Quick! Dish out the knighthoods and earldoms to Ben Stokes, Brendon McCullum and Rob Key. Invite them round to No.10 for a massive party. The resident loves a party, I’m told. Right now, he could do with a little success by proxy even if he doesn’t know his bail from a deep mid-wicket. Wall games are more his bag.
Yes, England have won all four Tests this summer, and against two of the best five-day outfits on the planet. Surely, it must all be down to the new regime? Yes, and no. There’s no avoiding the remarkable turnaround in the Test team’s fortunes, although I could never fathom the terrible run it endured last year. The absence of Anderson and Broad on the road didn’t help but I can understand the need to wrap these two legends in cotton wool to preserve them for the 2022 summer. Perhaps that could be justified.
England have suffered from woefully inconsistent opening batters, middle-order batters and a supporting cast of seam bowlers who seem to injure themselves every time they arrive at a cricket ground. Joe Root plus ten others doesn’t make a world-beating side. Crawley, Lees, Malan and Pope still don’t possess the fear factor and neither do the Overton twins or Jack Leach. And yet England have just crushed world champions New Zealand and achieved their record run chase to overcome a top-class India. If nothing else, rivals will know that no fourth-innings target is safe. 400? 500? Pah! Easy-peasy.
I’ve whinged before about applying T20 batting strategies to the Test format. England are the current 50-over kings, featuring explosive strokemakers like Buttler, Roy, cokehead Hales and, before his hopeless loss of form, Morgan but, until the past month, failed utterly to translate the ability to make runs in one-dayers to five-dayers. Ben Stokes, of course, has previously managed to win matches without compromising his aggressive style but this summer even the new skipper has been eclipsed by Jonny Bairstow. Where has this form come from? You’d think that bowlers of the calibre of Boult, Southee, Bumrah and Shami would have the nous to find his weakness but they, too, have toiled against him. Meanwhile, Joe Root flows serenely on, by a country mile the best batter in the world and surely heading for Tendulkar-esque records.
But England can’t win Tests without taking twenty wickets, or at least tempting the opposition into risky declarations. Enter Mattie Potts. He may be the only English fast bowler in the county game not on the physio’s table, but he has certainly delivered, not only with wickets but also the spirit engendered by his some-time Durham colleague. Let’s hope he doesn’t suffer a sudden catastrophic vulnerability to injury like Jofra Archer, Ollie Robinson, etc, etc and please, don’t let the England malaise condemn Somerset’s Craig Overton: we need him too badly!
There’s
no reason why England can’t replicate this form when the Test side re-groups
for the South Africa, then there is the tricky trip to Pakistan and next year’s
home Ashes series. The Aussies will prove awkward adversaries, of course, but
confidence acquired from the past month’s triumphs and Joe Root’s genius could
make 2022 a real turning point for the nation’s Test fortunes.
