The figures make for grim reading. England’s men’s cricket team, who were world champions in the 50 over format in 2019 and the 20 over version in 2022, have gone out of the Champions Trophy having lost all three of their games.
Brendon McCullum took over as coach of the white ball side in January hoping to bring with him some of the success he has enjoyed since becoming Test coach in 2022. At the time England were in dreadful form and his positivity and uncomplicated tactics transformed both results and the way in which they were achieved. The team beat India with a brilliant run chase at Edgbaston, whitewashed Pakistan in Pakistan and stopped the Aussies winning the Ashes on English soil.
It was hoped that McCullum’s arrival would give a boost to Jos Buttler’s squad, whose form had been indifferent to say the least. The 50 over World Cup was tamely surrendered in India in 2023 and last year they limped through to the semi-finals of the T20 tournament before being comfortably beaten by eventual champions India.
The Champions Trophy, while another ICC global event, is more of a money spinner for the game’s governing body than a tournament that is highly regarded by players and fans. This is the first time it has been staged since 2017, and exists to fill the gap where otherwise there would be no big international tournament.
This particular Champions Trophy has been something of a farce. Three of the matches have been washed out, which is too many in a tournament as short as this, and India’s refusal to travel to play in the land of their bitter rivals Pakistan has seen them enjoy what have been effectively home matches in Dubai. A ridiculous situation – India should have been told that they either play in Pakistan or don’t participate at all. Sri Lanka and the West Indies would have been more than willing to replace them.
So, it’s not as if England’s terrible performance in Pakistan will be worried about for long. But the fact is England are once again the laughing stock of world cricket after spending the last decade building an excellent reputation.
Buttler has resigned and the search for a new captain, most probably Harry Brook, has begun. England don’t play again in white ball cricket until May – it will be interesting to see what the team looks like by then.
England are the champions of Europe. I, and no one else who holds their national pride through the prism of sport, will ever tire of saying that.
The power of sport is incredible. It brings people together, it divides them, it captures the nation’s attention and it even brings about huge changes in society. I am so grateful to have sport in my life and I don’t know what I would do without it. On Sunday afternoon, I rushed home from work to watch the final on TV. A peak audience of 17.4 million tuned into the BBC, making it the most watched women’s football match ever on UK television.
The match itself was an emotional wrangle. It was tense throughout, the two finalists were well matched and clearly the two best teams in the tournament. Ella Toone’s sublime finish gave England the lead in the second half, only for Germany to level through Lina Magull. Tabea Wassmuth dragged England captain Leah Williamson out of position, allowing Magull the space to finish.
At that point, I felt like the Germans just hadn’t read the script. Like the Italian men last year. This wasn’t their story. The Wembley crowd – 87,192, a record for a Euros match for men or women – were desperate for England to go all the way and put the crowning glory on a fantastic tournament. On the radio on the way home from work, I heard a German journalist say “Germany wants to win it. England needs to win it.” He was right. England had done so well, but they really needed to make that final step.
Extra time came and the dreaded penalty shootout was looming. Everyone knows we don’t beat the Germans at penalties. Thank heavens, then, for Chloe Kelly poking the ball over the line from a (North Walsham born) Lauren Hemp corner and putting England back in front with ten minutes to go. The celebrations were wild. For once, England weren’t following the script.
The way England saw out the game was masterful. Keeping it in the corner, drawing cheap fouls from the increasingly frustrated Germans, not giving them a sniff of coming back. Then, the referee (who had a really poor game, by the way) put the whistle to her lips. She waited a couple of seconds and then blew. No one knew what to do with themselves. England had won Euro 2022, the country’s first major tournament victory in football since 1966.
Here, we were embracing each other in pure delight. It feels so good because it happens so rarely. Germany, for instance, were aiming to win the Women’s Euros for the ninth time. It wouldn’t have felt so joyous and momentous for them. England, with the years of dreaming, the heartbreak, the near-misses… it all felt like it was leading up to that moment.
