LEE PAYNE

Category: Sport

  • England seal a superb series whitewash

    England vs New Zealand
    3rd Test (of 3)
    Headingley, Leeds
    23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th June 2022
    Result: England (360 & 296-3) beat New Zealand (329 & 326) by 7 wickets
    England win the series 3-0

    England received the trophy after winning the series 3-0

    It was only innate English pessimism that put any doubt in the ability of our re-energised Test team to knock off the 113 runs required to win the third Test and seal a 3-0 series whitewash.

    Tickets for the final day at Headingley were free, just as they were at Trent Bridge last week, but some stayed away as grey Yorkshire skies on Monday morning brought showers of rain that prevented any play until after lunch. I think allowing free entry on the last day of the matches in this series has been a great idea, and I suspect a deliberate ploy to get the fans back in love with Test cricket, which had been in a desperate state over the last couple of years.

    With an entire session lost to the weather, part of me was watching the clock, worrying whether England would have enough time to seal the victory. I was a fool – once they did manage to get on the field, they had it done and dusted in just over an hour.

    Before this series, chasing anything more than 250 would have been daunting, but in a very short space of time Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have the squad believing they can win from any position. At Trent Bridge, they chased 299 in a mere 50 overs and in Leeds they went after the target of 296 at more than five runs an over. This final act was a formality, a New Zealand side run ragged longing for the plane home.

    Joe Root averaged 99.00 in the series

    It has been a series full of highs for England, but the brightest lights were Joe Root – officially the player of the series – and Jonny Bairstow, so it seemed fitting that they were together at the crease at the end. Root was 86 not out and would surely have gone on to a third century in the series, while in his current form Bairstow is brilliant fun to watch. Confident and totally at ease with his game, on his home ground he followed up his first innings 162 with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it 71 from just 44 balls. With ten to win, he cracked a four off the very much part time bowling of Michael Bracewell and I said out loud: “will he try to finish this with a six?”. Next thing I knew, the ball was sailing into the stands. Jonny, you beauty!

    Jack Leach was the deserved player of the match for taking 10 wickets across the two innings. In my piece about the Trent Bridge Test, I said the Somerset spinner “just doesn’t seem like he’ll ever worry a batter”. He is a very likeable cricketer and is clearly highly valued by his team mates, so it was nice to see him do so well but I maintain that if England are going to dominate in Tests they will need to find a better spin bowler. Ollie Pope also had a good series, playing at number three for the first time. He rounded off his series with an 82 to go with the hundred he scored in Nottingham. Matty Potts bowled some excellent spells and, in his captain’s words, appears to have taken to international cricket “like a duck to water”, while Jamie Overton did not look out of place on debut, scoring a superb 97 with the bat and sending down some hostile short pitched bowling.

    In fact, the only England player to come out of this series badly is Zak Crawley. He made a tortured 25 on Sunday, during which he ran out his opening partner Alex Lees because he was too busy admiring his own shot, played flashy drives at deliveries that weren’t there to be driven and finally slapped a dreadful shot into the hands of Kiwi skipper Kane Williamson. He looks utterly out of his depth, but is in the squad for the India match next week. With a break after that until the South Africa series in the middle of August, it seems he may have a chance to get some runs for Kent, because surely he will need them if he’s going to keep his place.

    Zak Crawley scored just 87 runs in 6 innings in the series

    So, having gone into this series with one win in their last seventeen Test matches, England are celebrating a 3-0 clean sweep of the world champions New Zealand. Next up is India at Edgbaston on Friday, followed by three games against South Africa and then the tour of Pakistan in the autumn. The new regime has breathed new life into the red ball side and the fans will be looking forward to, rather than dreading, each fixture. But what of the visitors? It was a year ago that they were crowned the inaugural winners of the World Test Championship, but since then they have lost key players – wicketkeeper BJ Watling and batter Ross Taylor have both retired – and their usually reliable captain Williamson has been out of form. The only partnership England struggled to break was the one between Daryl Mitchell and Tom Blundell, who between them scored more runs than the rest of the New Zealand team combined. They struggled with injuries, Colin de Grandhomme and Kyle Jamieson both going home early, while Williamson missed the second match with Covid. Their team selections were strange, they didn’t play a proper spinner in two of the three Tests and the one when they did he was only given two overs.

