England v New Zealand: second men’s Test, day four – live
Updates from the fourth day’s play at the Oval Get in touch! Share your thoughts with Tim Morning everyone, or should that be hello darkness
Updates from the fourth day’s play at the Oval Get in touch! Share your thoughts with Tim Morning everyone, or should that be hello darkness, my old friend? For England supporters of a certain age, this match has been a flashback to the Eighties.
First the management picked the wrong response to Ben Stokes’ and Gus Atkinson’s big night out, suspending them when Harry Brook had merely been fined for a worse offence, perhaps because the ECB was afraid of looking weak. Then, just as fortune favours the brave, so misfortune homed in on the faint-hearted.
England lost the Player of the Match from Lord’s, Ollie Robinson, to injury and their wicketkeeper, Jamie Smith, to the birth of his second child. Suddenly the team had no spine – no captain, no keeper, no new-ball pair. The selectors put their faith in what Micky Stewart, whose name is on the pavilion at the Oval, once called “a lot of inexperience”.
Joe Root found himself not so much the stand-in captain as the babysitter. Continue reading...
The BriefWire