I have spent a lot of time and energy arguing with men – and it is always men – on Twitter about women’s sport. Tired clichés about how ‘no one cares’, ‘the standard is shocking’, ‘they should be in the kitchen’. Well, last night they were categorically rendered incorrect and irrelevant. I just love sport and I don’t care if the people playing it are male or female. The quarter-final against Spain and the final against Germany comfortably matched the quality of any men’s football match I can think of, and I am so proud that this incredibly likeable squad will have inspired women and girls across the country to start playing and to dream big.
It’s been an amazing few years for women’s sport in the UK. England won the cricket World Cup in 2017, Emma Raducanu won the US Open last year at the age of just 18, and the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games are the first to award more gold medals to women than men. It’s wonderful to see.
So, if you’re one of those blokes who avoided the game yesterday because you feel threatened and intimidated by seeing a woman play sport, I have a question for you:
It’s fair to say us Norwich City fans weren’t expecting much from the game against Manchester City. The above is something I overheard a lady in a yellow and green shirt say at the station as I waited for the train.
I had been referring to the game as ‘the massacre’ as it approached. You always hope for the best but the fact that our defence has not exactly been watertight so far this season, Pep Guardiola would be bringing one of the best squads ever assembled and our injury list was so horrific that Stephen King might consider writing a story about it, I honestly feared it could be anything between 6 and 10 nil to Manchester City. The heaviest defeat in Premier League history was suffered by Ipswich, of all clubs, when they were thumped 9-0 by Manchester United in 1995. I hoped that record would not come under threat.
Dereham-born academy graduate Todd Cantwell doubles Norwich’s lead against the champions
What followed was surely one of the most unlikely results ever in football. I wonder if the Norwich players had seen how they were being completely written off and thought ‘we’ll show you’. We were confident enough to play out from the back, not frightened to play the same intricate passing football against the reigning champions as we had played against Rotherham and Millwall last season, we were utterly determined not to let Guardiola’s superstars walk all over us and we ended up playing the Manchester City way better than Manchester City.
With so many injuries that Daniel Farke had to name two goalkeepers on the bench to make up the numbers, it didn’t bode well for a game against a club that could afford to bring world class talent like Kevin De Bruyne, Gabriel Jesus and Riyad Mahrez off the bench. But from those who were fit enough to take the field for Norwich, new heroes emerged. Sam Byram would have been highly unlikely to play had Max Aarons not been injured on England Under 21 duty, but he was fantastic at keeping the daunting Manchester City attack as quiet as possible. Ibrahim Amadou, making his home debut, was so good he picked up the man of the match award. Usually a holding midfielder, Amadou lined up alongside Ben Godfrey at centre half and put his body on the line for the cause.
Ibrahim Amadou was immense for Norwich City
Of course we needed some luck. Aymeric Laporte’s knee injury before the international break meant that the visitors were forced to partner John Stones and Nicolas Otamendi in central defence. The pair played as if they had never previously met and Norwich were able to capitalise with the superb Emi Buendia pinching the ball off Otamendi in the penalty area to set up the third goal. When Raheem Sterling crashed a free header against the post when it looked easier to score, I sat in the Barclay beginning to wonder if something special was happening below me.
This match will live long in the memory and reminds us all why we follow sport. We all make our predictions. We all have an idea of how things are going to play out. Then sport surprises us. A series of events occurs that simply shouldn’t happen. That’s what we got at Carrow Road on Saturday. Write the Canaries off at your peril.
On Sunday I went to Old Trafford for the T20 Blast match between Lancashire and Durham.
Me, my mum and her partner at Old Trafford
A week on from England becoming world champions (I will never get tired of saying that), cricket is enjoying a boost in popularity. The Cricket Paper reports that counties have noticed an increase in ticket sales for the T20 Blast as people who maybe haven’t been to a match for a while, or indeed at all, seize the opportunity to see the game in the flesh.
