Start your day with Jonathan Liew on Trent Boult, bowling and rebirth.
If batting is analogous to the cycle of existence and death, then bowling is more akin to the miracle of fertilisation and birth. The odds of success are infinitesimal, and yet still you keep trying and failing, swimming against the indomitable tide, striving for the prize of life itself. This is why – mentally speaking – batters end their careers drawn and empty, while bowlers get stronger and stronger. Batters are constantly dying. Bowlers are constantly being reborn.
PreambleAre you not entertained? With the series already won, Ben Stokes promised thrills in this third and final Test, and his team have delivered. Yesterday it felt as if the wheels were coming off the jalopy, six wickets down with 55 runs on the board and 12 overs bowled. But maybe it was all part of the plan.
At Trent Bridge, Jonny Bairstow’s 136 from 92 balls swung the second Test the hosts’ way. Before Headingley, his captain gazed into his crystal ball. “At some point this week, we have to do it with the ball or the bat. So I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw something similar to what Jonny did last week.”
And here we are, with the revitalised Bairstow on 130 from 126, heaving the pendulum improbably back towards the hosts again. Stokes had also called on Jamie Overton to “show the world what he’s got” – he probably meant breaking rather than building batting partnerships, but who really knows any more?
In his early days as captain, Stokes seems to have found a way to transfer his knack for comic-book heroics onto his teammates. England resume here with New Zealand’s first-innings total of 329 in sight. The tourists, who have contributed so much to this thrilling series, are grasping to regain control.
Then again, in this weird and wonderful new England era, control is overrated. Play starts at 11am (BST), but after that, there’s little point predicting anything.