    All that aside, however, it needs to be said that it is always a pleasure to play against New Zealand, the true gentlemen of the sport. England have had some terrific tussles with the Black Caps in recent years (this being the obvious one) but they always play the game in the right way and in the right spirit. I look forward to our next meeting.

    Watch the highlights of the fifth, decisive day of the third Test

  • Cricket is better than football

    England vs New Zealand
    2nd Test (of 3)
    Trent Bridge, Nottingham
    10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th June 2022
    Result: England (539 & 299-5) beat New Zealand (553 & 284) by 5 wickets

    Jonny Bairstow’s astonishing century won the second Test for England

    Sport is my strongest passion. My life is essentially a continuous festival of sport, and football and cricket are the headline acts. I love them both, but it might surprise some to learn that in the unlikely situation I was forced to sacrifice one to keep the other cricket would be my number one.

    It’s not easy to argue cricket’s case in the face of a sport that dominates as football does. Governing body FIFA estimates that 4% of the world’s population are active players or referees, and 3.2 billion watched the 2018 World Cup on television. In Britain, it feels like someone you meet is more likely to be a football fan than not and it is often a safe bet to use a following of the game as an ice breaker.

    Cricket is actually the second most popular sport in the world, though the numbers are boosted somewhat by its obsessed following in very large countries such as India and Pakistan. Here, it is not so common to come across a fellow cricket fan (even less so one in their twenties like me) and it at times feels like a passion – a guilty pleasure – to be kept a secret, fearful of hearing some nonsense about it being “boring”.

    I expect many to scoff at this, but I believe cricket is far from a boring sport and actually more exciting than football. You see, in football the sole aim of the game is to score a goal. Everyone watching is waiting to see a goal. Some will say they are interested in the tactical battle or the attractive passing style of play, but deep down they just want to see a goal. Even when a goalkeeper makes a great save, what the neutrals really wanted to see was a goal. Absolute goal fests in high level professional football are, however, very rare – that’s why they get talked about so much when they do come along – so in reality most football fans are disappointed and bored more often than not. People keep watching, keep turning up for each game because maybe, just maybe, the next one will be the one with all the goals in it.

    Every ball of a cricket match is an event. It has lulls of course, every sport does, but it can’t possibly be boring in comparison to football because you could see the equivalent of a goal every few seconds. Each time the bowler approaches the crease, there is so much that can happen. Perhaps a wicket will be taken – stumps flying everywhere, a stunning catch – or maybe the batter will whack it out of the ground, or try a risky reverse sweep. No one has ever unironically enjoyed a 0-0 result in football, either, while in cricket a draw can sometimes be among the most thrilling things ever to happen in any sport.

    Daryl Mitchell scored a century and a half century in the match but was on the losing side

    With three distinct forms of cricket (four if you count the Hundred, which I don’t), the thrills come in many ways. The five day Test match is my favourite and the game that finished on Tuesday, with England winning at Trent Bridge, is one of the best I’ve seen in nearly twenty years as a fan.

    A flat pitch and a small ground meant a total of 1,675 runs were scored, compared to 837 in the first Test at Lord’s last week. 249 boundaries were hit across the five days, a record for a Test match. New Zealand, missing their captain Kane Williamson because he tested positive for Covid on the eve of the match, made the most of being put into bat by racking up 553. Nine of the eleven batters made it into double figures, with Daryl Mitchell adding 190 to his century at Lord’s and Tom Blundell joining him with 106. On Saturday, many were saying that England had gone back to their old ways – they got the decision at the toss wrong, they didn’t bowl well, they were wasting reviews.

    The new approach from the skipper Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum is always to take the positive option, and England were certainly positive with the bat. Scoring more than 500 in the first innings will usually ensure that you don’t lose the Test, at least, but New Zealand remarkably found themselves beaten by five wickets with a whopping 22 overs unbowled on the last evening.

    From Alex Lees starting to express himself as a Test opener with 67 and 44, to Ollie Pope’s long awaited second Test century, Joe Root continuing his astonishing run of form with 176 and Ben Stokes seeing England over the line with 75 off just 70 balls, it has been a series to savour for the batters.

