What we talk about when we talk about cricketing dads isn’t as simple as Bazball | Jonathan Liew

As rain scuttled day three memories flooded back of our annual trip to watch England lose at cricket, and the sense of two lives drifting apart

The rain came to Edgbaston early on the third afternoon, with the Australians still batting and a nasty swirling wind that whipped you in the face like a wet towel.

Edgbaston, it has to be said, is not the most auspicious place to be when it rains. Most of the seats are entirely open to the elements, and so when the weather hits the only places to take shelter are the poky little gangways at the bottom of each stand. And so here we cowered and shivered, pressed up against roughly 2,000 other punters all jostling for this same tiny parcel of dry land, patiently waiting for Damien Martyn and Adam Gilchrist to resume their innings. Dad sipped a cold pint. I drank tea out of a flask. We didn’t talk much. We never talked much.