This includes – crucially – children. Most of the crowd in Manchester, which was huge for a domestic game, were families with youngsters. I’m not a big fan of kids – they are noisy, carry illnesses and can’t sit still for five minutes – but they are vitally important for the future of cricket. They all seemed to be having a great time, and that’s key. Children need to think of going to a cricket match as a normal thing to do, and something to look forward to. They will be the next generation of players and fans and will hopefully pass on their enthusiam to their own kids in years to come.
The players warm up at Old Trafford, Manchester about an hour before the start of play
I had been to Old Trafford before, for the Test match between England and India in 2014, and enjoyed the laid back atmosphere and friendly stewards. This makes it the ideal venue for 20 over cricket compared to, say, Lord’s which I find stuffy and inaccessible. The emphasis was on fun, with the Lancashire mascot Lanky the Giraffe dancing on the boundary before play began.
As for the match itself, T20 is perfect for those who are unfamiliar with cricket. It’s short and sharp and you get to see plenty of big sixes and wickets. Lancashire batted first in their opening home game of the tournament and amassed 189-3, opener Steven Croft top scoring with an unbeaten 65 from 43 balls. The star of the show, however, was Australia international Glenn Maxwell. The world number one ranked all rounder in T20s hit 58 off 33 balls with four sixes. Each boundary was received with loud cheers and a burst of pop music. It was interesting to see how partisan the crowd was, a lot of the people there seemed to feel for the Lancashire cricket team the same way I feel for Norwich City Football Club. They weren’t just there to enjoy a day out, they were there to see the home side win.
Australia international Glenn Maxwell bats for Lancashire in front of a huge crowd at Old Trafford
Durham never looked like chasing the 190 they needed to win and were all out for 117 within 17 overs. Scott Steel had scored 58 from 46 balls but the next highest score for the visitors was 12. Lancashire won by 72 runs and a couple of run outs were enough to secure Maxwell the player of the match award.
Maxwell played for Australia in the World Cup (having won it in 2015) so he was the main attraction for the kids. They gathered round to watch him be interviewed at the end of the match, taking photos and hoping for an autograph. The occasion was slightly lacking in big names. Both sides were packed with solid professionals and the standard was high but aside from Maxwell only D’Arcy Short, another Australian, would have been recognisable to most of the crowd. Short was not involved in the World Cup but has played for his country, as well as in T20 leagues around the world. Also on show was Keaton Jennings, who has scored a Test century for England but has otherwise struggled at the highest level and has been dropped from the most recent squad.
Player of the match Maxwell is interviewed after Lancashire’s 72 run win
The majority of the England players involved in the victorious World Cup campaign were getting a well deserved rest, with the seven week long tournament soon to be followed by a Test match against Ireland and the five match Ashes series against Australia. Part of me, though, wished that there could have been a way to get those stars involved in the first couple of rounds of T20 Blast fixtures to really capitalise on the current popularity of cricket in this country.
Had those England players been available, the Lancashire side would have featured Jos Buttler and Durham’s side would have boasted Ben Stokes, who was player of the match in the World Cup final. Mark Wood is also a Durham player but is injured and out until September. It would have been fantastic for the crowd to have been able to see their new heroes, but I understand that with a packed schedule it was almost impossible. Wood and Stokes paraded the World Cup trophy around Durham’s home ground the Riverside on Saturday, as captain Eoin Morgan had done around Lord’s, where he plays for Middlesex, on Thursday. I had a faint hope that Buttler might have done the same around Old Trafford on Sunday but it was not to be.
The T20 Blast is a fantastic product. Now in its 17th season, the crowds are big, the standard is high and overseas stars want to play in it. If some of it was on Free-to-air television instead of it all being on Sky Sports I have no doubt it would be a massive annual summer event.
