Jarrod Kimber's Blog, page 23
July 11, 2014
July 10, 2014
When 3.33 beat 8130: Cook and Shami
A young boy gets on a motorbike for the first time. The instructions are given to him. He looks on quietly. People expect him to struggle. Instead he takes to it fairly well. Muddy dirt tracks are handled with ease. He jumps off little ramps and holds on. He mostly works out the brakes and how to turn and tries, but fails, to pull off a wheelie. Eventually he stops, and the next boy gets on. A boy who has ridden a motorbike for years: yet he makes a simple mistake and rides straight into a BBQ.
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Alastair Cook’s first ball catches him by surprise. He has more Test hundreds than any other England batsman but he reacts late to the movement into him and an inside edge ends up at backward square leg. It is not a stunning show of confidence as he wanders to the other end confused.
Mohammed Shami’s first ball is a length ball, India’s No. 11 rocked forward and defends with the sort of certainty a man with a Test Average of 3.33 really shouldn’t have. He’s not overawed by his first moment in England. He’s not overawed by facing Stuart Broad. He’s not even overawed by the sudden collapse that has led to him being in. He’s just playing a forward defensive shot.
Cook handles the next few balls fine. A yorker is dug out. He pushes to the legside looking for runs. He is handling the pitch with no demons like it’s a pitch with no demons. The ball is not swinging or seaming.
Shami also handles his first few balls well. They bowl short, and he defends well and misses when trying to attack. He cracks one to point. And turns a ball into the leg side to get off the mark.
Shami’s first boundary is a heave over the legside against a confused James Anderson. Shami is full of confidence having survived for a while and is now flexing a bit of muscle. He also whips a ball off his pads so well that he beats a man in the deep. He smacks Moeen Ali long and deep with a dance down the pitch. He cracks a short ball to the point boundary and no fielders move. And then to finally get to his 50 he hits a Test bowler with 358 Test wickets over the sightscreen.
Cook gets a ball on his hip and turns it to the rope.
Shami’s innings is not all grace and beauty. He tries to upper cut one to third man. He mistimes one so badly he can’t even find a fielder. Almost loses his off stump. Almost loses his toe. And is actually caught behind, despite the fact England didn’t hear it. It was a quality innings for a No. 11, but not a quality innings.
Cook’s innings isn’t quality.
Cook faces nine of his ten balls from Shami, including the last one. Getting bowled around your legs can look unlucky. Bowlers don’t plan for it very often. And even when they do, it rarely works. This is the sort of ball that Cook could have literally flicked to the leg side with a blindfold on, handcuffed upside down in a tank of water. Now his head leads away from the ball, his body tumbles after it.
Cook has never been pretty, but now he’s ungainly and needlessly mobile. He can’t stand up properly and exposes the leg stump. The ball flicks his pads and instead of rolling away safely for a leg bye it slams into legs tump. Cook has lost his way so much he can almost see the ball hitting the stumps.
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Mohammed Shami had made a 50 before today, for Bengal U-22s four years ago. Alastair Cook has made 35 fifties at Test Level. Not forgetting 19 fifties in ODIs. There are also a few hundreds. And he once made 294. But Cook hasn’t scored more than 51 in his last five Tests.
Today the bunny with no batting pedigree scored more runs than the man with 8,130 runs.
Today two men batted: one with little expectation or hope, the other with fear and uncertainty. One made an unbeaten. The other hit the BBQ.
When 3.33 beat 8130: Cook and Sharma
A young boy gets on a motorbike for the first time. The instructions are given to him. He looks on quietly. People expect him to struggle. Instead he takes to it fairly well. Muddy dirt tracks are handled with ease. He jumps off little ramps and holds on. He mostly works out the brakes and how to turn and tries, but fails, to pull off a wheelie. Eventually he stops, and the next boy gets on. A boy who has ridden a motorbike for years: yet he makes a simple mistake and rides straight into a BBQ.
_________________
Alastair Cook’s first ball catches him by surprise. He has more Test hundreds than any other England batsman but he reacts late to the movement into him and an inside edge ends up at backward square leg. It is not a stunning show of confidence as he wanders to the other end confused.
Mohammed Shami’s first ball is a length ball, India’s No. 11 rocked forward and defends with the sort of certainty a man with a Test Average of 3.33 really shouldn’t have. He’s not overawed by his first moment in England. He’s not overawed by facing Stuart Broad. He’s not even overawed by the sudden collapse that has led to him being in. He’s just playing a forward defensive shot.
