Ollie Pope 6: Failed on final day but his first-innings 73 when everyone else fell around him was probably worth a century in the circumstances. Zak Crawley 2: Now is surely the time to end his misery after a run of scores this summer of 43, nine, four, 0, six, 25, nine, 46, nine and 13. Yet compared to his opening partner he looked like Don Bradman. England’s player ratingsĪlex Lees 5: At least stuck at it in second innings but still only 40 runs overall. Though the review seeks balance in an eco-system serving all forms of the game, a priority is to address the chasm between domestic and Test cricket. It seems ambitious to boast of addressing these failings in a five-year window, especially when the professional game is played with a Dukes ball that yields cheap wickets on helpful pitches. You don’t need to be a partner in PricewaterhouseCoopers to identify the failings in a team without a reliable opening partnership since Strauss stepped away a decade ago, without a world-class spinner since Graeme Swann walked in 2013 and a bowling attack spearheaded by a pair with a combined age of 76. He was proved emphatically right, South Africa sweeping England aside before tea on the third day without the need to bat again. Captain Dean Elgar claimed the aggressive, attacking cricket deployed under new coach Brendon McCullum was unsustainable against deeper attacks than those presented by New Zealand and India. South Africa were always sceptical of the English flowering.
How do a set of aims and objectives straight out of the management consultancy playbook explain the judgment that led Zak Crawley to attempt to lump Keshav Maharaj’s first ball into the square leg grandstand when batting to retain his place? How does the KPMG manual establish what induced Alex Lees to swipe away at a length ball from Rabada to begin the first-innings rout?