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Tag: first

  • Naive England given reality check in Lord’s thrashing

    England vs South Africa
    1st Test (of 3)
    Lord’s, London
    17th, 18th, 19th August 2022
    Result: South Africa (326) beat England (165 & 149) by an innings and 12 runs

    The latest issue of The Cricketer magazine was laying on the doormat when I got home from work on Friday. Its front cover asked the question: “Can the Proteas’ pace attack puncture Bazball?”. As I was unwrapping it, on my television the tall South African seamer Marco Jansen bowled James Anderson to seal a thumping win for the tourists inside three days. The early evidence would suggest the answer to that question is “yes”.

    The first half of the English Test summer had been full of positivity. New captain Ben Stokes and new coach Brendon McCullum combined to instill a never-say-die attitude into the ailing red ball side, an aura of self-belief that carried England to four wins in a row. They benefited from New Zealand suffering from a lack of form and a spate of injuries – their best batter, Kane Williamson, is going through one of the worst patches of his career and their best bowler, Trent Boult, was wary having just taken part in a full-on season of the Indian Premier League. Colin de Grandhomme and Kyle Jamieson both succumbed to injury during the series and had to fly home. Yet, the Black Caps were in a position to win each of the three matches. At Lord’s, they had England on the ropes in the fourth innings but took the wickets of Stokes off a no ball, a reprieve that proved fatal. Then in Nottingham, a Jonny Bairstow inspired England powered to a final day chase that would previously have been seen as impossible. At Headingley, the home side were 55 for 6 in their first innings but were rescued by Bairstow and Jamie Overton.

    It went down in the record books as a series whitewash, but closer inspection reveals a story that wasn’t so one-sided. India were also sent packing in the Test rescheduled from last year, at Edgbaston, though you wonder how. Rishabh Pant made a brilliant hundred on the first day, then on the second Stuart Broad was whacked for a record 35 off one over. India were on top for so much of the game but didn’t bowl well in the final innings and Bairstow and Joe Root made the chase look easy. England’s daring new approach to the Test format is undoubtedly exciting – they back themselves to play their natural games, never give up and when one falls short they believe they will always have someone who will step up. The media coined it Bazball, named after the Kiwi coach in the sunglasses with the beard who looked cooly on from the balcony. The squad and the management themselves hate the term. They feel it cheapens what they’re doing and is used on social media to poke fun at the England team when it doesn’t all go to plan.

    It’s safe to say it didn’t go to plan this week. The series against South Africa had an oddly low key build up. It started six weeks after the India match ended, following a block of mostly disappointing white ball cricket and with the Hundred and the new football season in full swing. The first match was over so quickly that there is a chance some will not have noticed it. There had been plenty of chat in the days before the game, with South Africa captain Dean Elgar giving his opinion on Bazball (he’s not a fan) and Sam Billings giving his response. Billings had just captained an England Lions team (second string) to a big win over South Africa, in which they amassed 672 at nearly a run a ball. There was a bit of spice about the series not usually seen outside an Ashes. Elgar’s team had to back it up.

    South Africa captain Dean Elgar

    They did. All of England’s victories so far in the summer had come from chasing in the final innings, so Elgar turned the tables by putting Stokes’s men into bat on Wednesday morning. Then the mightily impressive South Africa pace bowlers got to work. Before long, England were 55 for 4 with both Root and Bairstow out for a combined 8 runs. The summer of 2022 has been characterised by very hot and dry weather, so naturally the first day of a Test match lasted just more than one session before it was abandoned due to heavy rain.

    It didn’t take long for South Africa to wrap up the England innings on Thursday. All out for 165 in just 45 overs. Ollie Pope, with 73, was the only batter able to offer any resistance. Kagiso Rabada took 5-52. South Africa’s openers then demonstrated anti-Bazball, if you will, seeing off the new ball nicely and putting on 85 for the first wicket until Elgar was extremely unfortunate to deflect an innocuous Anderson delivery with his arm onto his stumps. His opening partner, Sarel Erwee, ground out 73 from 146 balls – by no means an attractive innings, but one that put his side in control. England should take note. All but two of the South Africans made it into double figures, compared to the four that got past single digits in the England innings. They were all out for 326 in the 90th over, 161 runs ahead.

