Ashes 2021-22: Australia v England second Test, day one – live!

“Weren’t Smith and Warner ruled never to be allowed authority positions in the Oz team after sandpapergate? Has that been overturned or overlooked or did I dream it?”

You didn’t dream it, Clive Darwell, you just embellished it. Warner is banned for life, Smith was banned for two years.

“Let’s not ask why some idiot was at a restaurant when he should have been in quarantine awaiting his test results,” writes in Peter Hutchinson.

I’m not sure what the details around the rules and the case are there, so I’ll hold fire before I start sledging anyone.

Less involved warm-ups for the Australians. Nathan Lyon is twirling down a few on one of the practice wickets. A few others are wandering about, taking a few high balls in fielding drills, that sort of thing. Carey is rehearsing some squats and sidesteps, getting his frog muscles warmed up. Pretty casual stuff.

Anderson has given Broad his 150th cap, that’s how Ali knows that. So Broad will play. Anderson will play. Mind you, Jack Leach is out in the middle warming up with everyone else. So is he playing after all? That could only happen if Woakes (the only No8) or Robinson misses out. They’re both in the middle too. Maybe England have dropped a batter. Maybe it wouldn’t make much difference.

Ali Martin, my colleague in the next seat, suggests that my yesterday’s speculation at the nets is all thistledown on the winds of time.

Short break there, I’ve just been listening to Nick Hockley, the CA boss, who stopped by to give us the update. A fairly comprehensive non-answering of questions, as ever, aside from confirming what we already knew from the press release about how Cummins got implicated (and how Starc and Lyon didn’t).

He doesn’t answer a question about whether they went up the chain to the prime minister’s office in an effort to get Cummins cleared to play. He doesn’t answer whether the protocols for players will change in the wake of this. He does say that everyone should accept Steve Smith’s return because he’s a changed man.

What about England? I just watched Stuart Broad walk across the ground in the arriving stream of players. He was with Anderson, Stokes and Robinson. My analysis of body language is: inconclusive. He was wearing blue sneakers. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

If the Adelaide Strikers were out of town today, Australia would have been grabbing someone from first-grade cricket. My colleague Bharat Sundaresan, an Adelaide local, suggests that Tim Oakley would have been the frontrunner for an emergency baggy green.

Speaking of Starc, he was at the same restaurant last night, with Nathan Lyon. By fortune they were at an outside table, so they weren’t near the problem case and they’re free to play. Imagine if Australia’s whole Brisbane bowling attack got wiped out? Usman Khawaja and Mitchell Swepson are the only remaining players in the squad.

Well! Jhye Richardson and Michael Neser are both very good operators, but if England can’t win this match then they can’t win anything. What an opportunity. The effect of losing a captain isn’t necessarily the most influential, but the discombobulation of losing the team’s pace spearhead is much bigger. In Brisbane, as per usual, Josh Hazlewood had the new ball and Cummins took it over from Mitchell Starc after two overs.

This time, both Hazlewood and Cummins are gone.