at the Melbourne Cup having a couple of frothies so he was all good. We have come to pretty much an agreement that . . . you go to cricket and cricket stays there. And when you come home, it’s just family. He’s the old man and I’m his son so it’s just normal.”
Not Starc enough
Mitchell Starc has 16 Sheffield Shield wickets in two matches including an eight-wicket haul and two hat-tricks in a game. But Stuart Clark, one of England’s destroyers in the whitewash of 2006-07 is still not satisfied. Twelve of Starc’s 16 wickets have been batsmen at No 6 or below, and Clark thinks he must be smarter to pick up top-order English wickets.
“He can bowl full and fast and straight,” Clark said. “What gets him in a bit of trouble is he probably tries it a bit too much when the wicket has got a bit of life in it. He doesn’t bowl enough balls on a good length so that they nick it behind. When it comes to blasting out the tailenders or the surprise ball, you would throw him the ball every day of the week and say ‘have a lash at this’ because you know he will knock them over.”
Scaling the heights
Adelaide Oval: not a venue for the for the faint-hearted. That is hardly a sentence the Digest down under expected to print. But then we saw folk — not one or two, but a flock — wandering along the top of the stand on the south side of the ground, all the way round to the Riverbank Stand. They were not lost — they were on the official Adelaide Oval Roofclimb. Yours during the second Test for just $225 (£131) per very dizzy head.
Done up to the nines
In Perth for England’s opening tour game, Joe Root appeared for the toss wearing his training gear, but for the first-class game in Adelaide, he saw fit to throw on the whites.