LONG POND, Pa. – The calendar says we are just one month into summer, but the racing schedule says the ARCA Menards Series season will reach its three-quarter mark with the completion of the FORTS USA 150 at Pocono Raceway.

The 60-lap race will be the series’ 69th visit to the 2.5-mile Pocono triangle since 1983 and the 70th overall counting a singular visit to the facility’s defunct three-quarter mile oval that encircled what is now the track’s garage area back in 1969.

Despite the season winding towards its conclusion, the battle for the series championship has stayed close over the course of the season. Michael Self has a 90-point lead over Bret Holmes in the standings. Self has three wins on the season, coming at Five Flags Speedway, Salem Speedway, and Michigan International Speedway, but he’s also faced some bad racing luck and mechanical issues along the way that have prevented him from building a significant lead on the field.

Self has repeatedly said his priority is winning races, not counting points. He has maintained that stance as the season concludes a ten-races-in-eleven-weeks stretch at Pocono.

“I really don’t want to talk about points at all,” Self said after the recent series race at Madison Int’l Speedway in Wisconsin. “Our priority all along has been winning races. If we win all of the races then the points situation will take care of itself.”

Holmes, a 22-year-old building sciences major at Clemson University, is still searching for his first career ARCA Menards Series win as a driver. Although that first win has been elusive as a driver, his team has collected an ARCA Menards Series victory. It happened, of all places, at Pocono with former series champion Grant Enfinger at the wheel in 2016.

Sitting second in the standings with twelve top-ten finishes in 14 races so far in 2019, Holmes has had a career season to this point. Holmes and his team collected an eighth-place finish last Friday night at Iowa Speedway, doing so in their backup car after a crash in practice damaged their primary car. A car that was the fastest on the track at the time of the crash. Holmes didn’t let the bad luck discourage him or his Shane Huffman-led team.

“The backup car wasn’t nearly as strong as the primary car,” Holmes said of last week’s Iowa run. “The guys worked super hard on it in the heat to get it ready for the race. We did what we could with the time that we had. I think if we could have raced our primary car, we definitely would have been up there contending for the win. We aren’t giving up, this just makes us a stronger team.”

Self and Holmes will both need to be at the peak of their game if they want to walk away with the series championship. A third contender has emerged, or re-emerged, in the battle as the season readies for the final run to its conclusion.

After back-to-back third-place finishes to start the season, Christian Eckes led the series standings heading into the third round of the season at Salem. But Eckes fell ill the night before the race and was unable to compete. The next time out at Talladega, Eckes was involved in a crash not of his doing and finished last in the 26-car field. In two races, he gave up 325 points to Self. Eckes sits just 105 points behind Self with six races remaining.

In the ten races since Talladega, Eckes has outscored Self 2,095 to 2,020. He has six races, including the FORTS USA 150, to close the 105-point gap in the battle for the series title. While Self is not paying attention to the points battle just yet, Eckes and his team have no other option.

“It’s hard not to pay attention to it,” Eckes said. “We are in the hunt. But we just need good finishes. Every time we get a good break, then we shoot ourselves in the foot. At Nashville we were 80 points back and we continuously shot ourselves in the foot afterwards. It’s unfortunate that it keeps happening. Everyone on the team is working hard to get it turned around. We need to string together six good finishes. We are going for wins right now. We have to. We aren’t that close where we can ride it out. We need good finishes. We can’t finish seventh anymore. We have a team that is capable of winning every week. But we’ve made some mistakes that have put us behind.”

It looks as though Gareth Bale and Zinedine Zidane's "Cold War" has reached its breaking point.

"We hope he leaves soon. It would be best for everyone, "declared the Real Madrid coach after his team's 3-1 loss to Bayern Munich in Houston on Saturday. These comments seemed to suggest that a transfer is close.

Bale's agent, Jonathan Barnett, then responded by calling Zidane "a disgrace." So one would assume there is just no way back from here.

