While selectors have admitted they do not expect consistency with this opening batsman that is exactly what he has given them with six single figure scores in 10 inningsIt was a sticky morning at Lord’s, the sort when even a short walk makes your shirt cling to your skin. And the strike meant everyone had hiked in and arrived red and glistening. There was a lot of talk about what the morning would bring, and given the conditions, an expectation the ball would swing. England had a new one due, too, three overs the start of play, and, as always, the two of the very best men to use it. The odd thing was that they ended up standing in...
The Proteas opener has come into the Test side via the Surrey Premier League and his stoic presence frustrated EnglandSo there is a story about Sarel Erwee, and how he used to hang with the South African middle-distance runner Andre Olivier when they were kids. Their fathers had played Currie Cup rugby together for Natal back in the 1980s, but the kids’ game was cricket. They used to play it on the strip in front of the Erwee’s garage door, and they had three house rules. One was that if you hit it over the fence it was a six, another was that if you hit it into the flower beds it was a wicket, and the last was that...
Ben Stokes was not alone in his inability to withstand 90mph in-duckers as South Africa made impressive start to first TestThe Lord’s clock had already ticked past 1pm by the time Anrich Nortje turned to bowl the final ball of the morning, scowling his game-face scowl as he glanced up at Ben Stokes: a genuinely terrifying expression, the face of a man with a deep and irresolvable sense of injustice, who can also – did we mention this? – bowl 97mph chest-thudding in-duckers.Nortje really is a wonderful fast bowler. Here, his morning was split between two short spells, one from each end. He isn’t tall, but has a fearsome whippy strength, skips off his back foot into a thrilling catapult...
Yorkshireman has been marginalised in the past, but England are playing to his strengths now and reaping the rewardsAcross this summer Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes have made it a point of principle to back their players absolutely in public, while building a team environment that is marked most of all by absolute positivity. They will not have had any one player in mind when they came up with this approach, but they have inadvertently created the perfect circumstances for Jonny Bairstow to shine – and the results have been explosive.He is someone who rarely looks happy on the field if he is not happy off it, someone whose confidence can sometimes be fragile. There’s one moment that really stands...
Infuriating meat-munching tropes obscure the real secrets behind the Proteas conveyor belt of fast-bowling talentSome time during the second one-day international between England and South Africa, while Anrich Nortje was unleashing thunderbolts in the Manchester gloom, the BBC’s lead commentator, Jonathan Agnew, wondered why the Proteas possess a seemingly endless supply of fast-bowling talent. A number of variables were mentioned but one in particular was cited as the primary reason: “Raw meat-eating Afrikaners.”Agnew then reached for a collective noun for these brutish seamers who feast on biltong from the time they can chew. The Beeb’s statistician, Andy Zaltzman, whose father is South African, offered the term “herd”. Continue reading...