There’s a curious theatre to English cricket. It is that peculiar mix of misplaced optimism and selective amnesia that allows an average series to be called “encouraging” and a failed prodigy to be called “the future”.
In Harry Brook’s case, one wonders which future they’re now talking about.
If it’s the next Ashes, it might be a dim one. If it’s the one in which England learn to bat through a single afternoon without resembling a T20 franchise on Red Bull, that may never arrive.
Brook entered the last Ashes like a promise scribbled in gold leaf – all punch, swagger, and a touch of disregard for convention.
Here, we were told, was England’s next great thing: the Yorkshireman who would blend the audacity of Pietersen with the spine of Root. Instead, what we got was something closer to a Bazball-themed performance of Waiting for Godot.
The audience kept waiting for something meaningful to happen, and every time it almost did, Brook walked off having tried to reverse scoop a delivery that deserved nothing more dramatic than a dead bat.
There is something endearing about his arrogance – in small doses. The trouble is, in Test cricket, arrogance without application is like playing chess with only the queen.
It works for a while, but eventually the king gets cornered. Brook, like his generation, suffers from an incurable white-ball hangover. He treats the red ball as an impatient cousin, one who needs to be hurried along to get back to the six-hitting bonanza.
Every now and then, Brook flashes brilliance – that thundering on-drive that makes even a veteran bowler sigh, the impudent cut that races through gully like it has a train to catch. But then, just as he starts looking like the batter we were promised, he gifts it away.
The pattern is déjà vu shaped – 30s that should have been hundreds, 50s that evaporate with a top edge, dismissals that leave you wondering whether he’s playing for time or TikTok.
Waiting for Brook to become a Test great is beginning to feel a lot like Vladimir and Estragon’s endless wait for Godot.
England’s Harry Brook bats against Australia in Melbourne. (AP Photo/Hamish Blair)
You know he’s out there somewhere – talented, capable, theoretically transformative – but he never quite arrives. Instead, you get the same dialogues repeated in different acts: another cameo, another sigh, another “he’ll learn.”
England’s faith in Brook is touching, even romantic.
But Test cricket, that wily old beast, rewards patience more than promise. Until Brook learns that you can build an innings brick by brick instead of trying to blowtorch your way to a legacy, he’ll remain a Test batter in theory, not in numbers.
For now, English fans must sit under that metaphorical tree, glancing at their watches and waiting.
Godot never came, but maybe Harry Brook will.
Then again, maybe he’ll just play a lofted drive and get caught at mid-off before he does.