Ashes 2019: England v Australia second Test, day three – live

Rory Burns was one of the few England batsmen to prosper yesterday, giving Andy Bull the opportunity to ruminate on the work ethic of the lucky.

Even Burns’s nearest and dearest surely would not say he was a handsome batsman. His stance makes him look as if he spent the previous night sleeping in the front seat of a car. But it works for him, and he weathered two superb spells, one from Josh Hazlewood at the Nursery End and another from Pat Cummins coming in from the Pavilion.

Graeme Hull takes line honours for the day’s first email, and he opens the floodgates with a very popular question, for which there is no satisfactory answer. “Given the forecast,” he asks, “is there any real reason why play couldn’t start at 9am to give more real playing time, rather than waiting for the scheduled start?”

Here’s how the most important 22 yards of cut and rolled London turf look this morning. You’d have to expect the variable bounce we witnessed yesterday will only continue, and it certainly looks dry enough for spin to become increasingly important.

Before play resumes there’s plenty of time to put the kettle on, make a brew, read the paper and have a chat. What better place to begin than with Vic Marks’s report from day two?

Jofra Archer, Stuart Broad and Jack Leach all hung around long enough for Bairstow to post his 50, his first excursion into double figures in Test cricket this summer. There were signs the old fluency was returning until he attempted to wallop a Lyon off-break into the grandstand. He managed only to find Khawaja at deep square-leg but at least England had crept to a disappointing total rather than a disastrous one.