Category: England Cricket

The team’s latest big hitter opens up after his incendiary innings against the West Indies this week

Fresh off a plane from India and straight into a player-of-the-match performance for England on his home ground, Jacob Bethell’s world is a pretty hectic one these days. But the only complaint about a jetsetting lifestyle that has him rubbing shoulders with Virat Kohli and tipped for superstardom is the hotel beds.

“A lot of them are way too soft,” says Bethell after the first one-day international against West Indies, his incendiary 82 having helped Harry Brook to a winning start as England captain. “I’ve got a bad back and I’m only 21, so we need to sort that out. I might have to walk around with some memory foam. But no, I’m enjoying it.”

Continue reading...

The Lancashire bowler, 43 in July, talks about life on and off the pitch, and why cricket was never about money for him

Sir Jimmy Anderson is running late, five, then 10 minutes past 10 before he arrives in front of his computer. He is dishevelled, like he is just up and into his T-shirt and jeans. He finished his first match since July the previous evening, Lancashire against Derbyshire in the County Championship, on a flat pitch at Old Trafford, and is still feeling it.

The fourth day had been hard going: 16 overs, eight maidens, two for 25, in a thwarted attempt to force victory against a Derbyshire team hell-bent on securing a draw. Lancashire finished two wickets short. “I’ve woken up feeling like absolute death,” Anderson says. “It was a bit of a wake-up call.”

Continue reading...

Batter relaxed about Jacob Bethell’s potential return after century against Zimbabwe with India and Australia to come

A Test match that began with England saying they wanted to be better at media interactions and show a touch more humility ended with the captain growling about his words being twisted. And they say a week is a long time in politics …

It was my question that sparked all this, as it happens. The day before the one-off Test against Zimbabwe, I asked Ben Stokes about Jacob Bethell, the conversations that surrounded his absence to play in the Indian Premier League, and whether, as the “incumbent No 3” who made such an impression in New Zealand, he would be “straight back in” for the series against India.

Continue reading...

One-off Zimbabwe Test at Trent Bridge the launchpad for a decisive summer for England and their abstemious captain

So where are we up to right now? Still Bazball 2.0? The start of Bazball 3.0? Given Ben Stokes has knocked the grog on the head this year, perhaps it should be Bazball 0.0% ABV.

Although, jokes aside, that recent revelation on one of those man-chat podcasts said a fair bit about Stokes’s nature. Not only has he temporarily paused drinking during his recovery from hamstring surgery but, so taken by this, he has even bought shares in an alcohol-free spirits company. England’s Test captain is someone who, when he sets his mind on something, sees it through to the extreme. Even abstinence.

Continue reading...

• Ashes rivals Australia sit above England in ICC table
• Zimbabwe Test is captain’s first action since December

England under Ben Stokes have never lacked ambition, but they go into a defining period of Test cricket with one in particular in mind: to become the first England side in 15 years to take top spot in the International Cricket Council’s rankings – officially the best in the world.

“If we win what we’ve got coming up, the likelihood is that we will be at the top of that leaderboard,” Stokes said. “There’s no doubt in my mind we have the ability to be that team.”

Continue reading...

All-rounder has been playing for his country – on and off – for 20 years and is relishing Thursday’s Test in England

In a Zimbabwe squad not exactly packed with experience – only three of its 16 members have played as many Tests as the 21‑year‑old English spinner Shoaib Bashir – Sean Williams is the most glaring of exceptions. When Jimmy Anderson took off his England cap for the final time last summer, 21 years, six months and 27 days after his debut, Williams took over as the cricketer with the longest ongoing international career: by the final day of the one-off Test at Trent Bridge this week he will be able to look back at precisely 20 years and three months at the highest rung of the cricketing ladder.

And still he is breaking new ground: England, who have not played Zimbabwe in any format since 2003, would be the 28th opponents of his international career, taking him two short of the world record held by the retired Kenyan Collins Obuya. “Definitely for me as an individual, it makes it massive,” he says.

Continue reading...

Visitors have endured political chaos and miserable results over 22 years but cricket is finally a national game

Twenty-two years is a long time, even in a sport that measures its games in days and its history in centuries. The last time England played a Test match against Zimbabwe, in 2003, Rob Key was in the middle order instead of the managing director’s job, Jimmy Anderson was a 20-year-old tearaway playing in his very first series, and the England and Wales Cricket Board was just about to launch the world’s very first professional Twenty20 tournament. Zimbabwean cricket has changed, too. Back then the team was in the earliest stages of a transformation that was meant to turn cricket from a minority game, played by the small white population, into a sport that better represented the whole country.

They have been hard years, riven by player strikes, political interference, maladministration and a miserable drop-off in results. The team temporarily withdrew from Test cricket, suspended their domestic competition and were repeatedly censured by the International Cricket Council. They lost so many players through emigration to England, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, that even now you could build a hell of a good Zimbabwean squad out of people who are making a living overseas. And yet, at the end of it all, the process was, by one important measure, a success. The squad that came on tour in 2003 was majority white, the team that has come this year is majority black.

Continue reading...

• England Test captain to return against Zimbabwe
• ‘It’s just getting harder to do everything’

Ben Stokes has stopped drinking alcohol during his latest injury rehabilitation in an effort to be firing on all cylinders for England this summer. The Test captain is set to make his comeback on Thursday in the one-off Test against Zimbabwe at Trent Bridge, having been sidelined since December after tearing his left hamstring in New Zealand.

He rushed back from a similar injury last year but his recovery this time after an operation has been painstakingly managed and Stokes has left no stone unturned to fulfil his vow to return in peak physical condition. Speaking to the Untapped podcast, the 33-year-old said: “After my first major injury, I remember the shock of it, after the initial adrenaline had stopped, thinking: ‘How has this happened? We did have a bit of a drink four or five nights ago, could that have played a part? It wouldn’t have helped.’

Continue reading...

England’s wicketkeeper-batter on the innings that changed his career, the influence of Kevin Pietersen and a huge year of Test cricket ahead

“When the pressure’s on,” Jamie Smith says intently on an otherwise languid morning at the Oval, “it definitely gives you more of a focus. You can’t get away from the fact that, when the game is on the line, you want to be the one that takes it on and wins it. Look at some of the best players that have played the game – and the impact they’ve had in situations where they’ve been needed the most.

“Look at Stokesy [Ben Stokes, his England captain] and some of the innings he’s played where he’s rescued the side from defeat or led them to victory. They’re the things that get remembered. So it would be nice to be the sort of player that can do similar.”

Continue reading...

• League playoffs clash with international assignment
• Buttler, Bethell, Jacks could have allegiances tested

England expect most of the five IPL players picked for their one-day international series against West Indies to report for international duty rather than complete the rescheduled tournament.

The IPL’s league phase will now conclude on 27 May, two days before England play their opening game against West Indies at Edgbaston, meaning that Jofra Archer and Jamie Overton, whose teams have already been eliminated from playoff contention, will certainly be free to play for their country.

Continue reading...