Category: England National Cricket

• Essex bowler, 27, gets first call-up for Trent Bridge Test
• Four-day game against Zimbabwe starts on 22 May

Sam Cook has been selected for England’s one-off Test against Zimbabwe later this month – reward not only for his excellence in the County Championship but also a commendable, unwavering desire to play the longest format.

Aged 27 and having taken a truckload of wickets for Essex at just 18 runs apiece, Cook could have been forgiven for wondering if the call would ever come. During the most recent winter, with six-figure offers from three different franchise tournaments, he could also have been forgiven for putting his bank balance first.

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If Zak Crawley’s form is a worry the middle-order is not, but Ben Stokes’s role as an all-rounder remains unknown

It may be viewed as an amuse-bouche before the main course of India in June, but England’s one-off Test against Zimbabwe is fast approaching. Selection is imminent – for the four-day match Trent Bridge that gets under way on 22 May and a training camp in Loughborough that precedes it – and after four rounds of the County Championship, the contenders are beginning to take shape.

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Fast bowler was unfairly demonised by beige fans but has just turned 30 and is honing his skills for a tough summer

This season, in an attempt to distract everyone from the fact that its main sponsors are one of the world’s largest steel companies and the literal state of Saudi Arabia, the Tata Indian Premier League has been planting trees for every dot ball bowled during the tournament. At the post‑match presentation, the bowler who delivered the most dot balls in the game is awarded a ceremonial sapling. Which means that on four occasions this season – the most of any player – Jofra Archer has been contractually obliged to receive a small tree on live television.

The first time Archer gets his sapling, he eyes it with the kind of narrow-eyed suspicion any of us might exhibit. By the time he gets his fourth sapling – 10 dot balls against Delhi Capitals, 180 trees planted – he’s basically a pro at this. Shake hands. Look straight into the camera. Gaze at the sapling tenderly, as if he’s going to plant it himself, in his own garden, sheltered and watered, and definitely not throwing it straight into the first bin he finds.

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Leicestershire left-armer reflects on ‘surreal’ Test debut last year, fitness work and Anderson’s advice in the nets

Josh Hull returns for Leicestershire this week, his first outing since that fast-tracked Test debut against Sri Lanka last summer. A winter “beasting” by the England Lions fitness coaches has the giant left-armer feeling stronger, with a more robust base from which to attack a potentially huge year of cricket.

Through no fault of his own, Hull was seen as the embodiment of Bazball braggadocio at the end of last season when thrown into Test cricket after just 10 first-class games as England blew their shot at a perfect summer. It was no disgrace – first-innings figures of three for 53 – but ended with a quad strain that underlined the physicality required.

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• Former cricketer opens up on dark times during recovery
• ‘I thought my face had come off. I was frightened to death’

Andrew Flintoff has described his return to cricket as a coach over the past 18 months as “the one thing that saved me” as he struggled to come to terms with the mental and physical scars caused in a car accident during filming for the BBC’s Top Gear in December 2022.

Flintoff talks for the first time about the accident and its aftermath in a Disney+ documentary to be released on Friday. “After the accident I didn’t think I had it in me to get through,” he says.

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• Former England captain was injured on set in 2022 crash
• Rob Key helped encourage return to the England fold

Andrew Flintoff has spoken about his mental health following his life-changing car crash on the set of Top Gear in 2022.

In one of his first interviews since sustaining severe facial injuries in the accident, Flintoff told former the England captain and the Times’ cricket correspondent Mike Atherton of his initial reluctance to return to public life.

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• 42-year-old retired from England duty last July
• Anderson knighted in Rishi Sunak’s resignation honours

Jimmy Anderson is to be awarded a knighthood for “services to cricket” a year on from the final Test of his record-breaking England career.

Anderson was widely tipped to have his previous OBE upgraded after retiring from international cricket last summer and on Friday was the only sportsperson to feature in the resignation honours list of former prime minister – and cricket fan – Rishi Sunak.

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• Yorkshire batter takes over from Jos Buttler
• Key says chance has come ‘slightly earlier than expected’

Harry Brook has been named as England’s new white-ball captain, with Rob Key, the director of men’s cricket, praising the Yorkshireman’s “excellent cricketing brain” but also admitting the opportunity has come “slightly earlier than expected”.