Those of us covering the Houston game for ESPN were given a big clue that something was amiss about 45 minutes before kickoff. At that point, word filtered down that Bale, originally in the squad as a possible substitute, would not be involved, and given the troubled nature of his relationship with Zidane, it seemed unlikely that an injury had caused his exclusion.

Clearly Zidane's patience has run out with a player he sees playing no part in Real's revival. A Bale move to Paris Saint-Germain in a deal that would see Neymar arrive at the Bernabeu is being mooted. It doesn't quite add up, though, as Real have just splashed €100 million to sign Eden Hazard from Chelsea for the exact left-sided attacking role that is Neymar's specialty.

It also flies in the face of the reports that Paul Pogba is Real 's top target at £200m. That said, Madrid president Florentino Perez has always loved doing anything to annoy Barcelona, and signing their former star Neymar would certainly do the trick.

Some kind of swap plus cash deal with Manchester United would make sense, provided that Bale fancies the Europa League and becoming the torch-bearer for a club battling through troubled times. It is just as likely he does not.

But the timing of all this is intriguing. Is it a coincidence that this sudden twist in the saga happened to be when Real and Bayern Munich executives were in the same town for their ICC match? Remembering Bayern's frustration in trying to sign Leroy Sane from Manchester City, a move for Bale to play out wide would make sense from a football point of view.

The Germans, now without Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery, might see Bale, 30, as the kind of marquee name to put them back among the Champions League favourites. Whether a man who has never mastered Spanish would relish a move to Germany is another matter altogether, though.

-- Sources: Madrid would let Bale go to China for free

-- Zidane: 'We hope he [Bale] leaves soon'

What about Tottenham? A return to Spurs might hold some appeal and would keep the Welshman in the Champions League. But even that ship may have sailed at this stage.

Who else could afford the wages? Outside of the European elite, there is China, with Beijing Guoan and Jiangsu Suning reportedly interested. But is a boatload of money enough for Bale to consider a huge step down in competition on the field and a massive culture shock off of it?

In other words, the list of suitors for the Welshman is small.

In any event, Zidane is surely right in saying it's time for a change for a player who has lost his way at Real. At 30, and after a long list of injuries, it is relevant to wonder whether Bale has quite the same hunger and desire as he once did.

Can he recover the deadly form that devastated defenders in his pomp? That's the question potential suitors will be asking themselves.

If Zidane is right, we might know more very soon.

Middlesex 209 for 3 (Malan 117) beat Surrey 172 for 9 (Pope 47, Roland-Jones 4-35) by 37 runs

The World Cup is over but the summer party has just begun, judging by the enthusiastic capacity crowd at The Oval, who watched Dawid Malan as the life and soul of Middlesex's 37-run win over Surrey in their Vitality Blast match.

It was one of those evenings to remind you that when England actually does summer it feels like there's no better place on earth - unless, of course, you've been stuck underground on the Northern Line with no air-conditioning waiting for a platform to clear at Kennington tube station.

Above ground, the beer flowed, the stands were brimming and the batting action from Middlesex - Malan in particular - was hot.

Unlike England's World Cup triumph on home soil, proceedings didn't exactly follow the script when man of the moment AB de Villiers was out for just 3 to what soon proved to be a poor lbw decision when replays showed his attempted reverse sweep off Imran Tahir made clear contact, according to Ultra Edge.

However, to focus too heavily on de Villiers - who had a wonderful night out in Middlesex's opening match last week, when he plundered an unbeaten 88 off 43 balls in a seven-wicket win over Essex - would detract from a brilliant performance by Malan.

An unused member of England's touring party for their T20I series in the Caribbean earlier this year, Middlesex captain Malan smashed 117 off 57 balls with 11 fours and seven sixes to play a big part in setting Surrey 210 for victory.

After Middlesex won the toss and elected to bat, Stevie Eskinazi and Malan set off at a blistering pace. Malan initially took a back seat to Eskinazi but immediately after the Powerplay, by which time the pair had put on 55 runs, Malan surged ahead, slamming a six and a four off the last two balls of Gareth Batty's first over.