Cook handles the next few balls fine. A yorker is dug out. He pushes to the legside looking for runs. He is handling the pitch with no demons like it’s a pitch with no demons. The ball is not swinging or seaming.
Shami also handles his first few balls well. They bowl short, and he defends well and misses when trying to attack. He cracks one to point. And turns a ball into the leg side to get off the mark.
Shami’s first boundary is a heave over the legside against a confused James Anderson. Shami is full of confidence having survived for a while and is now flexing a bit of muscle. He also whips a ball off his pads so well that he beats a man in the deep. He smacks Moeen Ali long and deep with a dance down the pitch. He cracks a short ball to the point boundary and no fielders move. And then to finally get to his 50 he hits a Test bowler with 358 Test wickets over the sightscreen.
Cook gets a ball on his hip and turns it to the rope.
Shami’s innings is not all grace and beauty. He tries to upper cut one to third man. He mistimes one so badly he can’t even find a fielder. Almost loses his off stump. Almost loses his toe. And is actually caught behind, despite the fact England didn’t hear it. It was a quality innings for a No. 11, but not a quality innings.
Cook’s innings isn’t quality.
Cook faces nine of his ten balls from Shami, including the last one. Getting bowled around your legs can look unlucky. Bowlers don’t plan for it very often. And even when they do, it rarely works. This is the sort of ball that Cook could have literally flicked to the leg side with a blindfold on, handcuffed upside down in a tank of water. Now his head leads away from the ball, his body tumbles after it.
Cook has never been pretty, but now he’s ungainly and needlessly mobile. He can’t stand up properly and exposes the leg stump. The ball flicks his pads and instead of rolling away safely for a leg bye it slams into legs tump. Cook has lost his way so much he can almost see the ball hitting the stumps.
_________________
Mohammed Shami had made a 50 before today, for Bengal U-22s four years ago. Alastair Cook has made 35 fifties at Test Level. Not forgetting 19 fifties in ODIs. There are also a few hundreds. And he once made 294. But Cook hasn’t scored more than 51 in his last five Tests.
Today the bunny with no batting pedigree scored more runs than the man with 8,130 runs.
Today two men batted: one with little expectation or hope, the other with fear and uncertainty. One made an unbeaten. The other hit the BBQ.
June 25, 2014
the pearl and the bank clerk defeat england
Sri Lanka’s GDP ranking in 2013 was 112, the UK were 21. They have a very small population compared to the other subcontinent cricket nations. Transparency International ranks them as the 91st least-corrupt nation on earth. They have only one really big modern city. Their cricket is mismanaged by selfish inept politicians. The team is signed off by the government. They don’t always pay their cricketers.
But this year they have beaten the world. And now they’ve beaten England with men who have lost their houses in tsunamis, been shot at by terrorists, competition winners and a tubby man who works at a bank.
Sri Lanka is a special place.
—
At the Sampath Bank headquarters in Colombo there is a round-faced man smiling happily wearing a polo shirt with the bank’s logo on it. He is being felicitated. He is a finger-spinning maestro. He is a World T20 winner. And this man, Rangana Herath, is also an employee at the bank.
Not in a ceremonial way. Not just to beef up their cricket team. But Herath works at the bank. Doing things that people do in banks. He probably has his own coffee mug there. When Herath sees the Sri Lanka cricket schedule, one of his first calls is to his bank manager. To ask for leave to travel to the tour.
Herath worked there when he made his comeback to Test cricket in 2009. Herath worked there this while he took more Test wickets than any other bowler in 2012. Herath worked there even while he was ranked the second-best Test bowler on earth.
Twenty-four days before his felicitation, Herath took 1-23 in four overs. Sri Lanka won the World T20 that day.
—
Sri Lanka Cricket is currently in debt. An exact amount is unknown. It was at one stage supposed to be US$70m. That is to pay for new stadiums that replaced the old stadiums that were in some cases not that old. This led them to not pay their players.
According to Forbes, MS Dhoni was worth US$30m last year. He captained the side that Sri Lanka beat in the World T20 final. In sport, money does buy wins. Internationally, less so. But Sri Lanka are playing cricket off the field in a way that the other countries haven’t done for decades. Their support staff is understaffed, undertrained, and at times seemingly not able to do their own research. They rely on the touring journalists for a lot that cricket board staff would usually do. They are comically unprofessional.