    Then there’s Jonny Bairstow. In my piece about the Lord’s Test, I was dropping Jonny for Trent Bridge and criticising his recent lack of red ball cricket. More fool me. Unleased, given licence to go full on white ball mode, he cracked one of the great Test innings. 136 off 92 balls makes it the second fastest century by an England batter in this form of the game and, though he nicked behind and wasn’t there at the end, he had certainly “broken the back of it” in his words. An extraordinary cricketer.

    England complete a win that will live long in the memory

    At the end of it, England have won a series for the first time in 18 months and go to Headingley for the last match full of confidence. For all the positives, Zak Crawley contributed only 4 runs in the game and Jack Leach sent down some very uninspiring spells of slow left arm bowling. So, will they be tempted into a change for Leeds? Here is who I would pick:

    1. Alex Lees
    2. Rory Burns/Ben Compton
    3. Ollie Pope
    4. Joe Root
    5. Jonny Bairstow
    6. Ben Stokes (c)
    7. Ben Foakes (wk)
    8. Stuart Broad
    9. Matty Potts
    10. James Anderson
    11. Matt Parkinson

    I maintain that there is still a Test match opener in Rory Burns, who scored a timely century for Surrey this week. Ben Compton is still in excellent form for Kent so should also be in with a shout. I expect them to stick with Crawley, mind. They might decide to rest one or both of Anderson and Broad, the veterans having played two in a row. Jamie Overton has been called into the squad. Matty Potts deserves another go. I completely understood the decision to stick with Jack Leach, who never got the chance to make an impact at Lord’s as he left with concussion after about an hour, but it just doesn’t seem like he’ll ever worry a batter. Parkinson should play in his place.

    Just over a year ago, New Zealand sportingly set England 273 to win from about 75 overs at Lord’s. There were no World Test Championship points on the line in that series, so not much to lose. They didn’t go for it, and trundled to 170 for 3 and a draw. It’s incredible how much things have changed. 299 in 72 overs is a stiff ask, and at 93 for 4 even I would have been inclined to shut up shop and take the draw, but this England side are afraid of nothing. That last day needs to be seen to be believed, so I’ve put the highlights video below.

  • A winning start: what I learned from the Lord’s Test

    England vs New Zealand
    1st Test (of 3)
    Lord’s, London
    2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th June 2022
    Result: England (141 & 279-5) beat New Zealand (132 & 285) by 5 wickets

    I’ve looked it up. There were 281 days between England’s men completing an innings victory over India at Headingley on 28th August last year and scoring the winning runs to beat New Zealand at Lord’s yesterday. That forty week gap between Test wins was without doubt far too long for a nation that loves this form of the game as much as we do. It had included a third disastrous Ashes tour on the bounce, the well-intentioned but ultimately ludicrous decision to drop James Anderson and Stuart Broad, and the departure of the captain, the coach and the managing director.

    Joe Root was the player of the match

    It was fitting that Joe Root was the one to get England home. To say he is now able to play freely, unburdened by the responsibility of being captain, isn’t quite right. He was still the best batter in the team when he was leading it. At Lord’s, however, the smile was definitely wider and the shoulders a little lighter. His 115 not out to see England safely to their target of 277 was masterful and it was great to see him enjoying being out there. Root is a special one, who we will not truly appreciate until he is no longer there. He would walk into any previous England side and be one of the first names in a World XI of current male Test players. Surprisingly, this was his first fourth innings century, but it also got him to the landmark of 10,000 Test runs. Only thirteen others have ever reached that number and at the age of just 31 he could well have more than anyone else by the time he calls it a day.

    England got the bowling attack exactly right. Regardless of their age, Anderson and Broad are two of the best there have ever been and simply had to play. Anderson will always get wickets and won’t go for many runs, either. Broad is capable of incredible spells in which it feels as if he turns a match on its head all by himself, as we saw on the third morning when one of his overs brought about three wickets that meant New Zealand went from being in a very strong position to blowing the door open for England.

    Stuart Broad got England back into the match with an inspired spell on the third morning

    Had it not been for the staggering number of injuries currently hampering England’s pace bowlers (they have no fewer than six currently unavailable), Matty Potts probably wouldn’t have been in contention for the squad, let alone making his Test debut. I like the attitude from new coach Brendon McCullum and captain Ben Stokes to give a young man in good form a go and he repaid them with seven wickets. I feel like I’ve seen enough of Craig Overton, the other contender for a place in the side this week, for now. Potts must surely play in the second match at Trent Bridge.

