Terrible Beaches
Grade: D
Right. That’s enough laughing at Australia for losing to Bangladesh (until Saturday anyway). Time to laugh at and/or with Pakistan and/or England instead, as Test cricket returns to English shores. (Why do they play cricket on the shores? Their beaches are terrible! Still, even terrible beach cricket (not to be confused with terrible beach cricket) is better than The Hundred. (At least, I assume. Once again, I’ve gone an entire Hundred without watching a single ball, let alone a hundred of them. (Might have lost track of parentheses here, which means that if you run this report card as code, it will not work.)))
Anyway, I’m pleased to report that, for a brief moment, England under the new Joe Root regime were taking a wicket with every ball they bowled!
Sadly, however, that stat fell away badly. Already, the Joe Root era is a repeat of the Bazball one in microcosm. Where did it all go wrong?
Nude Nuts Adjacency
Grade: F
As alluded to above, England got a wicket with the first ball of the Test. Ollie Robinson, back for the Ollie Robinson Test of this particular series, trapped Azan Awais in front. Then followed up a few overs later by doing the same - but somehow even more emphatically - to Shan Masood.
The spell had England fans understandably giddy with delight. Imagine if Robinson can keep up this form! Imagine if this is how he’ll bowl all the time now! Imagine the potency of an attack with Robinson and Jofra Archer sharing the new ball!
It’s good to imagine things. John Lennon taught me that via his smash hit song, ‘Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey’.
Sorry. I don’t mean to come over all ‘nude nuts’-adjacent with my scepticism. But the ability of Robinson to bowl brilliant spells has never really been in doubt, has it? Before we get too carried away, let’s see him back it up on whatever beach the next Test is played on.
Morpheus Off The Long Run
Rain showed up shortly after, despite a variety of ongoing lies over the last few months about some kind of English heat wave. By the time the players returned, I was heading to bed.
Here’s what I missed while I slept.
Oh my goodness, oh golly, oh gosh
It’s a five-wicket haul to Tongue, Josh
And goodness, gosh, golly
The same to Robinson, Ollie
Pakistan’s hopes? They might be hogwash