Unlikely hero keeps Australia’s hopes alive
He’s bespectacled, shortish, seems serious, even studious, has played just 14 first class games, and was a last-minute replacement for injured off-spinner Nathan Lyon.
But Victorian off-spinner Todd Murphy emerged as the unlikely hero after Australia managed to retrieve some sort of level standing in the final couple of hours of the second day of the Fifth Ashes Test at the Oval.
Australia’s Todd Murphy in action. Reuters
Aged just 22, Murphy clubbed a remarkable 34 off 39 balls in a ninth wicket stand with captain Pat Cummins, who made 36.
The young Victorian’s innings included three towering sixes, as Australia’s tail wagged yet again, and the tourists managed to end the day on 295 all out — 12 runs ahead of England’s first innings score of 283.
Someone with a demeanour suggesting he would be more at home in a botany class instead of in front of a hostile English crowd at the Oval effectively smote English speedster Mark Wood out of the attack with his boundaries.
It seems an extraordinary Test arrival, but there is a Shane Warne connection.
Murphy was born in the Victorian border town of Echuca on the Murray River. His father, Jamie Murphy, was a left-handed middle-order batsman who played eight seasons for the St Kilda club in Melbourne, where he was a teammate of Shane Warne.
Fast-forward from the immortal S.K. Warne to The Oval in London with Cummins and Murphy at the crease, and Australia’s tail did not just wag, but turned (somewhat Warne-like) flamboyant.
This contrasted with the battle of attrition earlier in the day, when the visitors’ scoring rate was barely two runs an over, or not much more than one third of England’s Bazball-boosted run scoring regime.
Australia’s run rate improved later on in the day,
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