When England’s openers strode to the crease yesterday, one was a fresh faced youngster with just one test under his belt (in which he looked unconvincing), and the other was a seasoned test player with more hundreds under his belt than any other England player in history. People who had never watched a cricket match before would have assumed that Alastair Cook was the former, not the latter. Cook’s dismissal was so predictable it was painful. He should have been given out on Friday evening...
England’s Best Cricket Team (Post 1980)
This XI might have been England’s best cricket team in generations. It’s a compilation of the best players we’ve seen since we started watching in the 1980s. It’s the side that would have beaten Steve Waugh’s Australians (maybe). If only they’d been born at a similar time so they were at the peak of their powers together. Of course, if Keith Fletcher was the coach, and they were still playing for their counties the day before a test, it wouldn’t have made much difference...
