Bazball has been hailed as a joyous reinvention of how Test cricket is played but in reality it is an angry reaction to past painThis 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...
England will need the action hero to bowl those fiery spells, especially now Australia have a big-hitter of their ownBefore the unbeaten 135, Ben Stokes’s Headingley rescue-act in 2019 began with the ball. It remains the somewhat forgotten preamble, the EP of promise before the first album that went platinum.Stokes was skilful in his 24.2-over spell in Australia’s second innings, but it was his ferocity that stood out, his unwillingness to step aside as an already significant lead grew into what should have been a match-winning one. The final figures were three for 56, tidy but hardly reflective of what he had produced. Marnus Labuschagne, who took the brunt of it, said later that it was one of the best...
Bazball is no magic formula, it’s another cheery novelty – the idea of the quick fix will always seduce lovers of the long gameI got a little teary the other night. It’s a really stupid story. You know that famous scene in Coronation Street when Hilda Ogden comes home from the funeral and there’s a parcel of Stan’s belongings on the table, and she opens Stan’s glasses case and suddenly, despite herself, she starts to weep uncontrollably? Well, it was like that, except rather than a dead husband I was mourning an era of English Test cricket. And instead of a pair of glasses, it was an interview with Graeme Swann on the Rig Biz sports comedy podcast.The bulk of...
Mavericks don’t often get the big jobs – Ben Stokes has shown everyone the value of doing things differentlyAccording to lore some of the very best Test captains are the ones who never got the job. Like Keith Miller – an admired, and audacious, skipper at New South Wales – who never led Australia because he was always on the wrong side of the selectors and in particular Don Bradman, who disliked the way Miller went about his cricket. Or Shane Warne, who won 10 games out of 11 as captain of Australia’s one-day team, but lost out to Steve Waugh on the Test job, a decision, it has to be said, which probably spared the selectors from having to...
Since Ben Stokes took over as captain, the Test side have had all the answers, but there are difficult questions to come in 2023I’ve just been to India with the cricketers from Harrow school, where I coach. There are some very strong players and a bit of depth in the first-team squad at the moment, which means I am lucky enough to be able to rotate players around.I always encourage young players to be all-rounders – you want athletic cricketers who hopefully can contribute with the bat, the ball and in the field – and recently the talent and flexibility in the squad has given me the latitude I need to mix up the side and give more people opportunities....