    Kagiso Rabada took 7 wickets in the match

    Zak Crawley was the first to go, as usual, in what must surely be his final appearance for a while in the England side. They seem to have such confidence in him that it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he were to line up at Old Trafford on Thursday, but with form players waiting in the wings, I just cannot see how the Kent man can continue wasting a place in the batting order. After Crawley, it was a procession of England wickets as their innings lasted a mere 37.4 overs. Only a fifty partnership between Stokes and Stuart Broad delayed the inevitable. South Africa had won by an innings – they had not just beaten England, they had embarrassed them.

    Let’s not pretend otherwise. For a team to be beaten by an innings within three days (don’t forget, the first day was largely washed out) – at home, especially – that’s bad. Lord’s will have to refund all the ticket holders for the weekend. Against the top teams, England have to realise that they are not always going to be able to assert their own style on the game. They are going to have to adapt to a situation, to play smart cricket. It was the lack of smart cricket that bothered me the most. It’s fine being ultra-positive, always setting attacking fields and playing the attacking shots, but at times the game demands that you think sensibly and do what is required to find a way back in. If that means keeping the flow of runs down for a while or blocking out a session, so be it. I’m all for the Bazball intention of having utter belief in your ability, but please use your brains. Oh, and drop Zak Crawley.

    The second Test starts on Thursday 25th August, 11am at Old Trafford, Manchester.

  • 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:

  • 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.

  • One year on: Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino by Arctic Monkeys

    Arctic Monkeys
    Left to right: Jamie Cook (guitar), Nick O’Malley (bass), Alex Turner (lead singer), Matt Helders (drums)

    Arctic Monkeys are my all time favourite band. No one else has ever made music that has spoken to me in quite the way they have. I own all six of the albums they have released to date, I know every one of their songs and the brilliant lyrics of their frontman Alex Turner have accompanied me through my highest of highs and lowest of lows.

    On 11th May 2018, the Sheffield band released Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, their first new material for nearly five years. It was a completely different sound, led by the piano, which left some fans used to them thrashing on guitars upset. I loved it, however, and love it even more now as it reaches its first anniversary. I’ll tell you why.

    Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is a collection of eleven songs loosely based around the idea that the human race has colonised the moon and opened a hotel and casino complex on it. Yet, the aesthetic feels like the 1970s. You need only to look at the video for the title track to see what I mean.

    Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino

    Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is meant to feel like a place you can go and spend a while. Tranquility Base was the name given to the area of the moon that Apollo 11 landed on in July 1969.


    I liked the idea of naming [the album] after a place, because to me records that I’ve been in love with and continue to be in love with feel like they’re places that you can go for a while.

    Alex Turner, Arctic Monkeys

    For me, it absolutely achieves that aim. I have listened to the album hundreds of times, often when I’ve got into my car after a tedious day of pushing trolleys around a supermarket car park. Heading to Tranquility Base for 41 minutes is a great way to escape the mundanities of real life.

    In these days of cherry-picking individual songs on streaming services, it was a bold move to release a proper album – a collection of songs designed to be listened to as a whole, in a particular order. The end of One Point Perspective actually blends in to the beginning of American Sports to emphasise this.

    The album is full of quotable lines. You get the feeling Turner was enjoying himself writing it, relishing the freedom its other-worldly setting was affording him. The genre of science fiction is often used as a method of commenting on our own world, as if taking a step back and looking at it from a different perspective offers the opportunity to say things you might not feel comfortable with otherwise.

    Turner does this in the song Golden Trunks. He had always steered clear of politics in his lyrics, but with this album he felt able to have a little stab at it.


    The leader of the free world
    Reminds you of a wrestler wearing tight golden trunks

    Golden Trunks

    I don’t know about you, but I get a rather unpleasant image of Donald Trump in my head after hearing that.

