Posted by Like many Lord’s Test pitches in recent years, the one for this England v India match started off an absolute pudding. Perhaps keen to shrug off the ground’s nickname as The Home of Absolute Puddings, it’s since deteriorated into something rather more treacherous.
For the first few days, Lord’s puddingly qualities were exacerbated by this year’s jam roly poly of a ball. The upshot was a breathtakingly old fashioned run rate (slow) with a decidedly modern over rate (glacial).
But then Zak Crawley walked out to bat in the second innings and everything suddenly came to life. Some say Crawley’s short on confidence, but we’re not sure we’ve ever seen a more confident move than calling on the physio for a made-up injury immediately after stopping the bowler a bunch of times due to a pretend distraction.
> Is Zak Crawley the most gifted inside-edger in world cricket?
(The only thing that might run it close was Shubman Gill stopping the game for a lovely, protracted massage so that KL Rahul could make up the time he’d been off the field – an absence that might otherwise have prevented him from opening the batting.)
The pitch was already overtired before Crawley’s impressively brassy play acting, but that was the trigger for some serious misbehaviour from then on.
All of which is a protracted justification for publishing a couple of images of Crawley playing a Jasprit Bumrah delivery with the serene dignity afforded to only the very few.
Textbook stuff.
Crawley really has enjoyed his time batting on the Lord’s surface this year.
At least the pitch isn’t killing people, like it used to: https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/not-out-dead-135627
I told Daisy last night that people would switch from complaining that the pitch is too benign to complaining that it is too spicy.
And here you are.
And here are Daisy and I, at Lord’s, for the finale.
Actually we were complaining that it was too slippy before. Seems solid enough today for the off stump to perform some cartwheels though.
Worse places to be either way. Have fun!
Indeed we are enjoying ourselves and indeed the cartwheeling stump was worth the price of Daisy’s admission ticket alone.
You could do a ‘cartwheeling stumps’ round-up of this Test.
Do you take requests?
You are well aware, Sam Blackledge. Well aware.
India are going to do it, aren’t they? Incredibly slowly and attritionally…
Had a message from someone this morning complaining about the deterioration of the pitch. I think a match that finishes c5pm on Day 5 is probably doing OK on the pitch front
Cricket!
Cricket, Test Cricket.