Category: England National Cricket

While there’s a statistically significant chance it will all go south, KP’s mentorship could be a throwback to better days

At the end of his time as consultant to the England cricket setup Gilbert Enoka praised Brendon McCullum’s incredible work in healing the culture of his team. Enoka is best known as the architect of the no-dickheads policy in sport. This is basically Doctor Dickhead. Dickheads? He’s not having them.

“There wasn’t one dickhead in there,” Enoka announced, proudly. And history has shown this to be correct. All the evidence suggests the numerical value of dickheads in the England cricket team was something other than one. And yes, zero is not one. Fair point. But so are all the other numbers, the ones that go up the other way into plurals, multiples, an infinity of dickheads.

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• Former England batter starts role with white-ball teams

• Fleming also ‘right person’ to take Test team forward

Brendon McCullum has revealed that he was the driving force behind the recruitment of Kevin Pietersen as a specialist mentor to England’s white-ball teams and said the new arrival had specific orders to “look across the environment and challenge me”.

Pietersen spent his first day in the role monitoring training at the Utilita Bowl after delivering an address that had the players “buzzing”, according to McCullum, England’s white-ball coach.

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Ollie Robinson was dominant, with Harry Brook, Dan Lawrence and Mohammad Abbas also standing out

By the 99.94 Cricket Blog

Joe Root: 164 runs at 41.0; two catches

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Some have stepped to the fore during a period of uncertainty, while others appear to be struggling for form

Robinson started the first Test by taking three wickets in an over, started his final bowling innings by taking two in an over, and between showed extraordinary control and consistency. His skill has never been in doubt but his fitness and work ethic were, so much so that he made only one appearance in just under three years before the comeback this summer.

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New Test head coach’s arrival and Root’s calming influence as captain add to promising signs in the post-Stokes era

As Joe Root calmly ran the rule over the Test summer and reeled off the ways in which it had been “chaos”, “unusual” and “unsettling” for England, it felt telling that first among them was Ben Stokes calling time on his international career during a match and a series that were both still live at the time.

Cricketers announcing their retirement mid-game is nothing new. Heather Knight went on to do the same during the women’s Test at Lord’s two weeks later. Root is also too loyal to Stokes to question openly whether that scene-stealing exit before New Zealand’s win at Trent Bridge was entirely in keeping with his call for “selfless cricketers” four years earlier.

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After an early scare, Joe Root and Jordan Cox usher England to victory and a 3-0 clean sweep of Pakistan

Razaullah’s agent is giving it some welly on X – apparently his phone is ringing red. Razaullah was due to play for Cleethorpes in the Yorkshire Southern Premier League before:

“@TheRealPCBMedia come calling - sort his Passport out, and wing him over for @Edgbaston. He’s now made his mark. Franchises already showing interest. Our phones have blown up. Watch this space!”

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• Mobile phones of players confiscated as part of inquiry

• Nine fined during Pakistan’s recent tour of Caribbean

Pakistan have launched an investigation into “discipline and conduct” during their highly dysfunctional tour of England, with two players understood to have had their mobile phones confiscated as part of the probe.

A spokesperson for the Pakistan Cricket Board confirmed on Monday that an investigation is currently under way and while no individuals have been named, it follows the removal of seven players from their original touring party last week in response to going 2-0 down with one Test still to play.

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• First time former captain involved since 2014 sacking

• Joins McCullum’s backroom staff for the next year

Kevin Pietersen has been appointed as a “specialist mentor” to England’s white-ball teams during the run-up to the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup in late 2027.

Announced on Monday morning, the move marks the first time Pietersen will have worked with the senior England side since he was controversially sacked as a player in the wake of the 2013/14 Ashes whitewash in Australia.

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One of the batting stalwarts of the team that reached Test No 1 a decade ago says the current side’s woes go far deeper than this tour of England

As a pillar of the Pakistan team that climbed from the nadir of the Lord’s spot-fixing scandal in 2010 to the top of the Test rankings six years later, all while playing overseas for security reasons, Azhar Ali knows a bit about overcoming a crisis.

But for all that Misbah-ul-Haq’s side offered hope back then – a reminder of Pakistan’s innate ability to overcome hardship and defy expectations – Azhar is currently looking on in despair at the state of their cricket and a tour of England that has pretty much imploded this past week.