    Music is saturated with love songs. Turner wanted to give them a swerve after several of them appeared on Everything You’ve Come To Expect, the 2016 album he made with his side project The Last Shadow Puppets. A couple made their way onto this album, though, with the closing track The Ultracheese being the most gushing. It is this song that contains my favourite line of the whole album.


    Oh, the dawn won’t stop weighing a tonne
    I’ve done some things that I shouldn’t have done
    But I haven’t stopped loving you once

    The last lines of the album’s closing track The Ultracheese

    Whenever I hear that, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It’s such a great observation about love – we mess up sometimes, but we never stop loving.

    In September last year, I saw Arctic Monkeys on their UK tour at the Sheffield Arena. It was a dream come true, seeing my heroes in the flesh in their hometown. The aesthetic they had created with the album carried on perfectly – the stage design, the clothes the band wore and even their hairstyles complemented Tranquility Base wonderfully.

    Wide shot of the stage at Sheffield Arena as Arctic Monkeys performed
    Seeing Arctic Monkeys live at Sheffield Arena in September 2018

    Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is a brilliant, mature, visceral album that I will be listening to for years to come. I hope you give it a try.

    Track list (click on song to listen)

    1. Star Treatment
    2. One Point Perspective
    3. American Sports
    4. Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino
    5. Golden Trunks
    6. Four Out Of Five
    7. The World’s First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip
    8. Science Fiction
    9. She Looks Like Fun
    10. Batphone
    11. The Ultracheese

    Now watch Arctic Monkeys perform the opening track, Star Treatment, live at TRNSMT festival in Glasgow from July 2018.

  • My First World Cup

    This year, the World Cup will be more than welcome. Norwich City’s rebuilding job after Premier League relegation can be put to the back of minds for just a month and attentions can turn to the fun, excitement and drama in Brazil.

    This is probably not the first article of this type you have read. You probably know by now that every football fan has a particular World Cup that they consider to be their ‘first’ – not literally, but the first tournament to capture their imagination and the first to live on in their memories. For me, this accolade belongs to 2002.

    As the World Cup began in 2002 I was a few months short of my 10th birthday. With the tournament being held jointly between Japan and South Korea, the time differences meant that matches started early in the mornings here. Before breakfast time. My school must have been very generous because for England matches we were allowed to stay at home and watch before coming into school afterwards, and if your parents were not able to keep you at home for an extra hour or two then the match was played in the school hall on a delay. I can clearly remember heading into school after England had drawn 0-0 with Nigeria and giving a smug-looking smile to my fellow pupils who were having to sit through it not knowing the goalless outcome.

    In literal terms, of course, my first World Cup would have been USA ’94, but as I was not yet two years old I can say with some confidence that I remember nothing about it whatsoever. I was also a late developer in becoming a football fan. I grew up in a family of football fans but much preferred watching cartoons until I was about 8. I can remember laying on the living room floor watching England’s famous 5-1 win over Germany in September 2001 and being utterly inconsolable after Norwich lost the play-off final against Birmingham the following May.

    The 2002 World Cup did not go too badly for England in the grand scheme of things. David Beckham scored a penalty to beat Argentina which made up for his red card against them in 1998 (see video above) and we made it to the quarter finals before a fluke of a free kick from Ronaldinho went over David Seaman’s head and we went out 2-1 to Brazil. I can also remember The Sun, which my dad had delivered every Saturday, putting their cartoon character Hagar the Horrible on the front page as a preview to England playing Denmark. The Brazilians went on to win their 5th World Cup with a comfortable win over Germany in the final.

    To think that ‘my first World Cup’ is now 12 years ago was an eye-opener. 2002 was not a vintage World Cup, but it was my World Cup. As much as I am club before country when it comes to football, the World Cup is such a brilliant tournament that for four weeks every four years I indulge myself in it and revel all the colour and celebration that it has. Inside, it makes me feel warm to think that, to some young boy or girl out there, Brazil 2014 will be their first World Cup.

    Perhaps you will read all about it before the kick off in 2026.