Rory Burns and Joe Denly can open, and they are joined by Keaton Jennings, Jos Buttler and Adil Rashid – but great sides have a rock solid opening pairPerhaps Ed Smith has lost his touch. Almost for the first time since he became England’s national selector in May he has announced a Test squad without surprises. Generally this is a good thing, suggesting stability, the ship on a steady course and sailing smoothly towards its destination with the usual, reliable crew. But that is not quite the case at the moment.Great sides have a rock solid opening pair and, whoever Smith and his fellow selectors picked on Friday, that was not going to be the case for England this autumn...
Series victory against India was a fillip as was Joe Root’s century but who opens the batting in Sri Lanka is no clearerThe players deserve their rest after a whirlwind five-Test series completed in record time, which has enchanted those able to watch it. The margin of victory, 4-1, compared with 3-1 in 2014, is a bit of a puzzle since India competed far better this time around, especially when the ball was in the hands of their pacemen and the bat in the hands of their captain, Virat Kohli. But by the Oval both those parties had run out of steam.In at least two Tests the outcome was in doubt during the final innings. As a consequence the cricket...
Rashid had had a fruitless series until he dismissed both centurions to trigger England’s final canter to Test victoryEarly on this final day, when it looked as if the fifth Test would drift rather than sprint towards its likely outcome, the idea of filing a column with some series awards had begun to take shape. Adil Rashid was up for at least one. Perhaps Rashid might get Best Walking Around for his “invisible” game at Lord’s, where he walked close to 10 miles from midwicket to deep fine-leg without taking a catch, bowling a ball or batting. He might even have been an outside shot for the coveted Strangest Selection, given his recurrent inactivity and the rage generated in Yorkshire...
England opener is certain to tour this autumn, thanks to selector Ed Smith’s belief that there are better days aheadAt lunchtime of the third day of this Test Ed Smith appeared on BBC Test Match Special and suggested Keaton Jennings would be going with England to Sri Lanka to play in the autumn Test series. England would not want to go with two new openers, Smith said, bearing in mind Alastair Cook’s imminent retirement. To which the most reasonable answer might have been: of course not, you’ll want three of them at the very least.In the process England’s chief selector confirmed two things. First, Jennings is clearly one of the luckiest cricketers ever to spend the large part of two...
The retiring England opener had his moments in one-day cricket but always put the Test game firstWhen Alastair Cook made his Test debut against India, following a 10,000-mile dash from the Caribbean to Nagpur as an 11th-hour replacement for the stricken Marcus Trescothick, back home in England Leo Sayer was top of the charts with Thunder in My Heart.This was not 1977, but 2006, and Sayer’s original single was back in vogue thanks to a remix by the house DJ known as Meck. Nevertheless, it was a different time, with cricket in the UK about to begin life behind the paywall of Sky after the heady Ashes summer the previous year, the radical new Twenty20 Cup three seasons old and...