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...
If the format is to thrive in the face of T20’s popularity, we must shelve old ideas about how the game is supposed to be playedLate Monday morning at Trent Bridge and Joe Root, 164 not out, is batting against Tim Southee. In the Daily Telegraph the previous week Geoffrey Boycott explained to his readers that Root is a better batsman than his teammates because, unlike them, he “doesn’t play” Twenty20 cricket. “You never see Root play the scoop, ramp or any fancy shots,” Boycott wrote. “His technique is honed and has been from a young age to play proper cricket.” Now Southee is bowling just outside Root’s off stump, looking to take the ball away. It is only the...
The batter forgot the typical Test rules and played as if it were a one-day game, destroying New Zealand with extravagant ease“Root’s bloody out,” the old man gasped. It had happened while he and his wife were fetching fresh cups of tea. “So who’s this batting?” she asked. He craned his head sideways so he could try to read from the big screen. “Jonny Bairstow. Then it’s Stokes, Foakes and the bowlers.” He sucked his teeth. “They ought to shut up shop or they could lose this.” She pursed her lips, clearly unsure whether or not she agreed. But he was wearing a Nottinghamshire cricket club tie and had, you guess, watched a lot of cricket here over the years....
The Surrey batter’s rich talent is clear but doubts had been raised about his ability to fulfil that promise at the highest level“Two!” shouted Ollie Pope. Joe Root wavered at the striker’s end, his bat in his ground, his weight on his front foot. “Two!” shouted his teammates on the balcony. Root had one eye on the ball racing away over the square and the other on the fielder haring in towards it from the deep. “TWO!” shouted the crowd. Pope was coming anyway, dead-set on finishing the last run he needed for his hundred. He, and everyone else in English cricket, had been waiting a long time for this, and he wasn’t going to waste even one more ball...
England set about chasing New Zealand’s first innings with an abandon not seen from them for several years in TestsTickets for this Test went on sale last September, and so the vast majority of fans at Trent Bridge on Sunday will have reserved their seats months in advance. Really, you have to admire the leap of faith involved there.Batting collapses. Erratic weather. Covid postponements. For much of the last few years, buying a ticket to watch England play Test cricket has been an act of the purest optimism: the sporting equivalent of playing the lottery. Continue reading...