Spectators are back ahead of June’s Test series, all we need now is sunshine

When Chris Silverwood, England’s cricket coach, announced his squad for the two Test series against New Zealand, which begins on June 2, he couldn’t help looking ahead to the Ashes in Australia in December and January. There are five home Tests against India before then and the minor diversion of the World T20 championship too. But everything is geared to the Ashes, and a rum series that will be, given that England will play no warm-up matches before the first Test at the Gabba in Brisbane, no first-class cricket indeed, since the fifth Test against India in September.

Not all the fifteen named in the squad for the New Zealand matches can be confident of being in Australia. Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer who are both certainties, one assumes, are currently on the injured lists. Meanwhile players who have just returned from the abruptly aborted Indian Premier League (IPL) were not considered, being now in quarantine, excluding: Jos Buttler, Sam Curran, Chris Woakes, Jonny Bairstow.

Of the squad named, Ollie Robinson, the Sussex fast-medium bowler and James Bracey, the batsman-wicket keeper from Gloucestershire, have not yet played Test cricket. Robinson gobbles up county wickets and Bracey has been batting very well. Gloucestershire have produced few Test players recently, but this is the county of W G Grace and Gilbert Jessop who, in 1902, made a hundred in a mere seventy-five minutes to enable England to snatch a one-wicket victory at The Oval. And the county of Walter Hammond and Tom Graveney, and, of course, Charlie Barnett, who, at Trent Bridge in the first Ashes Test of 193 was 98, not out at lunch. So young Bracey has much distinction to live up to, and I hope he gets the chance to do so.

Silverwood emphasised the importance of experience; he would, it seems, be reluctant to have anyone making his Test debut against Australia. That’s a reasonable position. As the great Scotland fly-half John Rutherford used to tell me whenever I suggested some promising youngster might be capped, “there’s no substitute for experience”. One may agree; I usually nodded my head. Nevertheless, it’s not difficult to think of players who made their debut against Australia and, far from being unnerved, made their mark and went on to long and successful careers: Colin Cowdrey, Geoff Boycott, Bob Willis, Ian Botham and Phil Edmonds, for example.

Silverwood keeps things agreeably simple. How do you win? Make a big first innings score and take 20 wickets. Well, yes, a big first-innings score may make defeat unlikely, but the kind of wicket on which you can make 400 or 500 may be ones on which it is difficult to bowl the opposition out twice. Still, there are other ways to win. In Australia in 1954-5, the first innings scores of Len Hutton’s England team were 190, 154, 191, 323 and 371 for 7 declared. The first Test was lost, the next three won and the last drawn, ruined by rain, no play being possible on the first three days. Bowlers win matches; batsmen may make it possible for them to do so.

It is natural that so much attention should be paid to The Ashes. After all, the first Test between England and Australia was played in 1876, which makes it one of the oldest of all international sporting contests. (The oldest member of the England team James Southerton of Sussex was actually born in 1826.) No wonder an Ashes series can hold us in a grip. It would be more than fifty years after that New Zealand and India were first playing Test cricket. Yet, the fact is that New Zealand and India are here in England now because they are the two finalists in the ICC World Test championship which will be played in a biosecure bubble at Hampshire’s Southampton ground. So they are arguably the two top teams in the world, better than either Australia or England.

India, having defeated both England and Australia this year, can certainly make that claim. They are, these days, the aristocrats of the game and cricket is followed with an enthusiasm in India unmatched anywhere else. By contrast, in New Zealand, cricket has played a poor second fiddle to Rugby. Before Covid, Test match grounds in India were packed even though they hold tens of thousands. Switch on the TV and watch a Test match in New Zealand and the crowd is sparse. At some grounds, where Tests are played, spectators loll on grassy banks.

Yet the teams may be better matched than this would suggest. If the Indian captain Virat Kohli is one of the top three Test batsmen, New Zealand’s captain Kane Williamson is up there with him. If India seems to unearth a brilliant young cricketer every six months, this New Zealand side is experienced, hard and accustomed to holding its own and winning. They are, after all, much the same squad that reached the final of the ODI World Cup in England two years ago and lost it only in that frenetic super-over.

If the Test championship final was being played elsewhere, it might be wise to have India as favourites, and if by mid-June summer has arrived, however reluctantly, this might still be the case. Yet New Zealand are perhaps better equipped for English conditions, when the ball swings or moves off the seam. They certainly have more batsmen experienced in English conditions, not only Williamson himself, but Ross Taylor, Tom Latham, Will Young (getting ready by making centuries for Durham), Henry Nichols and the wicketkeeper B J Watling. And they have bowlers like the experienced Tim Southee and Trent Boult capable of exploiting any favourable weather conditions. Moreover, New Zealand will have had these two warm-up Tests against England, and so arrive in Southampton perhaps better prepared – especially if they have won at least one of these games. 

The India – New Zealand Test may be the highlight of the summer. If we get a summer that is… Just now, as the spectators are being permitted to return in limited numbers, the rain has come with them to stop play. Truly, the Gods have a twisted sense of humour. This being so, it might please them to have the New Zealand cricketers crowned World Champions while the mighty All Blacks aren’t.