This is the first Test series that Sri Lanka had sent players over early to properly acclimatise before the tour. Herath and Shaminda Eranga both came over. It was a step towards professionalism in a sport that has been professional for years.
—
North of Colombo there is a town called Chilaw. There is an ancient Hindu temple in Chilaw that was once visited by Gandhi. Every year they have the Munneswaram festival. It was once famous for pearls. And they have a first-class cricket team the Chilaw Marians Cricket Club.
Shaminda Eranga comes from Chilaw.
Like many in Sri Lanka, the cricketers from Chilaw are largely invisible inside the system. There are Test-quality cricketers playing on the streets of the Hikkaduwa right now that will never play with a hard cricket ball in their life.
Eranga was not playing first-class cricket. He was not in the system. He shouldn’t have made it at all. But like his seam-bowling partner Nuwan Pradeep, he made his way to a fast-bowling competition. He bowled fast. But five guys bowled faster. Somehow the sixth-fastest bowler in that completion was picked for Chilaw Marians Cricket Club. Five years later he would clean bowl Brad Haddin with his second ball in international cricket.
Eranga is the closest thing Chilaw has produced to a pearl in a very long time.
—
Herath has been in Test cricket since 1999. He invented a carom ball. He disappeared back into first-class cricket and the bank, and was in club cricket in England when he was picked for his comeback.
There are no billboards in Sri Lanka with his face on them. He’s not famous like Kumar, Mahela, Lasith or Angelo. Even Ajantha Mendis is sponsored by chicken sausages. Herath may be a Test bowler with over 200 wickets who has carried a poor attack for years, but he’s just a really good player, not a star or legend.
Against Stuart Broad, Herath had bowled around the wicket with a low arm action. Broad takes a big step forward when he defends spinners. Herath bowled the ball exactly from the right angle, with the right amount of turn, to ensure that Broad would miss one.
Against James Anderson, he bowled over the wicket with a high arm action. Anderson gets right over the ball when it’s full, and can dangle his bat when it’s slightly shorter. Herath was trying to find either of these two dismissals.
Broad missed his, Anderson survived.
—
Eranga spent most of the first innings not getting anywhere. There was some swing, but not enough. He bowled a great line and length to Sam Robson, but couldn’t get the edge. England just moved further and further away with the game. Even the second new ball did nothing for him. Sri Lanka were all but gone. But then they got the wicket of Ian Bell. It was Eranga’s wicket. He added Moeen Ali’s wicket to it. The next morning he had Chris Jordan and Anderson as well. They were still behind, but they were within some kind of touch.
In the second innings, Eranga bowled the worst he had in the series. At Lord’s he was the pick of the bowling, in the first innings at Headingley he inspired the comeback. But when his team really needed him to help win the game in this innings, he couldn’t get it right. He lost his line and length. He didn’t make people play. He was too short. The only time he looked good was when he just tried to knock Joe Root’s mouth off. That didn’t work either. Then when he took a wicket, that of Jordan, he also overstepped.
Eranga’s first 23.4 overs were just not great.
It was probably mostly luck that he received the last over. Dhammika Prasad had bowled the second last over. Herath could not outfox Anderson. Pradeep looked spent. And Angelo Mathews had lost his first innings magic.
Eranga was just the man who was left.
—
Sri Lanka feel like they don’t get the credit they deserve. They feel that when they win, it is Yuvraj’s (or whoever else that game) fault. Or the home conditions helped them. Or the other team was just useless. On Monday at Headingley, they started one of the great comebacks in modern Test cricket. Their captain played one of the great knocks of modern Test cricket. They were on the verge of their first ever series win in England. Their first major series win outside Asia for almost 20 years.
And the next day the cricket world talked about the other captain who had a shocker.
Before the tour they lost their coach to the opposition. While here they have been accused of breaking the spirit of cricket. Their spinner was accused of breaking the laws of cricket. Their bowlers were pop gun and a glorified county attack. Their batmen were suspect against the moving and short ball. They would be bombed by the short ball. They were sent in to be annihilated here. They felt under siege.
At Lord’s it got even worse when Broad and Anderson attacked them with the ball, and the English players, lead by the extremely mouthy Root, came at them very hard. Pradeep was almost beheaded. After that they were upset by Cook’s comments about Sachithra Senanayake’s action. And England had dominated them for eight straight days of cricket.
