Maybe it’s time to do this again – Lord’s October 2025
Ball One – It’s not just Derek Randall who can do cartwheels
Who doesn’t like to see a stump uprooted and cartwheeling backwards into the outfield? Well, not the batter obvs, but the bowler, fielders and crowd love it. You can go days without seeing it, especially as stumps appear to have become heavier with embedded electronics and lit up bails, so it’s a rare treat when you get one.
Josh Tongue’s first delivery of the day knocked the stump out of the ground, dangerman, Glenn Phillips the man dismissed (he never does things by halves). It was at least the second such instance in 61 overs, which feels both most unusual and most welcome. If the Lord’s groundstaff have a specific method for pushing the stumps in, they should share it widely. And thank England’s big quick for his part in the spectacle.
Ball Two – No words for Ravindra
One of the more opaque terms in the cricket lexicon is ” a goober”. The all-seeing eye of Google traces its etymology to Joe Root as recently as 2019, but I’m sure there were earlier uses. It seems to be an alternative to “a dolly”.
Now you might ask why cricket, not short of arcane words, needs another. But Rachin Ravindra provided an answer. On Day One, at deep square leg, he dropped a dolly and on Day Two, at midwicket, he dropped a goober. Another such gaffe and we’ll need a medium to contact Samuel Johnson. That’s unlikely to work – but how unlikely were those two let-offs?
Ball Three – Head’s gone (too far or not far enough)
A question that is often asked concerns the day to day work of an international coach – surely if players are at the pinnacle of the game, they don’t need coaching, at least not on technical matters.
At 2pm, after a review for a ball that Jacob Bethell missed by at least a bat’s width and escaped on an umpire’s call, 12 of 21 match dismissals were LBW or bowled – ie straight balls missed. (That figure was to balloon to a preposterous 20 of 32 dismissals by the close). Okay, the pitch is offering both up and down and side to side and the bowling was, as has been the case since the first ball, excellent, but, more often than not, the batter’s head is not in line (nowhere near in some cases) with the ball.
This is surely a coaching and practice issue. In white ball cricket, freeing the arms / playing 360 degree cricket / opening up scoring options is important and lining the ball up can get a batter closed off, too side on. But against a moving ball, with predatory slips crouching, it’s critical to get that basic stuff right, something I’m sure all the players did, automatically, aged 12.
England appear to have swapped Ollie Pope, whose head, hands and feet got very misaligned in the second half of his Test career, with Jacob Bethell, who has many of the same issues. They can be hammered out of him – if he has the will. Not that he stood a chance with the ball that shot along the ground to bowl him – frankly, a disgrace for a Day Two pitch, winter 2025 relaying or not.
Ball Four – Hold The Front Page! England are not very good at batting
Every cricket fan loves to claim that their team collapses more often than any other, but all teams do and confirmation bias does the rest. (Who recalls a stately progression from 103/2 to 240/4?)
But, even the most Adelaide-damaged fan is excused for a bout of apoplexy today, England going from 126/2 to 127/6, with the last three bowled or LBW – now that is a collapse. Of course, what has gone before in this madcap match on a malodorous strip, has planted demons in their minds – and there are demons in the pitch, so that’s hardly a failure of mentality. And the Kiwis are bowling very well indeed.
But… Oh England!
Ball Five – He was so self-assured and at ease, he deserves his own song
The British groundstaff are the best in the world
I don’t believe one of these stories I’ve heard
’bout them doctorin’ pitches for no reason at all
Lining the batters right up by the wall
Shooting at wickets, knocking them down
DRS not needed as the stump’s on the ground
Nullifying techniques, increasing the fear
I don’t believe that sort of thing happens here
Sing if you’re glad we have Gay
Sing if you’re happy that way
Hey, sing if you’re glad we have Gay
Sing if you’re happy that way
The Ollie Robinson Band
Ball Six – England well ahead, regardless of history
New Zealand closed on 36/3, not entirely out of the match, but accumulating another 218 runs between the showers on Saturday or on what might be a somewhat moribund Sunday, looks a tall order indeed.
Despite England’s late order rally, adding 99 after the fall of the sixth wicket, it’s still very much a bowler’s game if they can aim at the stumps and rely on the natural variation as the ball jags, squats and jumps on this substandard strip of earth. That said, a few top edges, a slog or two into the stands and – and the match has not been short of them – a fistful of dropped catches and the scoreboard will soon look very different.
The algorithms may have the match as a coin toss, but the eye test says that England should win four times out of five. They’ll win 19 times out of 20 if the Kiwis do not try to knock the bowlers off their lines and lengths, so we’re pretty much guaranteed fireworks between the cloudbursts at the weekend.