England’s Existential Cricket is not fun and carefree but therapy for years of cruelty | Barney Ronay

Bazball has been hailed as a joyous reinvention of how Test cricket is played but in reality it is an angry reaction to past pain

This week I watched, in covert late night instalments, the entire day-by-day extended highlights of England’s 1994 five-Test tour of the West Indies. This wasn’t meant to happen. But as Rick James famously said, Sky Cricket Greats is a hell of a drug. In the event it just turned out to be one of those strangely moreish spectacles.

A lot of things happened very slowly and then happened suddenly with dramatic jumps forward. Mike Atherton top-scored across the series but still seemed to be continually walking off looking soulful and wronged, sawn off by another grubber. Alex Stewart swished and carved his way to those two brilliant, breezy hundreds in Barbados, hunched in his agreeably old-fashioned stance, sleeves rolled like a cricketer from a 1950s cigarette card. Andy Caddick seemed to be always bowling, from both ends and for both teams.