Malan moved in sight of his half-century first too. His thumping six off Tahir sailed well back into the first tier of the Bedser Stand to bring him within touching distance of the milestone, which he brought up three balls later with a four. He didn't stop there, meting out similar treatment to Liam Plunkett in the next over and hitting Batty for consecutive sixes in the next.

The TV camera kept panning to de Villiers in anticipation and he finally made his entrance to the pumping beat of Darude's Sandstorm - and a huge roar from the crowd - when Tom Curran bowled Eskinazi round the legs for 42 off 31 balls to put Middlesex at 131 for 1.

They cheered as de Villiers fended off a Curran bouncer backward of point for a single, but his innings bit the dust in disappointing fashion a short time later and for the first time all evening the stands fell into a lull, even before replays showed how unlucky he had been in his dismissal.

It did not take long for the spectators to liven up again, though, as they enjoyed Malan's knock. He reached his century off 49 balls with a single off Jade Dernbach, who later went for 23 in the penultimate over with Malan and George Scott indulging in a six and a four each.

Malan finally fell with three balls remaining in the innings, edging Curran to Ollie Pope, who took an excellent overhead catch behind the stumps.

With the temperature still hovering around 30 degrees at 8pm, the home crowd remained upbeat despite the considerable task facing their side.

Pope gave good chase after the early loss of openers Will Jacks and Aaron Finch, reaching 47 off 31 deliveries. But once he skied Toby Roland-Jones to Nathan Sowter to seal his exit, it felt like there was too much left to do for Surrey. Jordan Clark offered a neat cameo of 21 off 11 balls but, with Curran and Dernbach at the crease and three wickets in hand, the hosts needed 53 off the last three overs.

Steven Finn took a strong catch, running round and diving at long-on to remove Curran off Roland-Jones and that all but signalled closing time. When Roland-Jones had Dernbach caught by Sowter four balls later to finish with 4 for 35 off his four overs, some revellers took the hint and made their exit, although the majority stayed to applaud the visitors' victory.

Malan admitted his knock ignited memories of his match-saving innings against Lancashire at the same ground to win their 2008 Twenty20 Cup quarter-final. Coming in with his side 21 for 4, Malan scored 103 off 54 balls to help Middlesex to a 12-run victory en route to eventually winning the title.

"A little bit. Stuey Law, the coach, was actually playing against us, he was the captain for Lancs that day, so I might have a chat with him afterwards and see what he would have done differently," Malan said with a smile. "But it's fantastic. To score Twenty20 hundreds is tough so I've enjoyed that so much. It is early but the signs are good."

Yorkshire 255 for 2 (Kohler-Cadmore 96) beat Leicestershire 201 by 54 runs

Yorkshire Vikings finished just five runs short of matching their highest team total in Twenty20 matches as they defeated Leicestershire by 54 runs in the Vitality Blast North Group match at the Fischer County Ground.

Led by an unbeaten 96 from opener Tom Kohler-Cadmore, they plundered an impressive 255 for two from their 20 overs - and that after Leicestershire had won the toss and opted to bowl first.

The innings contained 19 sixes - one short of the English domestic record of 20 set by Essex against Surrey at Chelmsford only last week - and easily surpassed the 223 they made against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge in 2017 as their highest away from home.

One more six and it would have beaten the 260 for four they amassed at Headingley, also in 2017, as their biggest total on any ground.

With Leicestershire's batsmen clearing the ropes 12 times in their 201 for four, the match equalled the domestic record of 31 sixes also set in that Essex versus Surrey encounter.

Kohler-Cadmore crashed eight sixes as he went close to a second century in the format, having faced just 54 deliveries.

He was backed up by half-centuries from Adam Lyth and West Indian Nicholas Pooran, the latter hitting six maximums.

Lyth and Kohler-Cadmore had given their side an exceptional start, crashing 76 off the opening six overs, which included a 50 off 21 balls from left-hander Lyth.

