If it did not quite match last year at Headingley, this win over Pakistan shows a team at their best when the odds are longestThe Observer’s official policy about the use of swear words is right there in the official style guide, between the entries on Swaziland and swingeing. “We are more liberal than most newspapers,” it says, however, “we should use such words only when absolutely necessary to the facts of a piece, or to portray a character in an article; there is almost never a case in which we need to use a swearword outside direct quotes.” Which, yes, all makes good sense. Only, I’d guess the person who wrote it never had to take on the job...
The 17-year-old has made a big impact as part of an entertaining Pakistan attack that has everything a side could wantThe first thing you notice about Naseem Shah is his action. It’s smooth and slick and sideways-on, as if the unnatural act of bowling fast were a perfectly instinctive thing, and those strange, awkward contortions of legs and arms, the leap and twist, the tangle of limbs, were all as simple and obvious to him as putting one foot in front of the other. His coach, Waqar Younis, once said it reminded him of watching Dennis Lillee bowl, which is rare praise. And that’s what the fielders were crying out to him in between deliveries, “Lillee Shah! Lillee Shah!” Whip,...
Wicketkeeper was a shadow of himself – and the player England believe he is – after dropped catches and fluffed run-out chanceThe ball was one of the better ones Dom Bess had bowled. It flew in a loop and as Shan Masood lunged out it landed, bit on the pitch and spun away, moving just enough to catch the outside edge of his bat.Masood snapped his head back to watch the catch but by the time he had turned around Jos Buttler had already missed it. The ball hit the heel of the wicketkeeper’s thumb and bounced away towards slip. It all happened so quickly, the merest split-second, that the commentators were not even sure if Masood had hit it....
The physical distance between the two cricket teams in recent years has created an emotional distance tooWhen Yuvraj Singh, the Indian all-rounder with balls and bravado, ice-cold chaser and hot-flush finisher, announced his retirement last week – there was a flood of love on social media. Not only from his brothers in blue – Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli – but his cousins the other side of the great partition: Shoaib Malik and Shoaib Akhtar.Yuvraj, whose career included India’s world T20 win in 2007 and their 2011 World Cup victory, as well as a cancer diagnosis and a subsequent recovery, made all of his three Test centuries against Pakistan, one in Lahore, one in Karachi and one on home soil...
David Warner and Aaron Finch laid a platform for a huge score but middle order’s failure to capitalise left Starc with work to doFor the second time in two World Cup wins, Mitchell Starc was the saviour for Australia. At Taunton on Wednesday, Pakistan had looked to have no chance to chase 308 when they slipped to 160 for six but from there the lower-order resistance from the captain, Sarfaraz Ahmed, and his big-hitting bowlers Hasan Ali and Wahab Riaz had built momentum. By the time Pakistan needed 54 from 48 balls, with Wahab well set on 39, it felt irresistible.Enter Starc, first tying things up with a tight over conceding three runs, then bursting past Wahab with pace to...