England are missing a trick by waiting until the gifted Sussex all-rounder is 27 and need to put a yorker through the rule bookEven with a week to sit on it there is no obvious easing of the dunder-headed inanity that surrounds the England and Wales Cricket Board’s proposed 100-ball competition. On wider reflection this isn’t just a bad idea. It’s more out-there than that, the kind of idea you might expect a precocious toddler to come up with, or some other species altogether: an ambitious sports-marketing chicken with a below average IQ, or a squirrel promoted by a series of unlikely events to a key management role in the national summer sport.Perhaps the only real purpose it has at...
Smaller ECB panel puts greater onus on the head coach Trevor Bayliss to have a significant input into England’s fortunes in all versions of the gameTraditionally after an emphatic Ashes defeat the captain or the coach is jettisoned. But this time the response from the England and Wales Cricket Board has been more measured and decorous than usual. Two months after the defeat in Sydney Andrew Strauss has announced a modest shake-up of England’s selection process.There are obvious reasons why Joe Root and Trevor Bayliss have survived a 4-0 defeat in Australia. Root is a young captain, still coming to the terms with the job. He could be an excellent leader provided he remembers that his prime function is to...
Decision to reinstate England all-rounder for series in New Zealand despite pending trial for affray has puzzling aspectsBen Stokes will be back in the fold and playing for England within four weeks. During the period when Stokes had not been charged by the Crown Prosecution Service after the incident in Bristol in the early hours of 25 September, he was unable to play for England. Now he has been charged, he can play. Which seems a bit odd. Related: Ben Stokes: all-rounder cleared to play for England after affray charge Related: Ben Stokes to get go-ahead from ECB to play in Indian Premier League Continue reading...
The ECB is an easy target but skewing the domestic game to produce more spinners and favour limited-overs cricket looks to have backfiredA stock of explanations and excuses is a valuable bit of any cricketer’s kit and should be kept ready, stashed by bat, box and pads. “The sun was in my eyes. I couldn’t pick it up in this light. My foot slipped. Somebody was moving behind the sightscreen.”England, who, after all, have had no shortage of practice at this, have used some particularly ripe examples over the years. Ian Botham blamed the rain that ruined their chances in a group match against Pakistan at the 1992 World Cup on the team chaplain, Andrew Wingfield Digby “You’re useless, you...
The authorities are ruining so much of the game many love as they concentrate on T20 money and power – and the ludicrous Test final is the last strawThirty years ago, when he was newly retired as a player and before he was canonised (if not yet knighted) for his performances as a jolly old card on Test Match Special, Geoffrey Boycott appeared on the Radio 4 programme In the Psychiatrist’s Chair.The interviewer, Dr Anthony Clare, casually mentioned that cricket was a team game. Boycott denied it. “No, it’s 11 individuals as a team.” What a giveaway, thought the massed ranks of cricket-loving, Radio 4-listening, amateur psychiatrists. Boycott had finally admitted what his contemporaries always claimed: that he played for himself.In Asia, it...