There were selection mistakes and preparation was a muddle but there was also Broad’s bowling and Stokes blazing awayThe fifth day of the fourth Test ended the same way every other in this series has begun, with England having a kickabout on the outfield. The difference, this time, was that it was lashing down with rain while they played. The only other people outdoors at Old Trafford were underneath umbrellas and for a time it seemed like England were trying to con everyone else into believing the conditions were fit for the 1pm start the umpires had promised earlier in the morning. As the rain became heavier and, one by one, more players and coaches came over to join them,...
Washout denied England chance of victory and rare fifth-Test decider and tourists still want to win the seriesSometimes in life, you get away with one. You glance away then look back just in time to hit the brake. You double-check the recipient field before texting the wrong person about what a prat they are. You snag a few fingers in the back of a jumper when a toddler has materialised on the edge of the kitchen bench. You make a stunning catch when a loan shark launches your mother’s Fabergé egg off the back of a truck.It’s not because you deserve it. It’s just the way things happen sometimes, a counterpart to all the times they don’t. At Manchester in...
Pat Cummins has endured two of his worst days as Australia captain, with the tourists left hoping for weekend rainYou can start with pure numbers. Once in Test history has a team made a bigger score at a faster rate. In a world of obscure stats that one offers clarity. In Manchester on Friday, England made 592 runs at 5.49 an over. The team to better this mark was England again, pretty much the same team, eight months earlier, with 657 runs at 6.50 against Pakistan. That time it had been a calculated plan to create a chance to win on the flattest track imaginable in Rawalpindi. This time was about using an opportunity that gradually took form as Australia...
Anderson failed to make the ball talk but otherwise this was a great day for the freewheeling hosts in push to level the AshesEngland have often given Jimmy Anderson a stage in this series. It happened again just before tea on the third day of an Old Trafford Test that already feels like a piece of deeper theatre, a staging point in that narrative arc taking us on to the Oval and last things, reckoning- ups, perfect endings.England walked out at 3pm into a thin white Manchester sun, a pre-rain sun (unless specifically stated otherwise all Manchester sun is pre-rain sun, in-between sun). Australia were 275 runs behind at the start of their second innings and looking a little dizzy and...
Composure on his way to 61 for England gives impression that cricket will not eat him in the way it eats so many of its young“Just another game,” Harry Brook declared in an interview with Wisden Cricket Monthly ahead of this Ashes series. “The same ball coming down at me. Just another human bowling a little round leather thing at another human. And I’ve got to hit it with a bit of wood. That’s it, really.”We can assume that Nasser Hussain’s job at Sky Sports is probably safe for the time being. But in another sense it was a quote that cut to the heart of what has made Brook one of the world’s most devastating players. Playing for England...