    The unfortunate Jack Leach was withdrawn from the game early on its first morning when he landed heavily attempting to stop the ball getting to the boundary and subsequently showing signs of concussion. The relatively recent addition of concussion substitutes meant that England were able to replace him with someone who could play a full part and they called upon Matt Parkinson, the leg spinner, who had to make his way from Manchester to London. Many had been calling for Parkinson to play in the match anyway, so for them the sight of ‘Parky’ being awarded his Test cap was welcome and overdue. He had been taken to the Caribbean but bafflingly left out, carrying the drinks while the bowling attack toiled. His first and so far only Test wicket was that of Tim Southee to bring New Zealand’s second innings to an end, but in a match dominated by the seamers little can be read into that. He simply has to be given another chance in Nottingham.

    The batting order is still a deep concern. Alex Lees and Zak Crawley opened, as they did in the Caribbean, but Lees is in danger of falling into the trope of looking good but not scoring many runs. His second innings 20 was, according to Michael Vaughan on the BBC coverage, the best runs he’d seen him make for England so far but then he made a terrible decision to leave a Kyle Jamieson delivery that thumped into his stumps and left him looking foolish. Crawley, we’re always being told, has so much talent, and he does – that 267 against Pakistan two years ago and the hundred he made on the West Indies tour earlier this year are proof of that. He’s not been consistent enough, though, and has a James Vinceian tendency to get out the same way all the time (caught behind or in the slips trying a flashy drive). His average is under 30. It seems incredible that England haven’t found the right opening partnership since Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook.

    Zak Crawley so often looks the part but needs more consistent runs

    Ollie Pope is another batter with undoubted talent. I have fond memories of his hundred in Johannesburg against South Africa, an innings that made him look every inch the Test player. He was brought into this match, however, as a number three – a position he’d never previously played in. Another couple of disappointing scores will not have helped to get certain sections of the public off his back.

    This is something I have noticed with the England team of late. Whenever they dismiss a team cheaply, some fans will laud the excellent bowling. If an England batter should be out for a low score, however, it is always because they are not good enough and should be dropped. I was watching the run chase on television and thought that Crawley and Pope – Pope in particular – lost their wickets to brilliant pieces of bowling that they could have done little to prevent. The reaction online was that both were useless and pathetic. I wonder how many of these commenters had actually seen the dismissals at all, or whether they were just waiting to see the fall of their wickets so they could criticise them.

    The next questionable member of the England top order was Jonny Bairstow. He had actually been one of the team’s form players this year, with a century in Sydney and Antigua, but had played no red ball cricket since the Caribbean tour because he’d been at the IPL. It was clear he hadn’t been able to switch his mindset away from the short forms, as a couple of scatty innings saw him bowled both times for not very many. One of the explanations often offered for why England seem to stick to the same underperforming batting line up is that there is no one else waiting in the wings. The early part of the county season has shown this to be untrue, with impressive performances from Harry Brook, Ben Compton and Josh Bohannon giving them genuine options. With the batting once again being spared its blushes by Root and Stokes, it feels like an opportunity was missed to give someone new a go at Lord’s.

    On a happier note, Ben Foakes showed exactly why I’ve been calling for him to be in the side for years. As much as I love Jos Buttler, he just isn’t a Test match cricketer and through his immaculate wicket keeping and digging in to support Root in the run chase hopefully Foakes has cemented his place for the foreseeable future.

    Ben Foakes provided perfect support for Root to see England to victory

    All things considered, this would be the team I would pick for the second Test:

    1. Alex Lees
    2. Zak Crawley
    3. Dawid Malan/Ben Compton
    4. Joe Root
    5. Harry Brook
    6. Ben Stokes (c)
    7. Ben Foakes (wk)
    8. Matty Potts
    9. Stuart Broad
    10. James Anderson
    11. Matt Parkinson

    I think Lees is worth persisting with. I was thinking of replacing Crawley with Compton, but feel there was enough in his performance at Lord’s to give him another go. Dawid Malan is a name that hasn’t been mentioned much recently but he was harshly dropped after the Ashes tour, where he was actually one of England’s better batters. Brook is in amazing form and deserves to play ahead of Bairstow. Parkinson needs another go, even if Leach is fit. The rest of the side are assured of their places.

