It has been a vintage season for England’s men despite empty grounds – but a hard financial winter loomsThe way Douglas Adams told it in Life, the Universe and Everything, the world ends right after England win back the Ashes on a glorious late summer day at Lord’s. “The sun was shining on a happy crowd,” Adams wrote. “It shone on white hats and red faces. It shone on ice lollies and melted them. It shone on the tears of small children whose ice lollies had just melted and fallen off the stick. It shone on the trees, it flashed off the whirling cricket bats.” If the last few months have taught us anything much, it’s that there would be...
Since making an impression for England’s under-19s in 2005, his style has evolved while he keeps taking plenty of wicketsThe Sunday after the Lord’s Test in 2005, England’s under-19 team played a one-day game against Sri Lanka at New Road. It was a forgettable business except that Chris Broad’s boy, Stuart, was making his debut and the few spectators there were all chatting about it. He would have stood out anyway, since he was so big and had a shock of blond hair, but they were curious to see the son of someone famous play, someone famous who’d seemed to have stopped playing himself only yesterday. They said the boy had only recently taken up bowling, that he had been...
Rory Burns and Dom Sibley appear to have solved a problem that has blighted the Test team since the playing retirement of the former ECB director of cricketIn the end it took England so long to find a new opening batsman that the man they were trying to replace ended up taking on the job of searching himself. So long, in fact, that he had to quit before he had finished.In the eight years since Andrew Strauss retired in 2012, England have tried 18 different openers in 18 combinations. There was Alastair Cook, obviously, Nick Compton, Joe Root, and Michael Carberry, then Sam Robson, Jonathan Trott, Adam Lyth, and Moeen Ali, Alex Hales, Ben Duckett and Haseeb Hameed, Keaton Jennings...
Anderson, Broad, Archer and Woakes are too good for tourists as they make most of tricky pitch and cloudy dayThis is an old story, but a good one, and worth telling again. Back in the late 1980s, Boris Becker beat Andre Agassi in the first three matches they played against each other. Agassi’s problem was he just could not figure out how to break Becker’s serve. He ended up getting a little bit obsessed and started watching video tapes of his service games on loop to figure out his secret. Then one day he finally cracked it. He realised that Becker had a tell. Before he tossed the ball, he would stick his tongue out. When he was serving wide...
Ghosts of 2014 were banished with a glorious reminder of his skill at the crease to seize England control against West IndiesEngland’s morning collapse may have had the West Indies quicks pondering their options for an early lunch only for Stuart Broad to yomp out to the middle with mischief on his mind.Shannon Gabriel had vaporised Ollie Pope’s hopes of a first Test century on home soil, Kemar Roach had become the first man from the Caribbean to pass 200 wickets since Curtly Ambrose 26 years ago and from an overnight 258 for four the scorecard read 280 for eight. Related: England dominate West Indies after Stuart Broad's assault Continue reading...