Azeem Rafiq made a low-key return to his former club while fans enjoyed collecting pint pots and some explosive battingA crowd might normally be expected to quieten during breaks in play, but as the afternoon session paused for drinks the volume on Headingley’s famed Western Terrace increased. People cheered as a man dressed as a lobster downed a pint of beer. A group in yellow blazers bantered with an adjacent group wearing orange cassocks, two flocks of brightly coloured parrots screeching loudly enough to be heard on the other side of the ground.Meanwhile, Yorkshire’s decision to ban beer snakes, the comically long stacks of empty pint pots so beloved of cricket fans, forced luminous-jacketed stewards to engage in a series...
The New Zealand bowler delivered one of the greatest opening spells this ground has ever seen to clean up England’s top threeThe long minutes at fine-leg feel like hours. Kicking his heels, tugging at his sleeves, brushing his studs across the clipped grass. Behind him the stands are a riot of colour and song, of bouncing beach balls and idle chatter and the rustle and rumble of punters to and from the bar. Trent Boult sees none of this, hears none of this. He does not walk in with the bowler. The ball is not hit towards him. All he can do is patrol this little parcel of exile, playing the game in his mind, ticking down the seconds until...
It is easier to play aggressively in home conditions but Alex Lees and Ollie Pope also showed encouraging signs for EnglandI remember watching Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes batting together, pounding it all over the ground and thinking to myself this really was the start of a new era. It was 2016 in Cape Town, when the pair put on 399 and hit 13 sixes between them. Trevor Bayliss was a relatively recent appointment as England head coach and we were seeing the impact of his arrival and maybe also the effect of the Indian Premier League.Fast-forward six years and we are at the start of another new era and everyone is talking about the same two batters after the...
The priority is not to wring more money out of broadcasters, but to preserve and find a way to share – not sell – this sport“The world keeps on ending, but every year new people too dumb to know it show up as if the fun’s just started.” John Updike’s creation Harry Angstrom, antihero of the Rabbit novels, may have been musing on life as a weary middle-aged car salesman in rust‑belt America. But he could just as easily have been speculating on the fate of English cricket down the years: a sport that is always in crisis, that is always dying, that has been dying in some form since the day it was born.No doubt the denizens of 18th-century...
The strong 14-man squad head for a rare trip to mainland Europe but will do well to match the drama of the Test teamWelcome to The Spin, the Guardian’s weekly (and free) cricket newsletter. Here’s an extract from this week’s edition. To receive the full version every Wednesday, just pop your email in below:Alec Stewart’s memories of England’s tour of the Netherlands in the summer of 1989 are a little hazy. He was only 26, full of anticipation for his cricket career ahead and yet to make his full England debut. Continue reading...