Posted by We love Sophie Ecclestone, but today’s misfortune feels very on-brand.
Rightly or wrongly (but probably, if we’re brutally honest, more rightly than wrongly) Ecclestone became the public face of England’s fitness and fielding frailties when she refused to do an interview with critic Alex Hartley during last winter’s Ashes.
Since then, things have changed, sand lines have been drawn and Ecclestone has taken a short break from the game for general mental wellbeing.
At the same time, some things don’t really change.
Sophie Ecclestone is an incredible bowler. Sophie Ecclestone is not a gymnast.
Today, off just the second ball of the match, Ecclestone appeared to suffer two separate injuries in the course of one fielding effort.
First her knee locked up and then as a product of that, she tumbled awkwardly onto her shoulder while attempting to scoop the ball away from the boundary toblerone.
Come the 23rd over, Ecclestone was invited to discover how severe these injuries were. She got through only five balls, but Ecclestone being Ecclestone, this was still enough to pick up a wicket.
So…
- Full commitment to fielding = two injuries and failure to prevent a boundary
- Less than an over of tentative, half-hearted bowling = dismissal of the number five batter
This is not a wholly inaccurate synopsis of what you’re likely to get from England’s finest bowler.
“All right, me hearties. Follow me!”
The problem with leading by example is that no-one can really do anything until you’ve provided the necessary example.
“What are we meant to be doing here?” asked England’s batters today.
“I’ll show you!” replied Harry Brook.
Unfortunately, by that point, most of his troops had already been dismissed. Jamie Overton was in by the time Brook showed them how to hit a fifty and number 11, Luke Wood, was in by the time he reached his hundred via his third six in three balls.
As a batter, it’s quite hard to follow when you’re already back in the shed.
The ghosts of Rohit and Kohli
If you, like us, had mentally filed Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli away as ‘no longer playing for India’ it was slightly jarring to see the two of them doing precisely that this weekend.
On some level, we knew they hadn’t fully gone away, but on a much larger and more mentally obvious level, we’d written a big thing about Rohit retiring and a big thing about Kohli retiring and had then followed a lengthy narrative that spanned the British summer about how India were going to shape up without them.
Retirement pieces are essentially obituaries. Even if the death is only of one particular aspect of the person’s life, it still feels oddly haunting to see those people out there doing that very thing like nothing has happened.
Let’s chalk it up as a Halloween miracle and then ignore ODIs until such time as these uncomfortable contradictions have resolved themselves.
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How do we feel about the strategy of the men’s team ‘warming up’ for the Ashes in NZ?
Meanwhile good on South Africa’s women, my feeling is that they have won the coveted right to be beaten in the final by an Australian team that is head and shoulders above any other in the tournament (even accounting for Laura W). But only time will tell….
Not sure international men’s cricket scheduling should ever be associated with strategising. The NZ tour is more just the particular thing that happens to be taking place before the Ashes.
Fair point! I think there has been some talk of strategy associated with these NZ games, but I’m sure you’re right that it’s only in the classic ‘make up the policy to look like we set out to do what we’ve had to do anyway’ fashion.
Suppose you could argue it reduces flight times and mitigates time zone adjustment.
You could. Less jetlag.
Meanwhile, er, didn’t I always say Australia shouldn’t take this tournament for granted…