They were sick and tired of being plucky cheerful losers. They wanted a win. They saw one. And they became very vocal. Root’s ears will be ringing from his entire innings. Broad’s unscheduled toilet break 20 minutes into his innings probably got more of the same.
—
This is not the strongest team Sri Lanka have brought to England. They’ve had Murali, Dilshan, Jayasuriya and Vaas to bring before. This team has two all-time greats, one potential great, and the second-best spinner they have ever had.
It also has Nuwan Pradeep and his bowling average of 72.78. It has Dimuth Karunaratne, who is immune to going out early, or making runs from his starts. Lahiru Thirimanne, who stopped believing runs existed. And Prasanna Jayawardene, who looked a spent force with bat and gloves.
Mahela Jayawardene never made a hundred. Herath never took a five-for. Nuwan Kulasekera was dropped after the first Test. But people kept stepping up. They had batted an entire fifth day to save an overseas Test only once before. But they all chipped in and did it with one of the worst batsmen in world cricket somehow surviving. Their bowling could never compete with England’s, so their fielders took many more of their chances. Their middle order slipped up in the third innings at Headingley, so their tail made runs.
It was gritty, tough, bits-and-pieces cricket that mostly was just keeping them in touch of England, nothing more. They just refused to be beaten. They just refused to go away. They didn’t smile, or play nice. They clawed and screamed.
On paper this Sri Lanka should never beat England. They should have been outgunned in almost every way. In preparation. Financial. Backroom. Coaching. Facilities. And even in the players who were involved. Virtually every single thing about England should have been better than Sri Lanka.
—
Anderson was playing for England by the time he was 21. He’s the embodiment of a professional cricketer. You can see his face on the back of buses in London. He has won games with the ball all round the world. He’s saved games with the bat. Today he faced 54 balls with the knowledge that any mistake and his team would lose a Test, a series, become a joke. Yet he played almost every ball well. Stoically. Until Sri Lanka very nearly gave up.
On the 55th ball, a world-class professional sportsman was bounced by the sixth-fastest bowler from the North Western Province and caught by a chubby slow guy from Kurunegala.
The pearl and the bank clerk. Sri Lanka is a special place.
June 24, 2014
england’s new errors
Alastair Cook did a slow depressing jog from the ground. His team had taken the final Sri Lanka wicket of the series.
England were scattered across the ground in various positions. All looking exhausted and frustrated. They slowly left the ground to a small applause. An automatic applause, like saying sorry to someone who has bumped into you on the street.
Cook had already left the ground before his team; he had a trudging jog off to prepare for the chase. There was no applause as he left.
—
“Oh you pretty sweet red little baby, I love the way you smell and swing. I cannot wait for you to help me. You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for you.”
England couldn’t have shown any less regard for the old ball had they all stopped to spit on it. They might as well have offered Sri Lanka 40 runs off the first seven overs of the day as a deal to move the game on. Offering players like Mahela Jayawardene and Angelo Mathews a warm up is never, ever, ever a good idea. As Sri Lanka started to hit the ball wherever they wanted, England looked more feeble and completely idiotic.
And despite all this rush to the new ball, Moeen Ali only received one of England’s throwaway overs. The last one. It was the only over he would bowl in the first 167 minutes of play.
Then they got that most fetishised of items, the second new ball. But instead of just bowling short or wide with the new ball, as they did on Sunday, they combined the two. If cricket had a dictionary, this bowling was its definition of awful. James Anderson looked tired, injured, grumpy and was clearly upset with the footmarks. After much short wideness, Anderson recalibrated and bowled full down the leg side. Stuart Broad’s short and wide almost worked. A poor ball, received a poor shot, before a poor effort from Ian Bell dropped it.
By this stage in the innings, England’s beehive is so erratic you can’t even see the little shadowy batsmen behind it. Their pitch mat looks like someone dropped a plate of food. And then vomited on it.
Then England found a slight ray of sunshine. Anderson got Jayawardene. Liam Plunkett took two more and got himself on a hat-trick. Sri Lanka’s terribly feeble, virtually useless tail was right there, right for England to bite the head off of. Even during this glorious time when wickets fell magically around them, England still used a review for an lbw no human being has been drunk enough to ever give out. But Sri Lanka are seven wickets down, less than 200 ahead. This is England’s time.