Walking away from Old Trafford, I couldn’t for the life of me fathom why the authorities have felt the need to invent an entirely new format of the game to try to attract new fans. Next year will see the launch of The Hundred, a convoluted version of the game with the simplest part being one hundred balls per innings. Eight completely new teams, based around the major cities and with awful names like London Spirt and Leeds Superchargers, will take part. These teams will have to start from scratch, with none of the existing loyal following of the county sides. The only thing going for it is that some of it will be on BBC TV. It makes absolutely no sense and from what I can see it is doomed to fail.
My visit to Manchester on Sunday was conclusive proof for me that the England and Wales Cricket Board already has everything it needs to make cricket the undisputed second sport of the nation again. I can only hope that their seemingly muddled thinking doesn’t mean they miss the opportunity.
Being a cricket fan is not easy sometimes. You find yourself hiding your obsession to avoid hearing the typical ‘it’s so boring’ or ‘I don’t understand it’ responses. Liking cricket feels almost like a taboo, akin to saying you’re into taxidermy or the music of Dido.
Just when it needed it, cricket put on its greatest ever match. The stars were aligned on Sunday. An England team in the World Cup final on home soil, a nation crying out for some sporting success and available to watch on free-to-air television. What a time to play out the most nerve-wracking, topsy-turvy, closest game the sport has ever seen.
England’s impressive young team made the international break more bearable
I’m never pleased when the international break comes around. They force an irritating halt to domestic football. In September, October and November they make the beginning of the season a stop-start affair; at times like this they make us all pause when our clubs have important matters to attend to.
That this one should be at the Easter weekend, traditionally a packed four days in the league calendar, made it even less welcome. Norwich City’s back-to-back clean sheets, first win since early January and slice of fortune with the result of the Tyne-Wear derby would have to be put to one side for a fortnight, until the huge game against Newcastle.
In the meantime, England would play friendlies against Germany and the Netherlands as part of their preparations for Euro 2016. Like many, I wasn’t expecting much. Germany are the world champions and, in Berlin, you’d expect them to sweep England aside.
This is the reason why what actually happened last night was such a pleasant surprise. From the start, there was an energy about the England team. They were closing the Germans down very well. We are so used to seeing us sit back and watch the opposition pass the ball around in these prestige friendlies, but last night the hosts were not given any time on the ball before a red shirt was trying to hound it off them.
Germany had a goal incorrectly ruled out for offside, but hey, it’s about time England had some luck (Frank Lampard anyone?). The Germans did go ahead when Toni Kroos took advantage of goalkeeper Jack Butland’s hindered mobility to fire one in at his near post. I am certain that, had he not done damage to himself seconds earlier, the Stoke keeper would have made a routine save.
In the second half, England were continuing to impress, finding each other well with passes and causing their rivals problems with some clever moves. It seemed unjust when Mario Gomez jumped between Gary Cahill and Nathaniel Clyne to put Germany 2-0 up. It was a scoreline that would have given the ‘same old England’ brigade ammunition but did not tell the story of the match.
What England were doing was making chances but wasting them. In the end, they had 19 shots on goal – 9 more than Germany – and 6 of them were on target. The Germans only hit the target twice in the whole game, and with stereotypical efficiency, scored two goals.
Harry Kane provided the spark for an England comeback by reigning in an untidy Jordan Henderson corner and fooled two defenders with a Cruyff turn – so apt in this week of all weeks – before striking it into the corner of the net with pinpoint accuracy.
Harry Kane sends a German defender for ice cream as he scores England’s first goal in Berlin
With less than twenty minutes to go, Roy Hodgson introduced Jamie Vardy in place of Danny Welbeck. He had been on the pitch for 198 seconds when his audacious backheel from Clyne’s cross wrong-footed Manuel Neuer and brought the scores level. Vardy became the first Leicester City player since Gary Lineker in 1985 to score a goal for England.
All but the harshest of England supporters would have gladly taken a draw away from the Olympiastadion having been two goals behind with 25 minutes to play. However, in stoppage time, Jordan Henderson finally got one of his corners right and Eric Dier thumped it in with his head to stun the world champions and give England a quite brilliant victory.
