The numbers lined up too neatly to be ignored. Joe Root walked out at Headingley on Thursday afternoon wearing the England shirt numbered 66, in his 66th Test as England captain, and made 66. For a while it looked as though the symmetry would break in the most satisfying way possible — with Test century […]
Harry Brook faced 93 balls at Headingley on Thursday afternoon and not once came charging down the pitch. He was dropped on one, accepted the reprieve without fuss, and worked his way to 91 in gloom thick enough to need the floodlights. For a batter whose recent reputation has been built on the shot he […]
The floodlights had been burning at Headingley since the covers came off, and for most of a rain-shortened second day they illuminated nothing but Pakistan’s problems. Then, with barely half an hour of play remaining, Ali Usman skidded an arm-ball through Harry Brook’s defences and clipped the stumps. Two balls later, the left-arm spinner had […]
With half an hour of a soggy Headingley evening still to run, Harry Brook rocked back to steer Ali Usman’s left-arm spin through a vacant mid-wicket, found only fresh air, and heard the ball clatter into his stumps. Ninety-one. At the ground where he learned the game, in front of the crowd that claims him […]
A Jordan Cox maiden Test half-century has helped push England into the lead on day two of the first Test against Pakistan at Headingley. Cox, promoted to No. 3 for the series, reached fifty in the afternoon session on Thursday and was joined in the milestones by his captain, with BBC Sport reporting back-to-back half-centuries […]
The Sam Curran injury that has shadowed his summer will now require surgery, ending the England all-rounder’s hopes of a Test recall this season. The Surrey left-armer, 28, goes under the knife on his groin on Friday and has been ruled out of the remainder of the English season, BBC Sport reported from Headingley on […]
Bangladesh flew into Mackay on a two-stop journey, took an extra day off before they went anywhere near a net, and reported to the Great Barrier Reef Arena on Wednesday as the talk of the cricket world. Their head coach, Phil Simmons, used the session – three hours long, every fast bowler running in hard […]
The last time England played a one-day international in Pakistan, they went home early. Their 2025 Champions Trophy campaign expired in the group stage, in the country that had staged it, and the tournament has hung over their white-ball cricket ever since. They will be back in Rawalpindi in a little over eight weeks, and […]
Headingley’s ground staff have tended that square for well over a century, but few will have been handed a job quite like Wednesday evening’s. Ollie Robinson had five wickets on his Test return. Josh Tongue had five of his own. There was, inconveniently, only one match ball. So England’s team manager, Wayne Bentley, carried it […]
The first ball of the series was a nip-backer from around the wicket, and Azan Awais was leg before with barely a stroke completed. Ollie Robinson had a Test wicket with his opening delivery, and England v Pakistan day one at Headingley never recovered its balance from there. By the close the tourists had been […]
Jake Weatherald walked off the Marrara Cricket Ground in Darwin having been dismissed for a duck in front of the crowd he grew up among, and the arithmetic of a short Test career closed around him. Australia lost that first Test to Bangladesh – a nine-wicket defeat the Guardian described as historic – and when […]
Test cricket returns to Headingley on Wednesday morning with England in a condition few of their supporters would have forecast in May: no Ben Stokes, no Brendon McCullum in the red-ball dugout, and Joe Root back in a job he once admitted had worn him down. The England v Pakistan first Test begins at 11:00 […]