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• Mike Hesson had only been in the UK to meet the king

• Interim picks up the pieces after seven players sent home

Mike Hesson was only in the UK this week to meet King Charles. But now the New Zealander finds himself interim head coach of a Pakistan Test side that have sent seven players and his predecessor home. As Hesson put it after his first net session: “The guys are probably more used to a little bit of chaos than I am.”

Even by Pakistan’s standards, this past week has been more than a little chaotic, with their somewhat nuclear response to going 2-0 down to England the talk of the sport. Hesson, previously Pakistan’s white-ball coach, has been parachuted in to restore some pride in the third Test at Edgbaston that starts next week.

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Series and matches are getting shorter as the sport’s pace of change quickens – as if cricket is a proxy for wider fears

There was a strange atmosphere on the final day of the Lord’s Test last week. It was a bank holiday Sunday, Jofra Archer was bowling the occasional rocket, and England were about to wrap up a much-needed series victory over Pakistan. The ground wasn’t full – it’s harder to sell day-four tickets in advance these days – and you couldn’t help the feeling that the denouement was a little, well, flat. Yes, the home crowd enjoyed the win. They’d have liked a bit more contest too.

Instead, it was the Pakistan Cricket Board that delivered the fifth-day drama, issuing an immediate recall of nearly half the team as if they were a bad batch of eggs. Perhaps some will see it as the decisive display of authority that Aaqib Javed, Pakistan’s director of high performance, would like them to give. For others, well-versed in the board’s volatile leadership, it’s just the PCB doing PCB things.

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Taking on more responsibility as Sussex captain has helped revitalise the bowler’s career, but he cannot afford to take his foot off the gas

Last winter, Ollie Robinson and England were living separate lives on the same continent. To the cracking of crockery and gnashing of teeth, England played five Tests as Bazball imploded. Robinson meanwhile toddled off to play grade cricket for the University of Sydney with no thoughts of playing for England at all.

Eight months later, Robinson’s life has turned upside down. After being dropped in 2024 by England over his attitude to fitness and suspicions of malingering, he was suddenly in favour again. In his first Test back in June he galumphed in from the Nursery End at Lord’s and took three wickets in his first over, a nipped‑back lbw, a nipped‑back catch at short leg and then another lbw. Boy’s Own stuff. He finished with seven wickets in the Test, and an award for player of the match.

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• Interim coach Trescothick hopes for unchanged lineup

• England secured series win over Pakistan on Sunday

Marcus Trescothick is determined to sign off as England’s interim head coach with a 100% record and has no plans to meddle with a winning formula in next week’s final Test of the summer, despite securing the series win by beating Pakistan at Lord’s.

Two successful games into a series, the most likely cause of a lineup change would be fatigue, but Pakistan have not forced England to toil unduly over their two wins – last summer the average India innings lasted 107.5 overs; this summer Pakistan’s figure is 43.3. Meanwhile winning the second Test on day four means the players have nine clear days before action resumes at Edgbaston.

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Dom Bess is one of many in a long line of England spinners to struggle for a sustained run in Test cricket. Why is there no lasting solution?

It is the eighth over of South Africa’s first innings in Gqeberha in January 2020 when Joe Root tosses the ball to 22-year-old Dom Bess. Three overs later, the decision pays off.

With the final ball before drinks, Bess takes a return catch to dismiss Pieter Malan. In the final over before the close, he has Zubayr Hamza caught at short leg. The next morning, Bess removes Dean Elgar, Faf du Plessis and Rassie van der Dussen to become the first English spinner to take the first five wickets of an innings since Derek Underwood in 1975.

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Captain followed trend of discussing nightclub incidents rather than cricket before the second Test against Pakistan

England won the first game of their last Test series, against New Zealand at Lord’s, but between that match and the second Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson were involved in a headline-grabbing incident at a London nightclub. “I’m angry, frustrated at having to sit here and talk through this,” Rob Key said a couple of days later.

“I feel disappointed that I’m here talking about this because there’s so much we’ve tried to do, so much we’ve tried to learn from, and I believe that as a team, the way they’ve carried themselves in the lead‑up to last week’s game, the way they played that Test match – to then be now talking about this, is just incredibly frustrating.”

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