Category: Cricket

South Africa won by 14 runs (DLS) on a wet and wild evening at Sophia Gardens

“Shame (but very predictable) about the current weather,” says Alfie Sparrow, although his email is actually about something else. “I’ve just moved into London, living in Tooting with some old uni mates. I was wondering if any readers have local cricket club recommendations? Played alongside Bas de Leede growing up in the Netherlands, winning 3 national titles in our age group. Wish I could say I was still near his quality but that’s far from the case – just after a friendly club for next summer.” Hope you find one.

“My girlfriend has very tentatively started to get into cricket,” reports Charles Aspden. “And we discussed potential telly programmes which would further entice her in. In true Alan Partridge fashion, she wants to see ‘Tea with Amol Rajan,’ a show somewhere between Bake Off and Grandstand. Amol travels the country to try the best and worst teas around the village, county and international grounds, interviewing the local eccentrics and giving tea ladies up and down the country some of the plaudits they deserve.”

Leg-spinner would reject Australia SOS as he builds up to another major event with three games against South Africa

The way the ball is coming out of Adil Rashid’s hand this summer – those gyroscopic leg-breaks and googlies still so utterly seductive – there is a case for Ben Stokes to flick him a WhatsApp that simply reads: “Ashes?”

It was enough to persuade Rashid’s best friend, Moeen Ali, to return to the fray back in 2023, an SOS answered initially with a LOL. Looking ahead to the Ashes tour this winter, Rashid, even aged 37 and having not fizzed down a red ball for six years (no barrier these days), would surely enhance the squad.

• Fast bowler will not play for Durham this season

• October tour of New Zealand could be earliest return date

Mark Wood is set to miss the entire home summer, with England deciding to take an ultra-cautious route with the fast bowler they deem central to their Ashes hopes this winter.

Wood, 35, underwent knee surgery in March and was initially targeting a return for the fifth Test against India in late July. Despite bowling in the intervals during that series, this target was then pushed back to a possible late season outing for Durham in the County Championship.

Crushing victory against South Africa showed 50-over team’s potential but struggle for series wins continues

There might have been a few sore heads in England’s squad on the morning after their epic, extraordinary victory against South Africa in Southampton, if only because of dizziness. On Sunday, after all, what had been down was suddenly up, what was bad became good, what was strong appeared feeble. And so the series ended having only really proved that what fails today can flourish tomorrow, which does not necessarily help with planning for the day after that.

Clearly England have a team with great potential, but across the week it only really shone when their opponents had misplaced both motivation and quality. Brendon McCullum, the England head coach, described “an oscillating series” that concluded with “an incredible blueprint of what this team’s capable of achieving if we can get it right”, but if it is hard to argue that scoring 414 before routing your opponents for 72 is anything less than ideal it is also not hugely repeatable.

• England head coach hails ‘box office’ Jofra Archer

• Stokes and Wood ‘progressing well’ after injuries

Brendon McCullum has ramped up the Ashes hype ahead of this winter’s trip to Australia, describing England’s pursuit of the urn they last won a decade ago – and have brought back from the Antipodes just once since 1986-87 – as “the biggest series of all of our lives”.

England returned to international action last week for the first time since a thrilling five-Test series against India concluded in early August, and though they lost to South Africa over three one-day internationals that run ended with a historic, one-sided victory in Southampton on Sunday. A spellbinding performance in that game from Jofra Archer, who took four wickets for 18 runs – “There was an ‘ooh’ or an ‘aah’ every single over,” he said afterwards – set imaginations racing with thoughts of what the injury-prone seamer might achieve in more high-profile assignments to come. The first Ashes Test starts in Perth on 21 November.

• Updates from the match in Southampton (11am BST)

• You can email Tanya | Report: South Africa seal series

An interesting chat between Nick Knight, Shaun Pollock and Mike Atherton. Athers says that England are trying to bring the ODI and Test teams together whilst treating the T20 side as a different entity. That’s sensible on paper, he says, but brings a “real challenge because of the amount and volume of Test cricket England play. They are going to have to be quite strong about where their players play franchise cricket.”

South Africa: Aiden Markram, Ryan Rickelton (wk), Temba Bavuma (capt),Matthew Breetzke, Tristan Stubbs, Dewald Brevis, Wiann Mulder, Corbin Bosch, Keshav Maharaj, Codi Yusuf, Nandre Burger.

Fast bowler’s surprise decision to miss Ashes is an endorsement of five-day game and its unforgiving nature

When Jamie Overton announced on Monday that he is taking an indefinite break from first-class cricket to focus on the white-ball formats, it caught the England management and supporters on the hop. A common reflex was to view it as the latest blow to Test cricket at large.

After all, Overton played in England’s most recent Test – the epic six-run defeat against India – and by all accounts was going to be selected among the pool of fast bowlers for the Ashes moonshot this winter. Aged 31, the chance to go on such a high profile tour is unlikely to come around again.

Jimmy Anderson, Adil Rashid and West Indies’ Jediah Blades are among other bowlers to suffer notable early nightmares

On Tuesday the screen at Headingley was showing Sonny Baker’s bowling speed. They were impressive figures – 87, 86, 88mph – and you wonder if the bowler himself caught a glimpse. Probably not. Big numbers emblazoned in pixels probably felt like the runs he was leaking.

England’s newest one-day bowler bore the pummelling with good grace, even as South Africa’s Aiden Markram levered him for sixes behind square on the offside and over deep square leg in his second over. Happily, Baker is a phlegmatic sort, because the one record a box-fresh paceman doesn’t dream of achieving is his country’s worst ODI bowling figures on debut.