Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 69

If Brendon McCullum’s bold new era is an illusion it is a persuasive one | Jonathan Liew

England still have a frail top order and an unbalanced attack but this team do not need to dwell on failings from the past

Shortly after half past five a wild and barbarous noise consumed Headingley, the sort that brings local residents to their windows and the day-trippers in the hospitality boxes streaming out on to the balconies.

A few of the dozing members in the pavilion may even have been stirred from their evening slumbers. Out in the middle Stuart Broad was pumping his arms like a preacher. England’s slip cordon were clapping in time, beating out a fearsome tribal rhythm.

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Boult reborn again for New Zealand with red-ball magic in white-ball furnace | Jonathan Liew

The New Zealand bowler delivered one of the greatest opening spells this ground has ever seen to clean up England’s top three

The long minutes at fine-leg feel like hours. Kicking his heels, tugging at his sleeves, brushing his studs across the clipped grass. Behind him the stands are a riot of colour and song, of bouncing beach balls and idle chatter and the rustle and rumble of punters to and from the bar. Trent Boult sees none of this, hears none of this. He does not walk in with the bowler. The ball is not hit towards him. All he can do is patrol this little parcel of exile, playing the game in his mind, ticking down the seconds until he can bowl again.

There are days when it takes a few overs for Boult to discover his rhythm. Short-form cricket is easier in this regard. The first couple of overs with the white new ball: that’s the game, right there. It swings or it doesn’t, you get the breakthrough or you don’t, and everything else is simply varying degrees of defence. But in a Test match you need to probe and experiment. Find out what this ball is capable of. Locate the right length on this pitch. In these conditions. Against these batters.

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Jack Leach’s lucky England wicket showcases randomness of Test cricket | Jonathan Liew

Nicholls’s dismissal happened for no reason but the fluke would not have stood out in the artificial shorter formats

It was shortly before tea at a clammy, claustrophobic Headingley when Jack Leach stepped up to bowl the final over of the session. After a promising start Leach had begun to lose the thread a little, and so had England.

Henry Nicholls had dropped anchor for 98 balls; Daryl Mitchell had simply picked up where he left off at Lord’s and Nottingham; the partnership between them had lasted 20 overs and was slowly squeezing the air out of the day.

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Jack Leach left high and dry by an England spinner’s thankless tasks | Jonathan Liew

Bowler retains the faith of his captain against New Zealand but is neither a positive attacking option nor able to tie down an end

Being a Test spinner is a little like being a guitarist in Radiohead. There are times when you are absolutely essential to the success of the enterprise. Then there are the times when you are so peripheral you may as well have stayed at home. You’re never quite in, but by the same token you’re never quite out. If Chennai and Sharjah are The Bends, then Trent Bridge on a cloudy early summer’s afternoon is probably analogous to one of the more ambient cuts off Kid A.

When you are an English spinner, the contrast is even sharper. On helpful surfaces, or in the Asian subcontinent, you are frequently expected to run through sides all by yourself. At home, meanwhile, the requirement is for immaculate control, unless the conditions are particularly seamy, in which case you will not be required at all. There are few roles in cricket whose demands are more varied and less reconcilable, where the margins for error are so unforgiving.

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‘Failure forms us’: an imagined video call between Bielsa and Pochettino | Jonathan Liew

Two Argentinian managers, both looking for work, talk Neymar’s parties and why there’s no happiness in football

Topic: Mauricio Pochettino’s Zoom Meeting
Mon, 13 Jun 2022 01:51 AM (CET)

[Marcelo Bielsa’s iPad has joined the meeting.]

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England and Joe Root reward fans’ optimism with riotous display of batting | Jonathan Liew

England set about chasing New Zealand’s first innings with an abandon not seen from them for several years in Tests

Tickets for this Test went on sale last September, and so the vast majority of fans at Trent Bridge on Sunday will have reserved their seats months in advance. Really, you have to admire the leap of faith involved there.

Batting collapses. Erratic weather. Covid postponements. For much of the last few years, buying a ticket to watch England play Test cricket has been an act of the purest optimism: the sporting equivalent of playing the lottery.

