Would you look at that? Cricket fans all over the world are starting to come to the same realisation as village cricketers came to decades ago all over Blighty.
Rain. It rains a lot in England. Especially when there is cricket to be played.
There’s no real way of avoiding it – even the stats and data and all that jazz tell us that it actually rains less in an English June (in England, before you try to be clever) than whatever month the Cricket World Cup was in Australia when it was last played there. And the Windies. And probably South Africa, though maybe not South Africa.
It’s just been monumental bad luck that so many days in a row were completely washed out. Apparently, such a tight schedule means there was no way of getting reserve days in the mix – not that that would have worked last week as it seemed to rain from Monday through to Friday and even affected the massive clash between India and Pakistan on Sunday.
England returned to action against an allegedly resurgent Windies side at the oddly named Hampshire Bowl. The only worry they had in Southampton was the fact that both Jason Roy – scorer of a magnificent 150 odd in the previous game – and skipper Eion Morgan both left the field of play and are doubts for the next match. Fortunately, the next match is against Afghanistan so you’d imagine they shouldn’t be missed too much.
England’s batting line-up suddenly looked less fierce with them missing but there wasn’t much to get concerned over. Joe Root opened and got a glorious unbeaten ton, his stylish proper cricket shot approach completely at odds to the modern ‘use the biggest bat you can find and smash it’ approach in ODI cricket. And with Root not able to open and bat three England thought they’d show off and move their number eight up to number three and let him get a chance to have a bat. Chris Woakes certainly did not look out of place as England glided home by eight wickets.
England bowled very well and unlike against Pakistan where the two speed merchants Jofra Archer and Mark Wood looked more interested in outdoing each other than bowling to win, they were both excellent (and a little bit quick) in restricting the Windies to a paltry total. Adil Rashid though, he’s bowling in a way that makes me worry when India get to face it.
