An alternate reality tells the story of England’s Yorkshiremen providing a blossoming partnership to save the summerIt is the morning after the day before. The beer-with-breakfast customers have emptied out of the Golden Beam pub on Headingley Hill and wound their way up St Michael’s Lane, scooping a second pint inside the ground as they head to their seats. The sky is bluer than Thursday, the mid-morning sun more powerful. It’s a day for broad-brimmed hats, factor 50 and batting, batting, batting.Jerusalem’s opening arpeggio plays across the speaker system, and the two home ground heroes make their way to the crease. Jonny Bairstow wheels his arms like windmills. Joe Root crosses the boundary with his customary sprint-out-of-the-blocks and a couple...
Patience pays off for unexpected inclusion for third Test with exhilarating yet controlled batting for his throwback century Travis Head is supposed to outscore you. That’s what Travis Head does, the guy who was already living England’s new ethos before England knew it existed. His power is shifting the scoreboard in the blink of an eye, having you glance up to see 20 or 30 runs from as many balls.What does it mean, then, when Head is already at the wicket on nine, and the player who walks out to join him brings up a century by the time Head has reached 35? To start the first morning of the Headingley Test, Mitchell Marsh’s call-up as an injury replacement was...
Fast bowler hits speeds of up to 95mph to show what England have been missing and give Australia’s batsmen a shockIn the … sorry, let’s try again, a little quicker. In the ti … and once more. In the time … OK, let’s press on. They say the average adult reads at 300 words a minute. Which means that in the time it took you to read the first word of this article the ball had just left Mark Wood’s hand, and while you read the second it has travelled the length of the pitch, and by the time you finished the third it had landed, changed direction and beaten the batsman. Who, when they’re facing bowling of Wood’s pace,...
After his contentious dismissal of Jonny Bairstow, England’s bete noire was given a hostile reception in Yorkshire“Just wait til Carey comes out.” The booing began before he even appeared, in fact. They were booing in the Western Terrace from the moment the umpires walked on to the field after tea. Without the benefit of the backstory, you might have supposed an entire stand of passionate England cricket fans were dissing their own team, the soundwaves reaching the fielders long before the Australian batting pair followed them on to the ground. Not unlike a ball leaving Alex Carey’s hands before Jonny Bairstow walked out of his crease.“He’s not worth booing,” said Nick to his friend Annie. “I’m not wasting my breath.”...
The issue in this toxic Lord’s Test lies with the ever-nebulous notion of the spirit of the gameFrankly, it’s just not Bazball, old boy. On a febrile, toxic, at times mildly hallucinogenic day at Lord’s the cricketers of England and Australia produced one of the most obscurely rancorous days of high summer sport seen in this country.Australia’s players were barracked by MCC members as they walked into the pavilion at the lunch break, with reports of “physical contact” initiated by the red-trousered ultras. The Lord’s crowd booed and jeered across four gruelling hours from midday to the close of play, a level of hostility that has surely never been witnessed inside this most mannered of environments, a place where a...