After three days of absurdist back and forth, the first Test ended with England calmly and efficiently knocking off the runsWhen the Jubilee Line tube is within a few stops of St John’s Wood on a Lord’s weekend, there tends to be some indistinguishable moment the personnel completely changes. Should you drift into your phone for a fraction too long you might then look back up and the general public throng will have been replaced by men in tailored suits, one arm holding on to the rails, staring each other square in the eyes, networking intent lurking underneath the gleam. This year New Zealand fans are there too, in 20‑year‑old Black Cap shirts as a sign they come in peace,...
The former captain can now concentrate on his batting and he produced the most enjoyable of his 26 centuries for EnglandThe rain was hard enough to wake the sleeping on Sunday morning, and it was easy to imagine the players were up early to check the weather. It looked a good day for bowling – damp, dark and overcast, as if the English summer had got lost somewhere in the west after sunset the previous evening and was still trying to find its way back around to the ground. Tim Southee and Trent Boult, who have played a lot of cricket here in the past 14 years, knew that conditions don’t get much better for men in their line of...
Whether effective or not, too many of England’s leaders have had to depart under a cloud, tarnishing their reputationThe career of an England Test captain, like a life in politics, always seems to end in failure. Maybe it’s at a tearful press conference after back-to-back thrashings by South Africa. Or by a hastily arranged England Cricket Board statement sent out after a row that also cost the head coach his job. Or off the back of an almighty spat with your star batsman that started when he was caught sending texts to the opposition slating your leadership. Or at the fag end of a slump of form in which the team lost five series in a row. In the end...
ECB shouldn’t be afraid of appointing a short-term leader who can steer the side through a challenging summerOn Friday, Joe Root resigned as England captain and this was one of the better recent days for the England and Wales Cricket Board. It was, at least, one clarification in a fog of uncertainty. There is no chairman at the ECB, no cricket director (though the expectation is that Rob Key will be appointed after the Easter bank holiday), no coach and now no Test captain. Not much room for complacency here. England have not been so rudderless since 1988, the summer of four Test captains.The assumption is that Root jumped rather than being pushed since there is no one around at...
A nice person and an all-time great batsman but after 64 Tests it is still hard to know what a Joe Root side is supposed to look likeThere is a terrifying moment in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner where the crew of the mariner’s ship, lost at sea under a merciless sun, are visited by a mind-blowing vision: a ghost galleon containing only the figure of Death and a sad, pale woman.Alone on their putrid deck, Death and the sad, pale woman – who to be fair, probably expected something more along the lines of cabaret and a buffet – play an arbitrary game of dice for the lives of the (already dying) crew. Continue reading...