Brook, 26, will take charge of both the T20 and ODI teams despite Key admitting last month he was considering offering the latter to Ben Stokes. Instead, Stokes will remain focused on leading the Test side and next winter’s Ashes moonshot, as well as his own return to fitness after hamstring surgery at the start of the year.

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Lancashire and England opening bowler who played in the victorious England Ashes side of 1971

Peter Lever, who has died aged 84, was a fast-medium bowler for Lancashire for 17 years and for England in 17 Test matches. In many ways he was the epitome of the staunch English professional cricketer, dedicated, modest and devoted to the game he loved. And yet throughout his career he experienced moments way beyond the norm, one of which was harrowing in the extreme.

He toured Australia twice, under the captaincy of Ray Illingworth in 1970-71 when England regained the Ashes with Lever playing in five of the six Tests, and then on the less successful expedition under Mike Denness four years later, during which an unsuspecting England team was confronted by the combination of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson for the first time. It was just after that series when a battered England side had moved on to New Zealand that Lever had the most traumatic experience of his life.

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• Opener insists results matter despite comments in India
• Duckett clarifies social media posts on Jasprit Bumrah

Ben Duckett has said England’s humbling experiences in India and at the Champions Trophy in Pakistan “hurt me so much” and that he hopes they can make amends this summer.

England have lost 10 out of 11 white-ball matches since the turn of the year, including all three at the Champions Trophy to finish bottom of their group, triggering the resignation of Jos Buttler as captain.

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Instincts are to protect England’s Test captain, but he’s the functioning brain of Bazball. It’s hard to think of anyone better to lead the ODI team

This column is about the rise of high-end supermarket cheddar cheese that has delicious and addictive crunchy crystals in it. What are these exactly? And is everything just basically crisps now? This column is about the MCC being needlessly given tens of millions of pounds because the England and Wales Cricket Board sold a hat that isn’t really a hat, just the promise of a brightly coloured future-hat.

This column is about cricket umpires being reduced progressively to a theatre of facial expressions, from the brave, wounded “you’re on screen, please reverse your decision”, to the screw-you triumphalism of the confirmatory finger to an empty set of stumps. Michael Caine once said that while doing a closeup you should always stare at a fixed point, always into one eye not both eyes of your scene partner. Do we need to train Joel Wilson in this?

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• England set for white-ball reset after Buttler resignation
• Key says it would be ‘stupid’ not to consider Stokes

Rob Key could offer Ben Stokes the chance to take on the captaincy of England’s one-day team – and potentially put Harry Brook in charge of the T20 side – after admitting it would be “stupid” not to consider his Test talisman for an expanded role.

Speaking at Lord’s on Thursday, less than a week after England completed their winless Champions Trophy campaign, the director of men’s cricket held his hands up to “a lot of errors”. There was also an admission his players lacked the competitiveness that Stokes brings.

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• England captain to prioritise fitness for Australia series
• Moeen Ali also withdraws and retires from county game

Ben Stokes and Moeen Ali have both withdrawn from this year’s Hundred. England’s Test captain has chosen to focus on his fitness and his duties with the red ball, and Moeen has decided to retire from county cricket so he can grasp the opportunities offered by global franchise leagues.

The competition has brought only bad luck to Stokes, who in five appearances has scored only 14 runs at an average of 3.50 and sustained one serious hamstring injury, while playing for Northern Superchargers last August. That pulled muscle kept him out of all cricket for two months and, after a recurrence while playing for England in New Zealand late last year, he required surgery from which he is recovering.

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Pakistan have a potentially destructive pace attack, Australia have been weakened and Afghanistan will debut

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As defeats pile up Brendon McCullum’s brand of cricket now has the feel of a cool music video on the deck of a sinking ship

Two summers ago, with interest in the England Test team’s seductive new energy reaching an early peak, I wrote an article suggesting that Bazball was a cult.

There were some parts of the clinical definition of a cult that seemed analogous. A sense of mission. Charismatic, dominant individuals in charge. Presents itself as innovative and elitist. Aggressively hostile towards any kind of outside questioning.

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