    In fact, it’s highly unlikely that England will make any changes. As the old saying goes, ‘you don’t change a winning team’. What a pleasure it is to be positive about the England Test team again, to be writing about a win. In some ways we’ve learned very little – we’re still not sure about the top order, we know that Root is class and that Anderson and Broad are still the best – but in others we’ve learned a lot. Setting the summer up with a victory could be huge for this new England team. Let’s hope they can follow it up at Trent Bridge next week.

    Broadcasting is another great interest of mine and it was nice to see Sky Sports back, showing their first live England Test since last September after a winter of BT Sport exclusivity. The commentary team has changed a lot since last year. Michael Holding has retired, David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd has left, Rob Key is now the England men’s managing director of cricket and there was of course the tragic and untimely death of the great Shane Warne. Sky dedicated the whole Test to the Australian legend and his name was never far from anyone’s lips. The TV commentary box at Lord’s has been renamed after him and on the first morning the ribbon was cut live on the coverage. They also used the lunch breaks to show a documentary about Warne. 23 overs into the first day’s play there was an applause for him, a moving moment in which everyone on the field lined up shoulder-to-shoulder to commemorate an icon gone too soon.

    When the Australian Mel Jones resumed commentating after the applause, it was with an emotional break in her voice that was shared by everyone. Jones was part of the commentary team alongside fellow Aussie Mark Taylor (great insight), Kiwi Simon Doull, England white ball captain Eoin Morgan and the stalwarts Nasser Hussain, Michael Atherton and Ian Ward. Even with Mark Butcher going down with Covid before the match, the Sky team is still the best in the business. Holding and Lloyd were the subject of another documentary, Voices of Summer, narrated by the brilliant Charles Colvile. I urge you to watch it, which if you can do here:

  • Winning or entertainment? My last newspaper column of the 2021-22 season

    The topic of why we invest so much of our time, money and emotions into this sport is one I’ve tried to tackle before without coming to any real conclusions. I think it’s a bit like searching for the meaning of life. If you start to think too deeply about it, you realise you have no idea.

    My last newspaper column of the season for the Eastern Daily Press is available to read online now.

  • I bought a 58-year-old football magazine

    Garden centres are usually my idea of hell but a few days ago I went to one that was a bit different. It had all the boring things, of course, like pots and plants, but it also had what they called a ‘retro shop’. An eclectic mix of items for sale with the only thing in common with each other being that they had spent years unused in someone’s house/shed/garage. There were old radios, guitars, weird wooden ornaments; it would take hours to go through it all.

    As a former collector of The Beano and The Dandy, my eyes were drawn to a pile of comics and magazines. While neither of those were anywhere to be seen, there were several Marvel and DC Comics titles, including a couple where the ‘new hero’ Doctor Strange – a character first seen in 1963 and recently played by Benedict Cumberbatch in a film – was mentioned on the front cover. Eventually, I stumbled upon a copy of Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly.

    The August 1964 issue of Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly I bought at the retro shop

    I love this sort of thing. Just like the comics, a magazine is like a time capsule. They quite literally document the time they were published. I have to admit, I’d never heard of Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly. The issue I found in the shop was from August 1964, a full 28 years before I was born.

    The first thing I noticed was that it was in colour. I doubt many people will have seen colour photographs of football matches in 1964. Newspapers were still very much black and white and on the rare occasions a game was televised it would have been in monochrome too, as colour television did not begin broadcasting in Britain until 1967. You can really see this standing out in a newsagent’s.

    I’ve always found something charming about old adverts. They were usually straight to the point and back then there was little regulation of the advertising industry, so the claims made in them were bold to say the least. Look at these two, for example. ‘Actual Tests’ (what actual tests? Who did the tests? What were they testing? How did they do the tests?) prove you can increase your strength 20% in 1 month (how do you measure strength to such degrees?) with astonishing new 6-second exercises! This company even offers to give you your money back if you don’t ‘get the kind of physique girls admire super quick’.

    This one promises to ‘enable to gain up to 6 ins. in height’. I’m pretty sure I get emails about this kind of thing nowadays, but they are usually pledging to help me gain six inches somewhere else.

    I suppose once you had become 20% stronger and 6 inches taller you might then have had the physique that the Manchester City Police were looking for.

