Bairstow rages at Trent Bridge
When Rob Key announced the appointment of Brendon McCullum as England Test coach in May, he advised fans to “buckle up and get ready for the drive”. There will certainly be some disappointments at some point, but so far the Kiwi and its captain, Ben Stokes, have taken them on a dizzying, thrilling tour of the game’s dizzying heights.
There were already a number of highlights, but it would be hard to top the last day before a packed Trent Bridge, the festive atmosphere made all the better by the fact that everyone got their ticket for free. England chased 299 to victory and were 139 at tea for four of 34 overs, with Jonny Bairstow on 43 of 48 balls. He hit 45 of the next 20 deliveries he faced and repeatedly nailed pull shots high over the midwicket.
“Ben said, ‘Don’t even think about knocking it down, just put it in the stands,'” Bairstow said. “I was just trying to do what the captain said.” Their challenge was to score 299 points in 57 overs; They did it with 22 left. “I can’t quite come to terms with it,” Stokes said. “That will never happen again.”
India and Pakistan create chaos at the peak
Despite everything their team did and won, England fans didn’t see the best of the T20 World Cup. As they struggled through the group stage, their momentum repeatedly derailed by bad weather, the drama was unfolding elsewhere. The two big names in the first group stage, Sri Lanka and the West Indies, lost their opening games to Namibia and Scotland respectively – despite winning, Scotland still failed to qualify, while Sri Lanka did despite losing. In the Super 12s, Pakistan needed three runs from the last three balls to beat Zimbabwe and found a way to lose, while South Africa fell apart and were eliminated against the Netherlands.
England’s outstanding performance came against India in the semi-finals but it was India’s first game and not their last that stands as the most extraordinary event of the tournament, played in front of 90,293 colourful, loud and happy fans and decided by a described Virat Kohli innings by Rohit Sharma as “not just his best, but one of India’s best”. The moment of greatest chaos came in a final full of ridiculously improbable twists and turns when Pakistan’s Mohammad Nawaz Kohli bowled – but it was a free-kick, the ball slipped to the third man and India ran three to push themselves to the brink of victory.
Dean’s mankad
It was a damn difficult way to decide a match and end a streak. Charlie Dean’s remarkable, near-match-saving innings from 47 ended just as England were beginning to think about victory after being disputed at the non-striker end – mankaadded, if you will – by Deepti Sharma for the final English Wicket to become fall.
She left the field in tears, but despite the fact that the incident was highly controversial (she was well-received that when Mitchell Starc threatened Jos Buttler with a similar fate a few weeks later and 10,500 miles away in Canberra, stump mics warned him: ” I’m not Deepti, but I can do it”), a comprehensive analysis of Dean’s innings showed that she left the crease early on about 85% of all deliveries when she ended up being the non-forward. That makes it hard to complain about the end result.
Debate over this sort of sacking seems to have been fueled by the excitement, with the opinion of Michael Atherton on Sky – “The message is actually clear: if you’re a non-striker on the non-striker’s end, you stay in your ground until you see the ball being released, and that can never happen” – increasingly common. The next day, Dean was back at Lord’s for the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy, where at the start of her first over with the ball, she stopped her run-up in the final step as if to execute a run-out of her own to cheers and laughter from the crowd . She left the wicket alone.
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Contrasting feelings as England’s Charlie Dean walks away after being ousted from India at Lord’s by Deepti Sharma. Photo: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images
Ellis wins T20 Blast for Hampshire (twice)
One ball of the T20 Blast final remains and Nathan Ellis is at the end of his run with Lancashire needing four to win. If he can stop Richard Gleeson from hitting it to the limit, the trophy belongs to Hampshire. He runs in and produces an impeccable slow Yorker that confuses the batter and hammers into the stump, and he sprints away jubilantly as fireworks explode around Edgbaston. Behind him, teammates rip the remaining stumps out of the ground before joining the merry group.
And then they see referee Graham Lloyd holding his arm at a 90 degree angle and waving them back. Ellis had gone too far, and Gleeson would make another attempt as the outfield was now shrouded in firework smoke and only two were required. Ellis has to do it all over again, and that’s exactly what he does — another slower ball, another shot and miss from Gleeson, and a bye isn’t enough (though they actually ran two, which caused some controversy after the game for exactly when the ball went dead). Incredibly good acting.
Boult renounces the NZ central contract
Last December, South Africa’s Quinton de Kock unexpectedly announced his retirement from Test cricket. In July, England’s Ben Stokes retired from one-day internationals (although he may reconsider). Shimron Hetmyer appears to have all but retired from international cricket, albeit unofficially – having played eight of the West Indies’ 52 matches in 2022, his absence has been variously attributed to poor fitness, injuries, missed flights and recent parenthood . Still, he had no trouble appearing in 15 of the Rajasthan Royals’ 17 games in the Indian Premier League and all 11 games of the Guyana Amazon Warriors in the Caribbean Premier League, finding a spot for the Abu Dhabi T10 in his busy calendar.
In November, England’s rising star Will Smeed, aged just 21 and without a first-class performance, decided to give up red ball cricket. But when Trent Boult asked to be released from his pivotal contract in August, the cricket world reeled on its axis. The bowler’s decision, albeit at the age of 33, to “move to the next phase” – less international cricket, focus on family and franchises – felt like a significant domino was about to fall.
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