The veteran England bowler and India’s tailender will be forever linked after the most expensive over in 145 years of Test cricketIndia are nine down, the last pair are in, and Stuart Broad knows exactly what he wants to do. Bounce them. Jasprit Bumrah is in and Bumrah can’t bat, not really. You can count his career average on your fingers. He’s only made one fifty in 12 years of cricket, and after four years in the Test side he has a top score of 34. That was at Lord’s last summer, in the second Test of this same stretched-out series. England tried to bump him in that innings, too, in revenge for the way he had bowled at Jimmy...
England fast bowler took some punishment against India but has the determination and confidence to keep on improvingThe cricket ebbed with the weather at Edgbaston. England’s advantage went with the clouds that blew away in the afternoon and India’s batsmen thrived under a bright blue sky later in the day. It made a long, hard day of it for the bowlers, who found the ground shifted so quickly beneath them that they lost the footing they had secured in the morning.When Matt Potts started bowling his spell to Rishabh Pant, he had taken two for 39; when he finished it, he had two for 72. A four through cover, two through point, two more to long leg, another through mid-wicket,...
This series will be remembered for England’s new dazzle but New Zealand’s resolute middle-order pair have kept games aliveFarewell then, Daryl Mitchell and Tom Blundell. However it concludes on Monday this series will chiefly be remembered for the rebirth of England in a new, thrilling and at least temporarily successful form, but this granitic pair will stand forever at its heart. While their opponents threw their wild and colourful brushstrokes, Mitchell and Blundell patiently set about resculpting the record books.They came into the fourth day at Headingley with their final partnership of the summer in its infancy, only seven runs in, and with England knowing an early breakthrough would almost certainly mean the game concluding swiftly and in their favour....
Opener’s flashy 25 was of a piece with the McCullum ethos but he could do with a bit more fear, and a return to his countyAnd frankly, were we not entertained? There were times during Zak Crawley’s blustery, tempestuous second innings at Headingley when you wondered whether we were watching a kind of brilliant performance art, perhaps even a sort of interpretative dance in which a 24-year-old man attempts to express the full gamut of human emotion via edges alone.Either way you could argue that there is no player in this all-singing England team fulfilling his brief more perfectly than Crawley. Continue reading...
England still have a frail top order and an unbalanced attack but this team do not need to dwell on failings from the pastShortly after half past five a wild and barbarous noise consumed Headingley, the sort that brings local residents to their windows and the day-trippers in the hospitality boxes streaming out on to the balconies.A few of the dozing members in the pavilion may even have been stirred from their evening slumbers. Out in the middle Stuart Broad was pumping his arms like a preacher. England’s slip cordon were clapping in time, beating out a fearsome tribal rhythm. Continue reading...