    Now for some of the actual football content. As this was a summer issue looking back at the previous season and ahead to the next, the team photographs of the champions of all four English leagues were featured. The Liverpool photo is notable for the presence of both Bill Shankly, who was manager at the time, and Bob Paisley, who was merely ‘trainer’ (first team coach in modern terms) then but would of course go on to take the top job and win six league titles and three European Cups in charge of the Reds.

    Below them are second division champions Leeds, promoted to the top flight under Don Revie. This was the start of a golden period for the club, in which they would be league champions twice and win the FA Cup in 1972. Several of the stars of that side were already present – Billy Bremner, Jack Charlton, Norman Hunter and Johnny Giles.

    This might have been my favourite page in the whole magazine. Readers would write in, offering to exchange, for example, ‘Man. Utd. [programmes] for Sunderland and Arsenal’. Charmingly, many would also seek pen pals so they had someone to talk about their interests with by letter. When you think about it, this was an early form of social media. People have always wanted to reach out to others, it’s just that these days you simply write a tweet and can be bombarded with abuse just seconds later. The best one on this page, for me, was from S. Baird of Accrington, who was offering ‘200 First Division Autographs’ in exchange for ‘Screaming Lord Sutch Wig and Top Hat’. So many questions.

    With my beloved Norwich City dropping like a stone towards the Championship once again, I scoured the magazine for mentions of the team in the hope that things might have been going slightly better in 1964. Alas, the second division table has us sixth from bottom.

    Now we come to the letters page. Paul Carter from Liverpool wanted football to do more for charity. The Charity (now Community) Shield had been going for decades by this point, so he can’t claim the credit for that, but football is certainly used for fundraising purposes on a frequent basis now.

    Finally, I give you D. Kilbride, who doubted Bobby Moore’s suitability to be the captain of England and suggested Jimmy Armfield be given the job instead.

    Two years later…

    Thanks for reading.

  • A draw – but for England, it will almost feel like a win

    This article was originally submitted to another website on Saturday 12th March but not published.

    Cricket being the glorious game it is, after five long days in Antigua the first Test between the West Indies and England ended in a draw and both sides move on to Barbados with the series level at 0-0.

    England really could do with winning in the Caribbean. They spent December and January being humiliated by Australia, a 4-0 Ashes thumping that was so bad the coach and the ECB’s managing director of cricket both lost their jobs. With the team’s pathetic top order batting causing outrage, they made the baffling decision to leave their two best bowlers at home. Joe Root remains as captain, but it would seem only because there are no other candidates for the role.

    The ‘red ball reset’ began by batting first, with Alex Lees on debut opening with Zak Crawley. By lunch, England were 57 for 4. Same old story. However, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes and Ben Foakes then dug in and Bairstow completed a fine century, his eighth in Tests. From that dreadful start the tourists managed to post 311.

    Gareth Copley/Getty Images Sport

    Pressure would have been on Chris Woakes (with a poor record away from home) and Craig Overton taking the new ball in the absence of Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad. They had to perform to quieten the talk about the two greats.

    They didn’t. England were poor with the ball as the West Indies openers got off to a flying start. They were almost lucky to make the breakthrough, Overton having John Campbell caught down the leg side. From 83-0, the home side were reduced to 127-4. Nkrumah Bonner made an excellent 123 off 355 balls in an innings where the next highest score was 55. The Windies made England toil, keeping them in the field for nearly 158 overs. The tourists also lost the extra pace of Mark Wood, yet again injured – this time an elbow – and unable to bowl for the rest of the match.

    It’s fair to say that the Antigua pitch wasn’t a shining example of a good surface for Test cricket. It was flat, slow and lifeless. England lost Lees for six in the second innings, a disappointing debut for the Durham batsman, but Crawley and Root made serene progress and both made centuries. Everyone knows the class of Root, but Crawley’s innings will give him huge confidence and likely cement his place in the team for the rest of the year at least. On the fifth morning they were looking to score quickly to set up an unlikely chance of forcing a win so they lost regular wickets but Dan Lawrence scored an enterprising 37 off 36 balls to set the West Indies a target of 286.

    Reduced to 67-4, England sniffed victory but Bonner and Jason Holder dropped anchor and fairly calmly batted out what was always like to be a draw. Stokes was only supposed to be used ‘sparingly’ as a bowler, as he continues to recover from a side strain, but bowled 28 overs in the first innings and 13 in the second. Questions will be asked as to whether that was wise. Eyebrows will also be raised at England’s insistence on playing on until there were just five balls remaining in the match, when it was possible for the two captains to shake hands and agree on a draw much sooner – this sparked an angry response from Carlos Brathwaite on the TV coverage, who claimed that England had shown their hosts ‘disrespect’.