The hat-trick ball attempt could have been one where Cook showed Mathews he wasn’t that worried about him, that he felt England had got their swag back. That they were ready to get back on top. He could have brought the field in, even a few catchers, and then kept them in the ring just to change the game a bit on Mathews after three quick wickets. Instead the field had many sweepers. Virtually no catchers. If he was unlucky enough to be caught on the hat-trick ball, it was likely to be at wide long-on.
Strangely he was not caught that way.
England then played every old cricketer’s favourite game of hoping they can dismiss the tailender by stealing a couple of balls at him in between the batsman hitting them for boundaries. It’s hard at the best of times, and harder when Angelo Mathews is batting like the world has been waiting for him and three of your seamers have abandoned line and length.
England went after it with their last bit of energy, Mathews smacked the ball back over their head and laughed at them.
By this point, Sri Lanka’s No. 9 Rangana Herath felt so comfortable he pulled out the back-foot cover drive. Which against an international bowler is like leading with your right. Instead he scoops it up in the air. Broad looks up, moves the wrong way, then moves slowly the right way, and then chases it like a dog who wouldn’t know what do to with it if he got it.
Mathews dominated them so much, they were lucky if they got to start an over against Herath early on. Chris Jordan had one. Jordan started with a shin-high full toss. Herath pushed it through covers and even gave himself enough time to run three. So then England decided to try a 7-2 off-side field to keep Mathews on strike. Jordan fired one down the leg side with no one behind square. Had England hit the boundary for Mathews, they could not have been any more accommodating. They did manage to keep Mathews on strike at the end of the over – he missed a knee-high full toss off the last ball. This was a horribly painful over for England fans, but it wasn’t much worse than any of the others.
England fluttered away another review on a ball that hit Herath on the groin. When Mathews finally got to 99, England didn’t seem to notice. Cook didn’t bring in the sweepers. Sure, Mathews would have got his hundred anyway. He may have got it if England had asked the 300 members of the crowd to come out. So, why delay the inevitable.
Broad tried an over of around the wicket, intentionally-down-the-leg-side bowling with Matt Prior standing at a fine leg slip. He is wided straight away. Anderson tries the opposite, an over of as wide as he can outside off stump. He’s wided as well. And then no one thinks to put out a third man, so Mathews flashes it exactly there. England have now even run out of stupid ideas. And that stage, England’s most sensible decision would have been letting Sri Lanka bat on too long to force a result.
Herath swept on to the back of his pad flap, it bounced up beautifully for Prior to take a quick-thinking catch. Prior saw it. Prior made the ground. Prior dropped the catch. Prior’s face is in the dirt. A visual representation of his keeping over the last few Tests.
England are saved the embarrassment of Herath’s fifty only by Mathews running him out. They finally take Mathews with a knee-high full toss. He had clearly used up all his awesome. Shaminda Eranga slaps England around, which at this stage is basically cricket abuse.
—
England need 350 runs with 10 wickets in hand.
Gary Ballance misses the quick skiddy one. Sam Robson nicks off chasing on the up. Ian Bell misses the one that nipped back. But then comes in the nightwatchman.
In cricket’s most rubbish position is Plunkett. While he may be a massive presence out on the ground, it doesn’t intimidate much as nightwatchman. There is a bit of King Kong about him, Sri Lanka are buzzing loudly and firing often. Plunkett’s been forced to climb the building only to get to the top and realise it’s pointless and is now clinging to the building rather uselessly. Then, instead of being brought down by enemy fire after safely putting Alastair Cook down carefully, Plunkett just jumped off the building taking Cook with him. One last mistake, falling to earth with the most pathetic of drives, confused and upset.
England need 293 runs with 5 wickets in hand.
—
England are 39 for 0.
Dhammika Prasad is bowling his skiddy medium fast stuff from over the wicket. He drops one short on off stump. To the left-hander it is going well outside off stump. The batsman decides to pull. The ball doesn’t get up as he would like. It takes the under edge and ducks back into the stumps.
Alastair Cook rocks his head back. Looks at the screen on as he leaves the field on his own. There is no applause again.
June 23, 2014
June 22, 2014
Robson’s desert digs
Sam Robson struggles outside off stump. That is the general consensus. The cricket elite, twitterers and taxi drivers have spoken. Cricket gospel is written and evangelized by them.
But don’t all batsmen since the beginning of overarm bowling have a problem just outside off stump in the corridor of uncertainty? Or whatever people call it now. Then there is the length, which is rarely described much more than just back of a length. It is the magic spot that Test bowlers from around the world hit.
