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Engand media reaction after Day 1 at The Oval, scores, highlights, latest, Jimmy Anderson

England’s media has labelled Day 1 at The Oval the hosts’ “most disappointing day of the Ashes” after Australia’s patient approach outshone Bazball again.

The fifth and final Test remains delicately poised, but Australia earned honours after bowling England out for 283 and reaching 1-61 at stumps.

Nick Hoult, writing for the UK Telegraph, noted Australia were “more streetwise and better equipped to negotiate difficult conditions”.

“This series is a clash of cricketing cultures. Australia play hard edged Test cricket, England go for it with whiz-bang fun,” Hoult wrote.

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“England aggressed at 5.1 an over, Australia grafted to the close 2.4, going nowhere but not giving wickets away. Someone clever, somewhere in the world, will work out how to blend Bazball with Australian grit and come up with a magic formula.

“This was the most disappointing day of the series from the England batsmen given the manner of dismissals, the lives gifted by tired Australian catchers and Pat Cummins’s reticence with his fields.”

Oliver Brown, also writing for the UK Telegraph, said “England have played the best cricket this Ashes — and the worst too”, questioning why the hosts resorted again to the default mode of “hit and hope”.

“The question is why it always needs to be this way with England under the Bazball revolution. Why is there always the instinct to go hell for leather? Why can they never be convinced that restraint might be the better option than uncontrolled belligerence?

“This was a day when a decisive contrast in styles manifested itself. Where Australia demonstrated the virtues of patience, with Khawaja and Labuschagne calmly seeing out the worst that Mark Wood and Chris Woakes could throw at them, England played with a heedlessness that suggested a team with one eye already on their summer holidays.”

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Brown said there was an “end-of-term” feel to the Test, and a sense of inevitability for England.

“You can sense it from the body language of (Joe) Root, a wonderfully sophisticated batsman but rushed and indecisive in dealing with Australia’s quicks. The Ashes have gone. That is the galling reality England are confronting. It seems their only response, counter-intuitive as it might be, is to carry on hitting and hoping.”

Paul Newman, writing for the Daily Mail, also agreed the day belonged to the “tortoises of Australia” and added the key to an England fightback would be 40-year-old legend Jimmy Anderson redsicovering his form.

“England need the real Jimmy Anderson to stand up after the most worrying signs yet that the man described before this fifth Test by Ben Stokes as the greatest fast bowler of all time really is in decline as he approaches his 41st birthday,” Newman wrote.

“Anderson was innocuous and uncharacteristically inaccurate in seven wicketless overs in two spells as his fellow veterans in Warner and Usman Khawaja launched Australia’s reply in a far more traditional way than England’s Bazballers.”

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