Daily Mail - 27.08.2019

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Daily Mail, Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Football

LYON BITTEN BY

MOTHER CRICKET

Few Englishmen will weep for the sledger-in-chief

Dream debut for Lukaku

as he scores in Inter rout

FOOTBALL

SHORTS

ROMELU LUKAKU marked

his Inter Milan debut with

a goal as his new side

beat Lecce 4-0 at

home in Serie A. The

26-year-old Belgium

striker, who moved

to Italy from

Manchester

United for

£73million,

netted the third in

the 60th minute when he

ran on to Lautaro

Martinez’s rebounded

shot and fired into the

corner. The strike means

Lukaku (left) has

scored on his

league debut for

Anderlecht, West

Bromwich,

Everton, United

and now Inter.

ZINEDINE ZIDANE says

Gareth Bale no longer

wants to leave Real

Madrid and insists the

Spanish giants are

‘counting on him’ this

season. Bale’s future

has been uncertain this

summer and he was

close to joining Chinese

club Jiangsu Suning. But

Zidane said yesterday:

÷

‘What has changed is

that the player wants to

stay, nothing more, and

we are counting on him.

He is a really important

player for us and he has

to keep doing what he

has done.’

ADAM WEBSTER

expects his Brighton

debut tonight to be a

‘physical’ encounter as

he prepares for a hostile

reception at Bristol

Rovers in the Carabao

Cup. Centre back

Webster, 24, who joined

÷

Brighton from Bristol City

for £20m, said: ‘It’s a

passionate footballing

city, it’ll be a physical

game. We have to make

sure we’re prepared.’

JAMES McCARTHY

could make his first

Crystal Palace start at

home to Colchester in

the Carabao Cup

alongside Spanish

midfielder Victor

Camarasa. Goalkeeper

Wayne Hennessey and

striker Connor Wickham

could also start.

÷

JAVI GRACIA, manager

of winless Watford, says

his side need to improve

ahead their Carabao Cup

tie at home to League

One Coventry. ‘We have

to be more clinical,’

Gracia said.

FRENCH club Nice has

been bought by Ineos,

the company founded

by British billionaire Sir

Jim Ratcliffe. ‘It has been

a long journey getting

here,’ said Ratcliffe, who

bid £88.7m for the club

earlier this year.

÷

÷

I

f England could have

chosen an Australian

cricketer to make the

fatal fumble that may

just have handed

them the Ashes then the

name of Nathan Lyon

would have been on

many lips.

David Warner may have epito-

mised the toxic culture that

brought him and Steve Smith

down in Cape Town but it is the

former Adelaide groundsman

who has carried on traditional

Australian attempts in this series

at ‘mental disintegration’.

It has been Lyon who has not

been short of a word whenever

a new England batsman has

come to the crease during this

Ashes and it has been his

approach more than any of his

team-mates that has been at

odds with Australia’s new

‘squeaky clean’ image.

So there were more than a few

England players past and

present who would have been

tempted to smile when Lyon

bungled the most simple of

run-out chances with Jack

Leach stranded and just two

runs needed for an England

third Test victory, or when Lyon

threw himself to the floor in

desperate frustration as Joel

Wilson turned down the appeal

for lbw against Ben Stokes

off the very next ball that

technology insisted was out.

Not least Matt Prior, who

was the victim of a completely

unprovoked verbal attack by

Lyon in the build-up to the last

Ashes before Australia’s whole

poisonous system came crash-

ing down around their ears with

the Sandpapdergate cheating

scandal.

It was in Brisbane towards the

end of a long media session

before the first Test in 2017 that

Lyon sauntered in and told us

that Prior was trying to get

out during the 2013-14 series

because he was ‘scared’ of

Mitchell Johnson.

He went on to say how he

wanted to end English careers,

a theme that was taken up

by Josh Hazlewood on friday

when he said the scars England

suffered from being dismissed

for 67 at Headingley would take

a long time to heal. Well, both of

them have now been bitten

on the backside by what

people in the game like to call

‘Mother Cricket’.

The one Australian it is

possible to have sympathy with

is captain Tim Paine, who

was given the mother of

all hospital passes when

he took over the Austral-

ian captaincy from the

disgraced Steve Smith

and has done all he can

to clean up their act.

What he cannot do is per-

form as a Test-class player

and Paine’s leadership

was shown to be as ques-

tionable as his batting on

Sunday when he was

tactically naive in the

field during England’s

epic last-wicket stand

and incompetent in his

use of reviews.

When Smith

was playing at

Edgbaston

he virtually

took over

from Paine

(right) in

the field but

he is banned from any

leadership role until March

and there really are no other

credible candidates to take over

from the likeable wicketkeeper

from Tasmania.

What will really hurt Australia

is that there was only one word

to describe the Lyon fumble and

the desperate Paine review that

cost Australia the Ashes, at

least for now, when even Pat

Cummins appeared to be

telling him not to challenge

the decision when he

struck Jack Leach

outside leg-stump. And

that word is the

one sportspeople

bristle at

— choke.

Consider

these stats

from the

BBC’s Andrew

Samson. Australia have been

involved in 16 Tests in which the

winning margin has been one

wicket or fewer than 10 runs.

They have only won four of those

and lost 12 and since 1952 they

have lost all nine. And we think

of South Africa as chokers.

It will take a lot for Australia

to come back from such a

crushing blow as Headingley

and it will be fascinating to see

whether there is more humility

now from Lyon, who quietly

became the third most prolific

bowler in Australian Test

history on Sunday.

Sadly for him the cricketing

fates, aka Mother Cricket,

were to hand him a very

different reason to remember

one of the most incredible days

in Test history.

THE ASHES

By PAUL

NEWMAN

Cricket Correspondent

Choke: no

other way

to describe

Lyon’s fatal

fumble

CRICKETPIX

14

TIM PAINE’S review success this

Ashes series is just 14 per cent. The

Australia captain has reviewed 29

times, and the decision has been

overturned on just four occasions.

58

HIS batting average of 12.83 is

the worst by an Aussie skipper

in the Ashes in 58 years. Richie

Benaud, a bowler, averaged 9.00 in 1961.

AUSSIE SKIPPER IN WORLD OF PAINE