Lyth had some good fortune at the start, almost out without scoring as an uppercut off left-armer Dieter Klein just cleared Callum Parkinson on the third-man boundary, the fielder stretching to get his hands on the ball but unable to make the catch or prevent a six.

Thereafter, he tucked into a mixed bag of Leicestershire bowling to pick up two more sixes and six fours to pass 50 for the 13th time in this format. Kohler-Cadmore got in on the act too, launching Colin Ackermann's off-spin for a huge six over mid-wicket in one of two overs in the Powerplay that cost 20 runs, the other bowled by seamer Ben Mike.

Lyth fell slog-sweeping left-arm spinner Parkinson but Kohler-Cadmore continued the big-hitting onslaught. Having walloped Parkinson's opening delivery over the mid-wicket boundary, he plundered more maximums off Aaron Lilley and Parkinson again to complete a 31-ball half-century.

The rate of scoring slowed a tad in the middle overs but it was a short-lived respite, as West Indian big hitter Nicholas Pooran picked up the mood. The wicket-keeper batsman was only one delivery behind Lyth in reaching 50 from 22 balls, with four fours and five sixes.

Pooran cleared the rope three times off Parkinson in the most expensive over of the night - one which cost 27 runs - including one hooked off a shoulder-high full toss and another pulled over long-on from the subsequent free hit, before he was caught at wide third man for 67 off Dieter Klein.

Yorkshire were lacking bowlers Matthew Fisher and Josh Poysden through injury, while Steve Patterson and England's Adil Rashid are currently being rested, and Leicestershire's 55 for one after the Powerplay overs was respectable enough but they needed to score in total 27 runs more than their highest score in T20.

South African seamer Duanne Olivier conceded 41 from his first three overs, lofted twice over the leg side boundary by compatriot Neil Dexter before taking a measure of revenge by bowling the batsman behind his legs.

But when Ackerman and Aussie blaster Mark Cosgrove departed in quick succession, any real hope of Leicestershire coming close to Yorkshire's total had effectively gone, despite a lively partnership of 61 in six overs between Aaron Lilley and Lewis Hill for the fourth wicket, each contributing four to the sixes tally.

Hick XII 96 for 7 (Cummins 3-15, Siddle 3-20) trail Haddin XII 105 (Labuschagne 41, Neser 4-18, Bird 3-25) by nine runs

In their quest to avoid a repeat of the batting humiliations in Birmingham and Nottingham four years ago that led to the loss of the Ashes, it cannot have been in Australia's warm-up plans to stage such a faithful re-enactment.

Requesting a seaming, bouncing surface as part of a training camp deal brokered directly between Cricket Australia and the Hampshire chairman Rod Bransgrove always left open the possibility of a rush of wickets when the Dukes ball did as expected. Not only was the pitch well grassed on top it was dry underneath, meaning there was variable bounce on offer as well as seam.

But to see the "Haddin XII" shot out for 105, by an attack featuring only James Pattinson among the pace bowlers expected to form the front rank of Australia's attack for the Ashes, was cause for at least slightly furrowed brows for the head coach Justin Langer and his support staff. By stumps the "Hick XII" had fared little better, limping to 96 for 7, for a combined tally of 201 for 17 across a most eventful day.

Compounding the diversion from likely plans was the fact that the only member of the Haddin XII top seven to reach double figures was Marnus Labuschagne, who demonstrated typical grit and thought in scrounging his way to 41 with the help of the good fortune required to survive on a pitch this lively. Labuschagne is, at best, vying for one of the last couple of spots in the squad, whereas David Warner (four), Marcus Harris (six), Travis Head (one), Kurtis Patterson (two) and Alex Carey (six) are all more probable to figure.

Equally, the new-ball spell of Pattinson turned plenty of heads but went wicketless, while Michael Neser and Jackson Bird struck frequently with a combination of swing, seam, bounce and pace from unerring lines. They were helped, too, by some inattentive shots - Warner was too early into his drive and Head too rash in throwing the bat at an angled ball, tendencies both will want to avoid during the Ashes proper.