Eric Dier completed the comeback to stun the world champions Germany
I will not get carried away. You can tell me that it was a friendly, that it was an ‘experimental’ German side, that it was a fluke, whatever – it was still a performance to get a little bit excited about. We are not going to win the Euros this summer. We might, however, do ourselves proud while we are there and build towards future tournaments with genuine promise.
The reason for this optimism is from the players involved in Berlin. We knew Joe Hart would be missing after getting injured in last weekend’s Manchester derby, but no one was particularly worried because we knew that Jack Butland was a more than able deputy. Butland was injured himself in the first half of the match, but Southampton’s Fraser Forster was perfectly capable of filling in. Goalkeeper wise, England have rarely had three as strong as those at the same time.
In defence, England look to have sorted out the full back positions. Nathaniel Clyne and Danny Rose appeared right at home in the back four, Rose in particular with some excellent tackles, and both were willing to race forward and mount an attack. Gary Cahill is clearly the odd one out, and you would expect John Stones to replace him at some point in the near future and form a partnership with Chris Smalling.
Eric Dier did an excellent job of protecting the defence and demonstrated his ability to pick out a forward pass. I personally have questions over the Liverpool pair of Henderson and Adam Lallana. Lallana hasn’t had a great season but has the ability, Henderson I wonder if he’s actually just rather ordinary and is mostly ‘a great man to have in the dressing room’. He missed a glorious chance, having his shot blocked by a defender when the keeper had been taken out of the equation, and I wonder if Ross Barkley has more of a place in this team than him.
The outstanding player for England on a night of very good performances was Dele Alli. It was easy to forget that the Tottenham midfielder is a few weeks away from his 20th birthday. Rarely has an Englishman looked so comfortable on the international stage so early on in their career. His dribbling, his passing and his sheer will to be involved and get on the ball made him more than fit to share a stage with the world champions on the night. He will need careful management but we look to have a real star on our hands here.
Dele Alli was magnificent on a great night for England
Danny Welbeck often gets a raw deal from the fans but he worked hard for his country, getting into good positions and never allowing the defenders to rest, always niggling away at them. His finishing ability is undoubted, and he has a definite role to play in the squad. Talk of finishing ability – Harry Kane is one of the best we’ve had in that respect for a long time, and Jamie Vardy continues to ride on the crest of a wave. Four years ago, Vardy was playing for Fleetwood Town.
Then consider what England have in reserve. Leicester’s Danny Drinkwater was in the squad for the first time, rewarded for a sublime campaign for the Premier League leaders, and, in the end, was untried. He will surely get some time on the pitch against the Netherlands on Tuesday. Daniel Sturridge didn’t make it off the bench. There is still Wayne Rooney to come back from injury too.
This is a very young team too. Take a look at the ages of the starting eleven in this game:
Jack Butland – 23
Nathaniel Clyne – 24
Gary Cahill – 30
Chris Smalling – 26
Danny Rose – 25
Eric Dier – 22
Jordan Henderson – 25
Adam Lallana – 27
Dele Alli – 19
Danny Welbeck – 25
Harry Kane – 22
If Cahill is indeed replaced by 21-year-old Stones, this brings the average age down even further. This is a squad of players who will be around for a while. 30-year-old Rooney would be something of an old man amongst that lot, but might not be the worst player to have as a vastly experienced captain to guide them.
Four of the starters last night were Tottenham players. I think it showed too, they were linking up with each other superbly. It can only help the national team if the core of the side all play for the same club. Three were Liverpool players, and just one was a Manchester United man. How times change.
I can honestly say that last night was the best I’d seen England play in a very long time and it felt slightly strange to actually be enjoying watching an international friendly. The future looks bright and if they can play like that more often, maybe I won’t be quite so annoyed when the international break rolls around. Maybe.
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LEE PAYNE 