After England’s heavy defeat to India at Trent Bridge, captain Root must lead from the front at the Ageas Bowl Related: Jonny Bairstow ‘desperate’ for England wicketkeeper role after injury Continue reading...
After winning three successive Tests England’s coach has not been widely heralded but Trevor Bayliss has shown that he is more astute than he lets onIt was not so long ago – after the first Lord’s Test of the summer, when Pakistan defeated England by nine wickets – that several sages were quick to start suggesting immediate replacements for Trevor Bayliss as the coach of England’s Test team.They felt able to conclude Bayliss was somehow a fine one-day coach but useless in the Test arena. This was the cutest of arguments somehow differentiating the qualities Bayliss can offer by the colour of the ball in play. It was mostly convenient, headline-making nonsense triggered by England’s poor run in Test cricket....
The world’s best Test bowler had the No 1 batsman’s measure for much of the second day of the first Test yet India’s captain punished England’s other bowlers in scoring 149Virat Kohli does not care to talk about the 2014 tour any more. After four years it seems the India captain has grown sick of being asked about it. But he did open up on it once, in 2015. “I put too much pressure on myself,” he said in an interview with Cricket Monthly. “I made it seem like a big mountain in front of me and once I was not able to scale it I was really disappointed.” Related: Virat Kohli’s brilliant century frustrates England in India fightback Anderson...
Recent visits have been mired in controversy but Virat Kohli’s team will play five Tests and hopes are high for a return of the sporting values that once characterised the tourThe Maharaja of Porbandar was a better captain than batsman, a fact that, it has to be said, had very little to do with his leadership. The Maharaja was India’s leader on their very first Test tour of England, back in 1932.When it was over, the joke was that he’d bought more Rolls-Royces than he scored runs. Which was unfair, since the scorebooks show that he made a combined total of eight in the matches he played, and even the most generous estimates are that he only had seven Rolls...
Moeen Ali and Chris Woakes give their first-hand experience of playing alongside India’s biggest starDue to GDPR, you may need to resubscribe to The SpinThe last time an incumbent captain of India joined an English county side was in 2000, when Sourav Ganguly pitched up at Lancashire. The story goes that early on, such was their overseas signing’s attitude that he handed his batting partner, one Mike Atherton, his sweater during a break in play with orders to run it back to the dressing room.It’s a great line but, sadly, one that is apocryphal, or has at least been spun to such an extent that Muttiah Muralitharan would have been be proud. Atherton did briefly find himself holding said cable-knit...