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Are the best days now behind Belgium’s golden generation? | Jonathan Liew

A thrashing at the hands of the Netherlands has prompted fears that Roberto Martínez’s side’s chance of silverware has passed

For 30 riotous, raucous minutes at the King Baudouin Stadium, you could convince yourself that everything was fine. Everything was coming off: Leandro Trossard found the top corner from 25 yards. Leander Dendoncker piled one in from distance. Kevin De Bruyne was having one of those games where he simply does whatever he wants. With virtually the last kick, the explosive 21-year-old Club Brugge striker Lois Openda scored a debut goal. Final score: Belgium 6-1 Poland. Normal service spectacularly resumed.

Everyone was having so much fun that it was almost possible to forget the humiliation that had taken place on the same pitch just five nights earlier. Against their neighbours the Netherlands, Belgium did not so much implode as disappear, deservedly losing 4-1. Afterwards Louis van Gaal – who you suspect has never quite forgiven Belgium for turning him down for the national team job in 2016 – crowed imperiously about how his side had “one player extra in every position on the pitch”.

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Ben Stokes makes things happen before his well of miracles runs dry | Jonathan Liew

England’s captain lives up to his cliche against New Zealand but cricket remains a secret party in apathetic Nottingham

In Gedling, an unnamed resident was awarded £100 in compensation by the council over missed garden waste collections. There was dismay in Bulwell at the announcement that the local branch of Boots would be closing in August. Meanwhile, a furious mother from Huthwaite accused Thorpe Park of “ruining” a family holiday by banning her from its Stealth ride on account of the fact that she only has one arm. “Having to get off the ride was very degrading,” said Lisa Johnstone, “and made my son nervous.”

Clearly, a busy news day in Nottingham. Perhaps it was hardly surprising, given everything else going on in the city, that Friday’s edition of the Nottingham Post could scarcely find room to mention the international sporting event happening in its midst. So it was that the second Test between England and New Zealand was demoted to a pitiful blob on an inside sports page.

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England claw a draw in Germany and the latest on Italy – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Nedum Onuoha, Nicky Bandini and Jonathan Liew to discuss England’s Nations League draw in Germany

On the podcast today: Harry Kane’s late penalty earns England a point in Germany, but they remain bottom of their Nations League group. Is Gareth Southgate rewarding loyalty too much over form? And how do the players feel about these matches after a continuous cycle of football since the Covid restart in 2020?

Elsewhere, Italy beat Hungary to move to the summit of group A3. Nicky gives us a lowdown on the mood in Italian football after their disastrous World Cup qualifying exit. Also, it’s time for “The Bandinis”, her awards for the Serie A 21-22 season.

Finally, there are some questions for Nedum on what the transfer window is like from a player’s point of view, plus will Gareth Bale move to the Championship?

To share your experiences as an LGBTQ+ fan please go here.

And tickets are still available for the upcoming Football Weekly Live tour.

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The rise of tactical batting retirements: intriguing innovation or just not cricket? | Jonathan Liew

The new T20 trend for replacing batters at crucial moments will upset traditionalists, but that doesn’t necessarily make it wrong

For a game rooted in centuries of tradition, cricket has often found itself curiously susceptible to fashion. Did you spot the moment, about five or six years ago, when it quietly became mandatory for any good fielder to be described as a “gun”? Bowling attacks were “the bowling unit” for most of the 2000s before imperceptibly morphing into “the bowling group”. Left-arm wrist-spin is having its long-awaited moment in the sun, itself a reaction to the 2010s trend for spinners who didn’t really spin the ball at all, but just did funny flicky things with their fingers while going “oooh” and stroking their chins a lot.

And so, just as one wicket often brings two, another fashion is sweeping through short-form cricket. On Sunday at Edgbaston, while playing for Birmingham against Nottinghamshire in a rain-affected eight-over game, Carlos Brathwaite became the first batter in the history of the T20 Blast to be retired out for tactical reasons. Seeing Calvin Harrison, a leg-spinner, about to bowl the final over for Nottinghamshire, Brathwaite decided to leave the field and let Sam Hain – a better player of spin – replace him.

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