England’s 1968 tour of West Indies contained incident aplenty off the field but turgid cricket on it, until a gamble that failedThere can’t be many Tests with such an unexpected twist as that between England and West Indies in Port of Spain, 52 years ago this week. Here’s Bruce Barber in the Guardian at the end of day three, under the headline “A disgrace to the name of cricket”: “In the mid-afternoon hours the only critical problem was to decide whether the batting or the bowling plumbed the lower depths …“Some devil’s brew was served at lunch, for after that the name of cricket was tarnished. Carew, a second-change off-spinner who would be lucky to get on most Saturdays in...
Let’s not dress it up. The fast bowler has been miserably treated this winter, and only occasionally by the opposition. England need to take far more care of this once-in-a-generation talentWell, they’ve done it. They’ve broken Jofra. It’s taken nine months, divvied up into one Technicolor English summer and one angst-ridden winter of injury, fudge and friction. But they got there in the end. And – fair play to the lads – in good time too.Spike Milligan had the phrase “I told you I was ill” inscribed on his headstone. Archer might be tempted to post something similar in response to the news he will miss the next three months of cricket with a long-standing stress fracture of the elbow...
As the global football and rugby union triumphs of 1966 and 2003, and now Lord’s last year show, time is not always kindOutside, it is cinereous and damp; February creeps in without an ode to anything, least of all joy. But somewhere, surely, the Cricket World Cup final is being replayed. On Tuesday England men’s cricket team play their first ODI since that magical Sunday last July when the bubbles flowed and the sun cranked up and the burnt-orange bricks of the Lord’s pavilion shouted “England” – though in a carefully non-xenophobic way.When a tied champagne super over gave England victory by dint of more boundaries, when administrators and broadcasters saw sense by showing the game on terrestrial television and...
The multi-talented player has a lot to offer his country - but recent form with the bat shows he is not cut out for Test cricketA rand for Jos Buttler’s thoughts as Mark Wood and Stuart Broad were clouting South Africa’s bowlers around Johannesburg? The invigorating final-wicket stand of 82 contained the kind of pyrotechnics we have become accustomed to from Buttler in white-ball cricket. Cross formats, though, and England’s Test wicketkeeper looks as sorry as a soggy Catherine wheel.It wasn’t always this way; Buttler was deemed a triumph of a selection after he received an unexpected Test recall in May 2018. That pick, a ballsy initial calculation by national selector Ed Smith in his first summer in the job,...
The team’s trip for a 1-1 draw with Australia involved an arduous trek across the globe and came with scandal and drama aplentyEngland’s 500th Test match on foreign soil, which concluded in Port Elizabeth on Monday, prompted a lot of people to reminisce about tours past, but few could hope to match the tale of England’s voyage to their first ever away Test, played in Melbourne in March 1877. It is a tale of death, drama, donkeys and cross-dressing, and one that was thankfully diarised in sometimes excruciating detail by an unnamed player in a series of letters to the Sporting Life.In all 255 days passed between the players setting sail from Southampton and their return to London’s Charing Cross...