Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 87
August 17, 2021
Son Heung-min was often eclipsed by Kane but can dazzle in his own right | Jonathan Liew
Without the England captain an exciting new Spurs era could dawn with the brilliant, deeply committed Korean its talisman
So let’s talk about the restaurant scene in the Son Heung-min documentary starring Park Seo-joon. What do you mean, you’ve never seen it? You know the one: the classic restaurant scene, from the 2019 docu-series Sonsational, which Son filmed for the South Korean broadcaster TVN. You know. The bit where he’s eating barbecue in Soho with one of the most famous actors in Korea. And suddenly, in the middle of this noisy restaurant, there’s this incredibly human moment between them, a fleeting glimpse of meaning and connection in their odd, hermetic existence.
“I don’t even know how I played today,” Son reflects. “It is just another day passing by.”
Related: Tottenham’s Son Heung-min strikes to stun wasteful Manchester City
Related: Manchester City lack a ruthless streak and know Harry Kane can provide it | Jacob Steinberg
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August 16, 2021
England beaten and bullied by a team moulded in Virat Kohli’s image | Jonathan Liew
Victory came in the modern India way – with a swagger and without taking a backward step
Ollie Robinson emerges from the darkness of the Long Room on his way out to the middle. England are 90 for seven and Robinson is about to face the hat-trick ball from Mohammed Siraj. All around the ground, India fans are in raptures. Standing at first slip, Virat Kohli is waving his arms, conducting them like an orchestra. The prevailing smell is of English blood.
As Robinson descends the pavilion steps, a couple of India players in tracksuits are coming back in the opposite direction, having just been out on the field delivering drinks. Robinson stops and waits for them to step aside. They do not step aside. Robinson waits. They wait. Eventually, after a fashion, they sort of awkwardly squeeze past each other. The whole encounter lasts barely a couple of seconds and yet as a motif for this bruising, absorbing final day it is hard to beat.
Related: India hand England heavy defeat thanks to Shami, Bumrah and Siraj
Related: Joe Root admits a lot of England defeat ‘falls on my shoulders as captain’
Continue reading...August 15, 2021
India needed the Pant doctrine but what they got was Cheteshwar Pujara | Jonathan Liew
Slow starts are nothing new to the batsman, but 33 innings since his last Test century the murmurs of discontent from within India have begun to swell
Rishabh Pant is the next man in. Everyone knows Rishabh Pant is the next man in. Even when he’s not batting, the India No 6 still manages to impose himself. The commentators warn in menaced tones about the “dangerous Pant”.
The cameras try to pick him out on the India balcony. And right at this moment, with the second Test agonisingly poised and Lord’s a hive of tension, the next man in is reclining across a bench, watching the game from a horizontal position.
Related: Mark Wood and Moeen Ali finally break India resistance in fascinating duel
Continue reading...England’s Moeen Ali hopes for Test victory target of fewer than 220
England will aim to restrict India to a lead of less than 220 on the pivotal fifth day of the second Test, according to the all-rounder Moeen Ali. An enthralling Sunday at Lord’s ended with India on 181 for six, a lead of 154, and with uneven bounce and turn threatening to play an ever-greater role Moeen warned that anything above a modest target would be tough to chase.
Related: Mark Wood and Moeen Ali finally break India resistance in fascinating duel
Continue reading...August 14, 2021
Joe Root forgets England’s toils and refinds secret to batting immortality | Jonathan Liew
The put-upon captain might have faded away in his fifth year in the job but instead he has played some of his greatest innings
If you wanted, you could still probably pick a few holes. He edged a few through the slips. He got bogged down a little in the 90s, and then again in the 150s. He didn’t hit a single six. Does an innings even still count these days if it isn’t accompanied by a big flashing bar along the bottom of the screen screaming “OH YEAH”? Most unforgivably of all, Joe Root’s unbeaten 180 against India lasted almost nine hours. Good luck fitting that into BBC Two’s teatime schedule.
Related: Masterful Joe Root hauls England back into contention with India
Related: Root century gives England edge over India: second Test, day three – as it happened
Continue reading...‘I’ve run out of superlatives,’ says Jonny Bairstow after Joe Root’s heroics
As Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root emerged from the pavilion on Saturday morning to a warm and sunny reception from a capacity Lord’s crowd, they took a moment to count their blessings. “Joe and I said to each other: ‘How good is to be walking out on a Saturday at Lord’s with your best mate?’” Bairstow recalled at stumps on day three. “To have a full crowd, with our family and friends here, was really special. The Lord’s buzz was definitely back.”