    Gareth Copley/Getty Images Sport

    The fact that England came anywhere near winning this match after being 57-4 on the first day will give them a boost. So, too, will the performance of Jack Leach, who was the main wicket taking threat and exerted the control that had abandoned him in Australia. Foakes has made a welcome (and long overdue) return to the Test team and his immaculate glovework is a joy to behold.

    Wood is unlikely to be fit for the second Test, with it starting just four days after the end of the first, so it looks like a choice between uncapped bowlers Saqib Mahmood and Matthew Fisher for Barbados – but those decisions can be made later. For now, England can reflect on a positive start to their tour of the Caribbean.

  • This one’s for you, dad…

    Latest newspaper column

    As you probably know by now, I write a column for the Eastern Daily Press. It’s about Norwich City FC and there are four of us who write one to be published in the paper on a Tuesday during the football season. We rotate, so I have one every four weeks.

    When I realised that it would be my turn on Tuesday 1st February, thoughts turned to my dear old dad. On 1st February 2014, he passed away at the age of 69 from Alzheimer’s disease. He was a mad Norwich fan and is largely responsible for me supporting the club, so I thought it would be nice to dedicate my column to him.

    Click here to read it now, and if you happen to be in a shop tomorrow you can read it in the paper as well.

  • We won a game of football! | Norwich Nuggets: Everton (h)

    Adam Idah scored as Norwich beat Everton 2-1 at Carrow Road

    Morale has been so low around Norwich City Football Club recently that I didn’t even go to the Boxing Day game against Arsenal – I was pretty scathing in my latest column in the paper, too. Six straight defeats, no goals for more than nine hours, rock bottom of the league – I didn’t head to Carrow Road today in a particularly optimistic mood.

    Wonders will never cease, however, and a couple of crazy minutes in the first half followed by a tense and scrappy second half brought the result of Norwich 2-1 Everton. We won a game of football! So what have we learnt?

    Adam Idah may have found a role in this team

    I’ll be honest, I’ve never really rated Adam Idah. He doesn’t score enough goals for me and he gets knocked off the ball too easily. But today might just be a turning point for him. Instead of playing as an out-and-out striker, he played in a position behind Teemu Pukki and it really seemed to suit him. His hold up play was as good as I’ve seen it, he helped the midfield out when they needed it and when his chance came he took it well for his first Premier League goal. One swallow does not make a summer, but this is definitely worth persisting with.

    Let’s not lower ourselves to time wasting, please

    I get it. Norwich hadn’t won for such a long time in the league that they’ve sort of forgotten how to do it. In the rare situation of having a lead to protect, they seemed to start wasting as much time as possible from a ludicrously early point in the second half. When Richarlison scored a rather excellent overhead kick to make it 2-1, we went into overdrive with the running down of the clock.

    Some fans will lap this up, as so many teams have done it to us, they will have loved seeing Norwich do it to someone else. But I’d rather we didn’t lower ourselves to that level. I would prefer the team to have the belief that they can see a game out properly. The feigning of injuries made for a scrappy game.

    Watford away is a massive game

    As the clock ticked slowly through the seven minutes of added time, it felt like a crucial point in Norwich’s season – if they were to concede and only come away with a point, it would be a crushing blow that might well have put the final nail in the coffin. By seeing it out and getting the three points, suddenly the relegation battle is not over and with Watford and Newcastle drawing today our next game could see us move out of the bottom three.

    Deliciously, our next game is at Watford, live on TV on Friday night. There’s every chance we’ll lose, but… you never know. It’s the hope that kills you.

    Norwich held on for a massive three points

  • ‘He’s a coach. He knows what he’s doing’ | Norwich Nuggets: Southampton (h)

    Oh, how I’ve missed that winning feeling. Walking amongst the crowds back to my car after Norwich City 2-1 Southampton, there was a buzz that had been missing so far this season. Having won none of their first ten games, the Canaries now have back-to-back Premier League victories for the first time since 2016 and, having failed to win on any of the previous 32 occasions they had gone behind in a top-flight game, they secured the three points today.