When the Hick XII took their turn to bat, the heavy roller and 31C temperatures had served to calm the surface somewhat, allowing Joe Burns and Cameron Bancroft to gain a foothold.

Their dismissals to Peter Siddle and Pat Cummins cleared the way for Steven Smith to get briefly re-acquainted with red-ball combat, before Matthew Wade was given caught behind and made clear he was far from happy with the decision. Pete Handscomb and Tim Paine also stayed only momentarily, before Mitchell Marsh departed in the day's final over. Cummins and Siddle had plenty of reason to be pleased with their work.

Quirks abounded in this fixture, not taking first-class status but also constituting far more strenuous preparation than the equivalent county games at Canterbury and Chelmsford in 2015. Twelve players a side, with 10 wickets completing an innings, 96 overs to be bowled in the day and the pitch located to the eastern edge of the square. Upon winning the toss, Paine was more than happy to bowl first, consigning Head's team to the sorts of conditions that have undone Australians in England so many times before.

Pattinson wasted little time making his mark, striking Warner in the chest with a rising first delivery, and moving the ball at pace while also extracting steepling bounce. It was Neser, however, who coaxed Warner into the drive, pinned Harris lbw with a ball straightening down the line of the stumps, and later returned to defeat Mitchell Starc and Cummins, the latter's off stump plucked out by late movement away.

Bird also fared well, tempting out Head and winning lbw verdicts against Patterson and Carey. Through it all Labuschagne offered a deferential defensive blade, salting away his runs with furtive deflections and the occasional boundary in a stay that, at 81 balls, lasted longer than the collective stays of the rest of the top five combined. He has done his Ashes chances no harm whatsoever.

Another question confronting Langer and the selection chairman Trevor Hohns is whether Starc's speed will be as dangerous in the Ashes as it was for most of the World Cup. He took the new ball for Head, and was certainly fast, at one point stinging Burns on the gloves. But the more dangerous trajectories looked clearly to be those of Siddle, who ended a 38-run opening stand between Burns and Bancroft, and Cummins, who found a scorcher for Bancroft and then beat Wade numerous times.

Smith offered up a pair of delectable boundaries through midwicket and cover, but dragged a full ball from Cummins onto the stumps when trying to repeat the dose. Wade's exit was no more graceful, seeming to suggest that a ball from Hazlewood had struck arm rather than bat or glove. Less doubt surrounded Handscomb's lbw, stuck on the crease to Cummins, or Paine's glance down the leg side into the gloves of his back-up Carey.

A late pressure release arrived via some loose stuff from Starc, only for Marsh to be bowled by Siddle in the day's final over. Given all that had gone before, this was only fitting.

If Joe Root required any evidence about the dangers of burn-out, he will not need to have looked far for an example.

The presence of Jonathan Trott, a member of the England coaching team ahead of this Test against Ireland, should have provided a timely reminder. For Trott, you may recall, had something of a breakdown towards the end of 2013. And, while there were many factors involved - not least his own upbringing, which put a disproportionate value on cricketing success - a key factor, he felt, was England's unrelenting schedule.

England had two Ashes series to play that year. And, while it is not as big a tournament as the World Cup, that England squad had long viewed the Champions Trophy - played just ahead of that first Ashes series - as a huge opportunity to win a maiden, global List A trophy. Losing in the final, particularly from a situation where they should probably have won (they required 20 from 16 balls with six wickets in hand), was later described by Trott (in his book, Unguarded) as "an overwhelming disappointment… probably the biggest of my career."

Perhaps more pertinently, Trott and co. went almost straight from the Champions Trophy into their preparation for the Ashes series. With no time to let the scars - be they physical or psychological - heal, the squad was required to assemble in Chelmsford for an Ashes warm-up match against Essex. As Trott put it in his book: "Maybe, if we had been given some time to reflect and get over the defeat, I would have been OK. But by the time we reported back ahead of the Essex game - we reported the night before two days of training ahead of the match - we had been given just three complete days off. We hadn't debriefed or discussed it. I hadn't had time to come to terms with it. I hadn't moved on. There was no time. There was never any time. If I had to pick the moment it all went wrong, that would be it."

