My youngest is three weeks old now, just enough already to know the best and worst of English cricket. She was born right around the time they beat Afghanistan, came home on the day they lost against Sri Lanka, and her first match – the one I watched while she sat on my lap – was that bleak and dispiriting defeat against Australia at Lord’s. “No, no this team are different,” I said when Eoin Morgan flapped a catch to fine leg and his side were 26 for three, “really, they can still win this”. She gave me one of those quizzical looks babies make while they’re learning how to work their face, like she wanted to say: “Unlike you, I wasn’t born yesterday.”
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