    New Norwich manager Dean Smith adorned the front of the matchday programme

    I overheard someone talking on his phone near the burger van outside Carrow Road after the game. He was telling whoever was on the other end, quite rightly, that Norwich were poor in the first half (that was not the word he used, mind) but that new head coach Dean Smith ‘sorted it out at half time’ and said ‘he’s a coach. He knows what he’s doing.’ I agree with this unknown gentleman and, for me, that was the most impressive outcome from the game. City were dreadful in the first half and were very lucky to go in level at the break. Smith clearly noticed what was going wrong and corrected it, as they were a far better side when they came back out and deserved their win.

    Max Aarons is more of a winger than a full back

    Southampton’s Kyle Walker-Peters must not have been able to believe the amount of space he had on the Carrow Road pitch in the first half. The number of times that the ball was pinged to him completely unguarded beggared belief, and this was the fault of Max Aarons. There is a lot to admire about the academy product but he is constantly drawn out of position and it feels like he might be better suited to playing on the wing, running at the opposition and putting in crosses, with a more defensively minded player at full back.

    Good to see Cantwell and Gilmour back in the fold

    Billy Gilmour grew into the game for Norwich City

    Daniel Farke seemed to have given up on both Todd Cantwell and Billy Gilmour towards the end of his tenure. It was positive to see both players very much involved with Dean Smith’s first couple of training sessions and certainly to see both in the starting eleven today. Cantwell didn’t have the best of games, clearly lacking in match sharpness and appearing to pull a muscle before being substituted at half time, but Gilmour grew into the game and his well-directed corner allowed Grant Hanley to head home Norwich’s winner. The Scot on loan from Chelsea was named the sponsor’s man of the match.

    Off the bottom – is the great escape on?

    It feels like a long time ago now but Norwich finally got their first win of the season at Brentford before the international break and backed that up with another three points today. Combined with the boost that a change in manager usually brings, there is a growing hope that City might be able to grind out enough points to stay in the Premier League. They have moved off the bottom of the table, thanks to Newcastle remaining winless, and appear to be on an upward trajectory. At the very least, they are no longer cut adrift.

    Captain Grant Hanley headed the winning goal for Norwich from a corner

  • Thoughts on Norwich City and the new manager

    Earlier today I was contacted by someone from a website looking for a Norwich fan to answer a couple of questions about how the season has been going, what went wrong for Daniel Farke and what the hopes were for the new manager Dean Smith. As it turned out, by the time I’d written my piece they had found someone else and didn’t need me. So it doesn’t go to waste, here’s what I wrote:

    Verdict on season so far

    It couldn’t have gone much worse. I approached Norwich’s return to the Premier League with some trepidation because I feel as fans we are still damaged from the awful experience we had last time. When the fixture list came out and gave us the champions, the previous champions and the FA Cup winners in our first three games I was concerned that we would be playing catch up and low on confidence from a very early stage and that is exactly what happened.

    Dean Smith is now the manager of Norwich City

    Verdict on manager

    There will always be a lot of love for Daniel Farke from Norwich fans. When he took over the club had a poor squad, full of players who either weren’t good enough or didn’t want to be here. He played a big role in the development of James Maddison and the money we received from selling him to Leicester helped to get the club back onto a sound financial footing. I have never seen a Norwich manager with such confidence in youth – Max Aarons, Ben Godfrey, Jamal Lewis, Todd Cantwell and Andrew Omobamidele are just some of the academy products that blossomed under his guidance. He had a real connection with the fans and, in supposedly one of the hardest leagues of them all to get out of, delivered the Championship title twice.

    Sadly, he was never able to crack the Premier League. I had desperately hoped that he had learned from two years ago and this time would take us into the top flight with an attitude of ‘unfinished business’. Unfortunately, he shied away from the attractive, possession-based style of play that had brought us success and tried to make the team play in a way that they weren’t capable of. By the end, he didn’t seem to know what his best eleven was or how to arrange them on the pitch and he simply ran out of road. I have seen the world ‘underwhelming’ used a lot in the reaction to the appointment of Dean Smith (including from myself) but the more I think about it, the more I think he fits. He just needs to find the right combination to get the club feeling good about itself again. I am convinced that the squad have not shown anywhere near to what they can do so far and if he can get them going then I honestly think we could still stay up. Good luck to him, we will be right behind him.