MELBOURNE
\nA rampant England tore through the Australian batting to dismiss the hosts for just 152 on day one of the fourth Ashes Test Friday in a huge confidence boost for the maligned tourists.
\nSkipper Ben Stokes won a key toss on a green track and his quicks feasted after sending in Australia under overcast skies at a packed Melbourne Cricket Ground.
\nOpeners Travis Head and Jake Weatherald fell for 12 and 10 respectively while Marnus Labuschagne made six as Gus Atkinson and Josh Tongue found plenty of movement. Steve Smith looked to have weathered the storm, but he was cleaned up on nine by Tongue, who knocked back his middle stump to leave England\u2019s \u201cBarmy Army\u201d of fans in full voice.
\nIt didn\u2019t get much better after lunch with Usman Khawaja (29), Alex Carey (20) and Cameron Green (17) among those departing.
\nMichael Neser top-scored with 35 while Tongue took 5-45. Australia have already retained the Ashes after crushing eight-wicket victories in Perth and Brisbane and an 82-run win in Adelaide, with England desperate to restore pride in Melbourne. Castigated over their limited Ashes preparations, the tourists lost the famous urn in just 11 days of play with a scandal involving alleged excessive drinking by players during a mid-series beach break piling on the pressure.
\nMissing injured pace spearhead Jofra Archer, they reinstated Atkinson after he was axed for Adelaide and he opened the attack.
\nAn aggressive Head drove consecutive boundaries off a wayward Brydon Carse, but he only lasted 22 balls, chopping on from Atkinson in the next over.
\nOpening partner Weatherald fared little better, tickling down the leg side to wicketkeeper Jamie Smith in Tongue\u2019s first over, with the Nottinghamshire quick then enticing an edge from Labuschagne that was well taken by Joe Root at slip.
\nSmith and Khawaja began to stabilise the innings before Tongue struck again to remove the Australia captain and leave England in control.With the sun breaking through on their return from lunch, Khawaja hit a glorious counter-attacking drive to the boundary off Atkinson.But his luck ran out next ball, getting the faintest of edges to Smith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MELBOURNE A rampant England tore through the Australian batting to dismiss the hosts for just 152 on day one of the fourth Ashes Test Friday in a huge confidence boost for the maligned tourists. Skipper Ben Stokes won a key toss on a green track and his quicks feasted after sending in Australia under overcast …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":91600,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91628,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91618\/revisions\/91628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}