You cannot drive it. You cannot pull it. You cannot cut it. It is just close and uncomfortable, like Hessian underwear, or that creepy bloke from the pub.
_____
The ball is left outside off stump with the assurance of a man who knows spiritually where his off stump is at all times. In his sleep, or during an attack by giant moody birds. His straight bat comes down so safely that an edge would seem like a rude shock. Runs do not flow, they often barely trickle. But every ball faced takes up more time. Bowlers tire as the ball loses colour, shape and hardness.
That is how Nick Compton plays. Today Compton used none of those skills out on a cricket ground, but was instead on a bus to Nottingham taking photos of people playing cards and a selfie of himself in sunglasses.
It was Sam Robson who used them.
_____
Robson leaves the ball well. His bat is straight. He covers the off stump. He rocks onto his front foot. Yet, in his first Test he went out twice to fairly standard deliveries. The first time was after just a few balls. It seemed like Sri Lanka had either done their homework on Robson, or just bowled fractionally outside off stump as you would with the new ball to practically any human being.
The second innings at Lord’s was longer. But Sri Lanka refused to leave his awkward spot alone. If they went straight, he clipped it on the leg side and scored easily. Outside off stump he scored once. An edge past slips. There was no push to point’s left hand, or dabs short of cover, no forcing, or opening the face, he just went nowhere.
Eventually he ran into Shaminda Eranga, who bowled the best spell of the Test and tortured Robson outside off stump. It was the two outswingers and one straight ball combination that had Robson dragging a ball back onto his stumps. Enough was seen. You did not need to be the Sri Lankan video analyst to suggest he had a broken technique.
_____
It is hard to clean bowl Sam Robson. Early in his innings he protects his off stump like a grumpy old man with a shotgun protecting his youngest daughter’s virginity. A middle-stump guard quickly becomes more of an off stump with an early trigger shuffle. It gives him more balls at his strength on his pads than most batsmen would get.
For all the talk about his weaknesses, he does have scoring zones. He can cut, in county cricket they talk of pull shots and overpitching will result in him driving. But it is that awkward line on that awkward length that people talked about the most. His biggest problem with this zone is not a weakness, but dryness.
Robson does not score when the ball is there. Virtually at all. He does not hit boundaries to put pressure on the bowler. As a top order churner, he does not have to. But he also does not find singles. He cannot get off strike. He is just a slow moving target protecting his weak spot.
His first 50 balls today in this area had Robson scoring four runs from the seamers. Against Eranga in that time, it was one run off his first 30 balls there. That is five overs of a bowler bowling in the exact zone of trouble without the batsman getting off strike more than once.
Now exchange the name of Eranga for Steyn, Harris or Boult. Would anyone want to give them 30 balls at you without getting off strike? Would many be able to? In first-class cricket you can sit on a bowler for a while. In Test cricket, the bowlers will sit on you.
Analysts the world over will mine every single aspect of Robson’s strong willed, disciplined, nuggety, patient hundred today. He might have made 127, but his metadata score will be far higher. The video packages will show ball after ball of him not getting off strike. Plans will be hatched, attacks will be prepared and pitch maps will be emailed.
Robson will patiently try to outlive them. That is his most impressive trait. Patience. It could be used against him, but he certainly will not run out of it anytime soon. You can only imagine the stick he received as a young guy playing the patience game in Sydney grade cricket while hummer driving bankers from Paddington and bearded brickies from Blacktown abused him for never playing a shot.
Nothing about his batting against seam bowling even hints at coming from Australia at all. His pointy back elbow makes him look like an accountant from Somerset. His fidgeting with his front bad is straight out of Millfield School. And the squat bounce at the crease is often seen at places that sound like Thurrock, Frieth and Whitestaunton. Until he moves out of the crease against spin, his batting is as English as Gooch’s back lift, Grace’s belly or Atherton being caught down the leg side.
_____
The ball was full and wide, Robson chased it and drove it efficiently and inelegantly into the covers. He ran hard, and easily made his second run, and then looked for a third. Having scored his 100th run, he did not throw the bat up, abandon a potential run, take his helmet off, kiss any logos, jump or even show any acknowledgement to the crowd. He looked for a third.
Sam Robson may make a lot of Test runs, but he will have to work harder and longer than most to make them. He will always be looking for a third.
