World Test Championship can bind supporters worldwide and become a competition every cricketer dreams of winningThe pandemic robbed New Zealand’s cricketers of a much-deserved victory parade on arrival in Auckland on Saturday morning. Instead the World Test Championship mace will now spend the next 14 days in a hotel room with BJ Watling while the team undergo quarantine.With the captain, Kane Williamson, staying behind in England to play in the Hundred, Watling was a fitting choice as its custodian, the now retired wicketkeeper having truly embodied their understated, team-first culture. Zoom calls and room service are no substitute for ticker tape and fans, of course, although the afterglow from their victory over India – and the final as a whole...
Series defeat has shown England’s selections to be muddled with a schedule that does not enhance their Test prospects The last time New Zealand won a Test series in England, back in 1999, England’s fans crowded the outfield and shouted “what a load of rubbish” and “we’re shit and we know we are” at the captain Nasser Hussain during his post-match interview. The mood was a little more forgiving this time around, not because England were any better – they weren’t – but because the opposition were. In ’99, the result dropped England down to the bottom of the world rankings – this time it pushed New Zealand up to the top of them.While England were settling down to the...
The young batsman’s technique is being pulled in different directions by the competing needs of three different formatsIt was hot and close when England’s openers got out to the middle, headache weather, heavy and oppressive. The team were already in some trouble, 85 runs behind, and it was about to get a whole lot worse. It turned out that slender lead was just about as much as New Zealand needed. Rory Burns, England’s one in-form batsman, went first. Burns has been playing so well that he seemed to forget that he was supposed to start all over. He threw a bold drive at the second ball of the innings and sliced it behind to second slip. Related: Second string Kiwis...
Despite making six changes to their team from Lord’s New Zealand have been far too good for Joe Root’s fragile sideIndia have been playing what they are calling an “intra-squad match simulation” at the Ageas Bowl, the highlight of which appears to be an unbeaten 121 from 94 balls by the ever-electric Rishabh Pant against an attack featuring Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma and Mohammed Siraj.Any squad led by Virat Kohli is unlikely to have gone through the motions – you fancy India’s captain would bring his burning intensity to a friendly game of KerPlunk – and they will certainly be more familiar with life in Southampton’s bio-bubble before the World Test Championship final that starts on Friday. India...
Where other bowlers have seen careers ruined by injury, mutterings about girth, depression and homesickness, Anderson is still going strong in his 162nd Test“What’s the secret?” Nasser Hussain asked Jimmy Anderson before the start of this Test. “A lot of it is luck,” Anderson told him. “I’ve been born with a body that can cope with the pressures of bowling.” The rest, he said, was “hunger”, the appetite to work at getting better every day for the past 6,596 days, since he made his Test debut in May 2003. In that time he’s played 162 games, which puts him top of the list, one ahead of his great mate Alastair Cook. Luck and hunger. It’s a short reply to a...