1 year ago
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“So looking forward to this,” emails Dean Kinsella. “Hope I can last the night! I’m wondering what are the chances of the pitch taking spin in the fourth innings. Seems quite a likely position for England to get to in this match. Trouble is i’ts likely to be only about the third day at this rate.”
Gower reckons it won’t become a raging bunsen but will dry out, so even if it doesn’t do loads, it might do enough – and if the pressure’s on, we know what can happen. But England might find bowling harder this morning, with an older ball and without lights.
Tangentially, I can’t say I didn’t muffle a titter thinking about Broad getting woken 17 times in the night to deal with nappies and such, while his mates were carting it all over Pakistan, telling himself he was having the better time. We’ve all been there (without the carting it all round Pakistan FOMO). But mazal tov old mate, wishing you and Molly much naches.
Stuart Broad is chatting to BT and he thinks it’ll be a wobble-seam day, so we probably won’t see his new delivery coming from a new angle with a different body-twizzle, aimed at taking the ball away from the right-handers. It’s a funny thing really, I remember Alex Ferguson saying towards the end of his career that when you’d been around as long as he had, there was always a record on the horizon, and Branderson are on 999 combined Test wickets, two behind the 1001 set by McGrwarne.
“Bay Oval looks such a chilled out place to be a spectator,” tweets Andrew Benton. “There can’t be many other grounds as grassy, can there?”
It does look lovely. On balance, probably lovelier than a box-room in norf Lahndan.
To keep myself company, I went to the newsagent and bought a silly quantity of munch; naturally I guzzled most of it before I even started blogging and now feel slightly peculiar, but I’m going to push through and dive into my Maltesers. If England are going to play this kind of cricket, the least I can do is support them with requisite calorie-consumption.
David Ivon reckons the weather will hold for us and that the pitch will be alright to bat on today. But he notes that “it’s grass and turf, there will be natural variations”, and given England have SB Pressure in their attack, you never know how things will play, however nice the track is.
“A good watch even at three o’clock in the morning,” says Alastair Cook of the Testvangelists. “I dread to think what people used to say when I was batting a three o’clock in the morning.”
On which point, how would Bazball work if England had him and Jonathan Trott in the top three?
Preamble
I ate some salt n’ vinegar Quavers the other day. Not an interesting piece of information, I know, but stick with me for the tortured analogy shall surely follow. Anyhow, they were pretty good, now that you ask, but they were also wrong – Quavers are meant to taste of cheese. End of. Fact. This. And other cringe-inducing internet vernacular and punctuation.
That is roughly how I feel about England being good at limited-overs cricket. OK, I have at times also felt ecstatic, but in the main, it’s something that is true and tastes good, but that also feels inherently incongruous and unnatural.
England playing the longer-form like this though, is of an entirely different order, because it’s so ... beyond. It’s like being told the Quavers aren’t Quavers, they’re manna, and they don’t taste of salt n’ vinegar, they taste of anything you want them to, which is the best flavour ever, that you haven’t had yet, that makes you see the world with different eyes and experience it with different soul whenever you’re lucky enough to see it cooking. I don’t know, I really don’t.
So yeah, yesterday was another silly day of testvangelism for the Testvangelists, defined by an unexpected decision that made perfect sense – compare it to that time England inserted Australia at the start of the pink-ball match at Adelaide in 2017. Instead they were their usual aggressive selves yesterday, then forced that home with a confrontational declaration, meaning New Zealand have a lot to do today to stay in the contest.
They’ve got a decent chance, obviously – Devon Conway is still in, while Daryl Mitchell and Tom Blundell are to come – but England’s seamers will fancy they’ve got one too. At the end of a preamble, I often find myself writing “this should be good”, a writer’s compulsion kind of thing when I’m refusing to finish without a line that feels like a closer. Today, though, I feel able to say “this is going to be good” ... because England are playing?! Goodness me, people. Goodness me.
Play: 2pm local, 1pm GMT
English (US)