England’s buzz was back too, for now at least. They began the day with a mountain to climb but ended it with a slender lead of 27 thanks in large part to Bairstow’s 57 and Root’s gargantuan unbeaten 180 – the England captain’s fifth century in seven months, and one that took him past Graham Gooch into second place in the all-time list of England Test run-scorers. Only Alastair Cook now stands in his way.
Related: Masterful Joe Root hauls England back into contention with India
Continue reading...August 13, 2021
Rory Burns endures to aid England while Hameed suffers | Jonathan Liew
The opener is awkward and unspectacular but often effective as he demonstrated with a battling 49 against India at Lord’s
As England’s openers walked out to bat at Lord’s on the second afternoon, a ghostly figure took his seat on the balcony to watch them. Half in light, half in shadow, Haseeb Hameed perched in the doorway of the dressing room and patiently waited for a chance that has been almost five years in the making.
Hameed is 24 years old, England’s incumbent No 3 batsman, a player of immense promise and potential, and yet ever since his Test debut in India in late 2016 his career has largely been conceived in terms of loss. In a parallel universe, in the world of romantic imagination, he does not break his thumb and lose his place. He does not return to Lancashire and spend the next two seasons mislaying all concept of his off stump. He does not spoil or ruin or succumb to paralysis and self-doubt. Instead, he nails down one of the toughest jobs in international cricket: opening the batting for England in the post-Alastair Cook era. Of course he errs and struggles, as England err and struggle, but along the way he also repays a little faith. He scores a gutsy, heartwarming century in the 2019 Ashes. He hits an emotional ton at Lord’s against the future world champions. He makes runs on the baked earth of South Africa, the warm soil of the Caribbean, the green pastures of New Zealand. By mid-2021, he’s faced and survived more balls than any opener in the world since his debut.
Related: Appreciating the gentle beauty of geometry from Edrich stand at Lord’s
Related: Root and Burns steady England ship but India remain in driving seat
Continue reading...August 12, 2021
Rohit Sharma reaps reward of India’s smart planning over England’s chaos
Both Indian openers showed grit and talent against a home attack that, Jimmy Anderson aside, looked largely disorientated
Rohit Sharma arrived in Australia a week before Christmas and immediately went into 14 days of hard quarantine. Marooned in his Sydney apartment while his teammates were playing in Melbourne, once he had completed his daily regimen of exercise there was little to be done except to watch television and think. So that was what he did. As his teammates battled hard against the Australian pace attack of Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc, Sharma watched intently, hour upon hour, working out their methods, working out his own.
The Sharma who finally emerged from quarantine was a smarter, more circumspect, more thorough batsman than the one who entered it.
Related: KL Rahul’s sublime century puts India in early control against England
Related: Australia’s Covid restrictions put integrity of Ashes at stake, warns ECB
Continue reading...Australia’s Covid restrictions put integrity of Ashes at stake, warns ECB
Tom Harrison, the chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, has put further pressure on the Australian government to relax its strict quarantine rules in order to allow this winter’s Ashes to go ahead.
Several England players have indicated they may pull out of the tour if their families are forced into hard quarantine after arriving in the country, and Harrison insisted the integrity of the series was at stake unless the Australian authorities softened the nation’s hard-line stance.
Related: England v India: second Test, day one – live!
Continue reading...Back in the game: here comes the Premier League again | Jonathan Liew
Flawed, frenetic yet somehow still glorious, the top flight returns and so do the fans. It looks like a four-horse title race and a cast of six will be fighting to avoid the drop
We go again. Thirty-three days after Gianluigi Donnarumma pawed away Bukayo Saka’s penalty at Wembley, exploding not just England’s fragile pretensions to supremacy but our fleeting illusions of national unity, here comes the riposte. The return of the Premier League to our multiple portable devices marks a return to English football not as we would dreamily like it to be, but as it really is: flawed and fierce, fuelled by personality and narrative and billionaires and gambling sponsorships, intensely tribal, consumed by petty arguments and – whisper it – the envy of the world.
This is, perhaps, no longer a fashionable sentiment to express in some quarters. To some, the Premier League – with its 24-hour media saturation, its faint whiff of exceptionalism, its greed, its bombast, its vast unaccountable power and entrenchment of financial inequality – represents everything wrong with the sport. Moreover, there are times – say, while watching Brighton 0 Fulham 0, or yet another feted but fetid early-season stalemate between two title contenders – when the Premier League’s rolling hype machine feels as much curse as blessing.
Related: Men’s transfer window summer 2021 – all deals from Europe’s top five leagues
West Ham's sixth-placed finish may soon feel like a pandemic memory, like queuing outside Lidl or clapping for the NHS
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