You don't have to be a genius to work out the similarities with the current squad. Little more than a week since England finally won that maiden global List A trophy - and in dramatic, draining circumstances - several of the team are back at Lord's on the verge of a run of games that will see them play six Tests in little more than seven weeks. And, between the World Cup final and now, they have attended numerous functions and events - not least a reception at Downing Street - with a residential Ashes training camp over the weekend. If anything, Root and co. had even less time than Trott's "three complete days off".

Success, no doubt, is less draining than failure. So it may prove that England's World Cup winning squad require less time to come to terms with recent events than their predecessors. And, as Root pointed out ahead of the Ireland Test, "we've learned" from the way the team of 2013 fell apart and "how intense things got".

For a start, England have rested key players. The likes of Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler, who are clearly key to the side in all formats, have been given an extra week off, though both attended the training camp. Equally, there seems little chance Jofra Archer will make his Test debut before the second Ashes Test at Lord's as he recovers from various aches and pains - not least a side strain - while Mark Wood's side strain may sideline him for the whole Ashes series. A return before the fourth Test, at least, seems unlikely.

Perhaps more importantly, the environment around the England squad these days is far less intense. So while the fitness and work ethic of the current team is every bit as good as their predecessors, there is more awareness of the need to relax, laugh and take time away from the game, too. Crucially, players are now encouraged to express their anxieties rather than feeling they had to conceal them. It would be disingenuous to pretend the situation hasn't improved markedly.

But the fact remains, five of the World Cup-winning squad will be in the England side that takes the field in this Test. And all five of them - Root, Jason Roy, Jonny Bairstow, Chris Woakes and Moeen Ali - have a strong chance of remaining involved throughout the Ashes series despite Roy having recently struggled with his hamstrings, Bairstow having struggled with his shoulder and Woakes having not played first-class cricket - and therefore having not been required to put his long-suffering knee through consecutive days of bowling - since September. We continue to ask a great deal of them. Quite possibly too much. And while English cricket has learned a great deal in recent years, it's never been quite enough to convince the ECB to risk compromising their income by cutting the schedule.

Root knows all this, of course. He came into that England side just as it started to disintegrate (he made his debut at the end of 2012) and spent Tuesday afternoon watching the recently released film The Edge, which chronicles that team's life-cycle. And as he says, it was his decision to play in this match. "I wanted to play this game," he said on Tuesday. "I wanted to get some red-ball cricket: the two days before this game, in particular, to make sure I felt in a good place."

But Trott and co. were given the opportunity to rest, too. Instead, he opted to play in the ODI series against Australia - his last ODI series, as it happened - at the end of the summer of 2013, before forcing himself through a series of brutal training sessions where he basically set the bowling machine to its maximum speed and took blow after blow to the head and body. Alastair Cook later described (again, in Trott's book) his failure to intervene in one "horrible" session where Trott was hit 20 times as something he would "regret horribly for the rest of my life". Such is the work ethic of international sportspeople, they sometimes need to be told to rest for their own good. Liam Plunkett's comments, made earlier this week, which suggested he was suffering from something akin to post-traumatic shock should sound a warning. These players need time to rest, reflect and recalibrate. They need time off.

Wait there, some of you will be saying. Don't we all have stresses and strains in our jobs? And without the compensations and lifestyles of our cricketers? People trying to survive on benefits and the minimum wage may struggle to find much sympathy for England's cricketers. And that's understandable.

But we don't all see our every move analysed and interpreted on TV. We don't all live under the scrutiny of social media. We don't all experience the emotional highs and lows and rushes of adrenalin. And the fact is that by asking England's top players to return to action so soon, we are risking their long-term prospects. While some may have seen the decision to field a second-string against Ireland as disrespectful to both the format and the opponent, most would have understood the enormity of the demands and the requirement to make concessions. All international cricket is important, but nobody can really think this Test is more important, from an England perspective, than the Ashes or the World Cup.

