Thanks old friend. Life has got in the way and prevented me from posting on or even visiting CW in recent years. But the last few England Tests have rekindled my love of the game. I’m positively wallowing in the Broad resurgence and the maturation of Stokes. The only thing lacking is a return to form and triumphant recall for Moeen, but for that I suspect I’ll be waiting a while
.My enjoyment of the 1st Test was tempered by anger, regret and bittersweet reflections. Imagine a fully fit and firing Mohammad Amir at the disposal of Pakistan on that final day? One who had not, as a teenager, been manipulated by dressing room ‘elder statesmen’ into spot-fixing.
And consequently an Amir who — rather than being transmogrified by years of enforced inactivity from a devastating rapier with real pace and late movement both ways into a military medium trundler — would have gradually morphed on the greatest cricketing stages from larva to chrysalis before fulfilling his destiny and emerging butterfly-like as the true heir to the legendary Wasim.
England would have been lucky to get to 150.
