For the new England Test coach Brendon McCullum, the job will be feeling a lot bigger now than it did this time last weekSome time in the middle of the afternoon Brendon McCullum quit his position on the balcony, where he had been sitting all through the morning, and disappeared back into the pavilion. He was gone for an hour or so, long enough that you started to wonder if he had clocked that he still had time to make the quarter-to-nine flight from London Heathrow which, with a couple of changes in Dubai and Melbourne, could have had him back in New Zealand by three o’clock Monday morning. Given the way the game was going at the time, he...
The New Zealand No 11 battles for personal milestones with Daryl Mitchell in a match-warping inningsThe batter powered a drive down the ground for four and punched the air with joy. His teammate approached from the other end to offer a fist-bump, then upgraded to a full hug. History had been made: Trent Boult had become the most prolific No 11 in Test history, level with Muttiah Muralitharan on 623 runs.Briefly and entertainingly, he and Daryl Mitchell, grinning behind their grilles, battled for personal milestones, Boult desperate to become the best of all worst batters, Mitchell to complete a first career double-century before he ran out of partners. Their team’s total was already good enough for little else to matter,...
The Trent Bridge groundsman’s warning proved prophetic as Ben Stokes made the right call but saw New Zealand benefitThere is a shamanistic mystery to the reading of a wicket. Many experienced players concede it is something they just aren’t good at, a mystical skill that never settled upon them, vaguely akin to the interpretation of tea leaves and the conjuring of visions from crystal balls. And Trent Bridge had produced a real puzzle.The groundsman, knowing more about this wicket than most, warned before play that this would be a good toss to lose. With grass on the pitch and clouds in the sky the obvious decision was to bowl – which is what Ben Stokes duly did – but there...
England’s captain lives up to his cliche against New Zealand but cricket remains a secret party in apathetic NottinghamIn Gedling, an unnamed resident was awarded £100 in compensation by the council over missed garden waste collections. There was dismay in Bulwell at the announcement that the local branch of Boots would be closing in August. Meanwhile, a furious mother from Huthwaite accused Thorpe Park of “ruining” a family holiday by banning her from its Stealth ride on account of the fact that she only has one arm. “Having to get off the ride was very degrading,” said Lisa Johnstone, “and made my son nervous.”Clearly, a busy news day in Nottingham. Perhaps it was hardly surprising, given everything else going on...
Ben Foakes and Joe Root excelled in the Lord’s win that provided plenty of talking points besides the hefty price of ticketsAfter slipping in his socks in the Oval dressing room last summer and ruling himself out for three months with a torn left hamstring, Ben Foakes might have been forgiven for thinking a prolonged Test career was not to be. Over the course of three-and-a-half years, before last Thursday, he had played just 11 Tests, all of them abroad, as England threw the gloves between Jos Buttler and Jonny Bairstow like an undecided suitor. But at Lord’s, Foakes finally got to play a Test at home, and he was quietly excellent. He let just one bye whistle past, organised...