So, just as if seems odd that a pathway system with age-group sides, county matches and a Lions side would expect someone - Roy - to make their Test debut in a position (opener) in which they've never batted before in first-class cricket, so it seems odd that players who are now so well protected and rewarded are required to return to action before they have had time to digest and recover from what may well prove to have been the defining chapter in their careers.

Batsman and bowlers alike were left puzzled by a Southampton surface that seamed like a green top but dried out rapidly over day one of Australia's lone Ashes warm-up while also providing variable bounce.

A ledger of 201 for 17 across the day hardly depicted a batting paradise, but nor was it exactly the sort of slow, seaming surface that the tourists can be expected to face against England over five Tests at Edgbaston, Lord's, Headingley, Old Trafford and The Oval over the next two months. Marnus Labuschagne, the only batsman to pass 30 all day, and Jackson Bird, one of four pacemen to take three wickets or more, were united in their puzzlement.

"We were umming and ahhing this morning about what to do if we were going to bowl or bat," Labuschagne said after making 41 out of 105 for his side. "I actually called Sam Northeast up in the change room and he was saying that on this wicket they tend to bat first because of the deterioration during the game. It's really hard to tell - the conditions with the ball as well, there was plenty of swing and seam for pretty much the whole day, so I don't really think it made too much of a difference batting first or second.

"The heavy roller probably did, over here it flattens it out a little bit for probably 30-40 minutes but towards the back end it was still pretty lively and going. It was just the dryness of the wicket, with the bowlers we had who did bowl a heavier ball into the wicket I think they got considerably more up and down out of the wicket than you would potentially in a championship game with the bowlers bowling a bit slower and a bit more sideways movement. But everyone you'll see will adapt and hopefully get some runs in the second innings."

Bird, who has played county cricket for Hampshire and Nottinghamshire in the past, said it was not like any pitch he had seen before in these parts. "It was a funny sort of wicket, you don't really see this sort of wicket in England," Bird said. "There was lots of live grass on it but the surface was really dry, so there was a bit of inconsistent bounce from the top end, and it nipped around a little bit as well with that inconsistent bounce, which made it hard. The wicket got a little bit better as the day went on, but the bowling all day was reasonably good."

Where this all leaves Australia's Ashes preparations is anyone's guess, but suffice to say there were more than a few batsmen who would have preferred greater time in the middle, particularly given its dual status as a preparatory fixture and also a selection trial.

"This game is a very serious game and it's one where we're all looking to perform," Labuschagne said. "As a whole squad everyone wants to score runs, take wickets and I think we're getting the best out of each other by playing this hard cricket and its the best preparation for the upcoming tour.

"Facing the majority of the people out there bowling 130-140kph plus, facing the extra pace on a wicket that is going a little bit up and down, you need to make sure your ducks are in a row and your plans are in order. You wish as a batter it counted as 141 but no, 41 is still 41. In a low-scoring game those scores do help the team but from a personal view, it's frustrating when someone does get in and doesn't go on with it."

As Labuschagne's opponents, Bird complimented the Queensland No. 3 on his diligent planning for the surface. "He had a plan especially facing up to me, he came down the wicket and across to off stump and tried to take away getting bowled and lbw," Bird said. "The wicket could nip and stay a little bit low so he took that mode of dismissal out and it seemed to work for him. Although he nicked one in the end but that happens sometimes. It was good to see him have a plan, he's had a really strong start to the county championship season this year."

Regarding the selection trial, with the final Ashes squad to be named at the end of the match, Bird admitted to more than a few unusual emotions. "It's a weird situation that we haven't been in before," Bird said, "but everyone's really embraced it the last week and it's been really good to get in both teams in separate groups and I guess try to get the team camaraderie as much as you can in a weird situation.

"Our batters are world class as well, so anytime you get to come up against those guys it's good for your confidence and good for honing your skills I guess. It was a poor day out for the batters but the bowlers took a lot out of it. I'm expecting the batting group to bounce back in the next three days."