That said, a sharply rising ball goes past Mathews' prod outside off-stump.
Lumb had a forgettable night otherwise, dropping an absolute sitter of a catch after Watson skied a rising ball.
Michael Clarke was his second victim, an undistinguished jab at a rising ball, but the seam had been upright, the intent good.
M. L. Perkins: Oval, perhaps, where a rising ball may break up odd bits of the pitch which are out of true (pill (rev). in anag. of alternate letters).
Only the opener Daniel Bell-Drummond, who had to fend off a very steep rising ball, can feel that it was the pitch that caused his downfall.
Rogers b Steyn 1 (Australia 1-1) strikestrikes with his first delivery, a rising ball outside off-stump that Rogers needn't have got involved in, but did and chopped onto his stumps.
If he gave the impression that he had been the victim of a spiteful pitch, he did his side a disservice: for a batsman of his calibre, he played inadequately at a rising ball.
Burns, however, having driven particularly classily down the ground – one straight drive off Ajmal Shahzad, passing within inches of the bowler's stumps, was a sumptuous stroke – fell on the cusp of lunch when he aimed to flick a rising ball from Harry Gurney, the left-arm paceman, off the line of his hip and was adjudged to have thin-edged it to the keeper.
There was a surprising amount of early bounce on what is traditionally one of the more sedate surfaces in Australia and Strauss, who gloved a rising ball down the leg side, and Trott, who spliced a simple return catch as he attempted to pull, encapsulated an uncertain England morning against the short ball.
Lumb came in when Riki Wessels retired hurt after being hit on the right hand with a rising ball from Footitt.
