Bad light stopped play on day 2 of the Australians’ tour match against the English Lions at Northampton and after a 68 over centre wicket practice for the Australians the match was declared a draw. Of the three batters seemingly fighting for two spots in the Australian team, Hughes, Smith and Khawaja, only Hughes spent a long time at the crease taking 92 balls to scratch out 30.

As I said yesterday: this was a terrible act of scheduling by the ECB and Cricket Australia playing a glorified net session or centre wicket practice for 2 days heading into the last test of the Ashes series. I guess though it is important to look for positives in every situation and I can see two here: Shane Watson did not get hurt and the final test is a dead rubber so at this net session didn’t make things worse for Australia.

Being on the last test!