We previewed the Boxing Day Tests. We may as well take a look at what happened in them.

Australia v South Africa

Signs of an upturn for South Africa, who finally passed 200 for the first time in many attempts. Their second innings 204 all out was enough to secure defeat by an innings and 182 runs.

Top scorer for the Aussies was David Warner, who made his first hundred in almost three years and then made another one in the very same innings. He then squeezed in both a retired hurt and a dismissal without adding any further runs.

Speaking afterwards, Warner added to the rich tradition of batters talking up the bowling on days when they’ve made a ton by describing an Anrich Nortje spell as the fastest he’s ever faced.

To be fair to Warner, there were some stats about saying it was somewhere up there, so it wasn’t a total self-aggrandising fiction. He also said a few more specifically nice things about Nortje and the effort he always seems to put in. Even so, it’s funny how bowlers always seem to be at their most incredible when they don’t actually get the batter out. “You won’t believe how incredible that bowling that wasn’t good enough to dismiss me was,” is the message.

The third and final Test starts next week. Suffering South Africa fans might like to ponder the nature of an Ashes tour where there would still be three Tests’ worth of unravelling still to come. Three Tests may seem tough, but there’s only really time for mild fraying.

Pakistan v New Zealand

New Zealand’s first Test back in Pakistan moved rather more conventionally than England’s, even if the weight of scoring was similar.

Responding to Pakistan’s 438, the tourists made 612-9. It did however take them 163 overs to reach 500 where England reached that mark in 75.

That comparison is not to do New Zealand down in the slightest. This match was at a different ground for a start. It’s just an attempt to contextualise the rather bonkers thing that Ben Stokes’ men did a few weeks ago.

Bangladesh v India

We included this when previewing the Boxing Day Tests but it didn’t actually make it that far in the end. It was however the best match of the three, India staggering their way to a target of 145 for the loss of seven wickets.

They only got there thanks to an unbeaten 71-run partnership between Shreyas Iyer and R Ashwin.

Of course Ashwin was there. Just of course. Immune to the pressure again. As we keep saying, R Ashwin is not like other people.

A few days after the match finished, Rishabh Pant apparently fell asleep at the wheel and totalled his car which then burst into flames. He had been travelling at “a lot of speed” according to the bus driver who helped drag him out. Pant has a few injuries but thankfully seems broadly okay.

Don’t drive tired, kids. Don’t drive quickly, kids. In fact don’t drive at all kids – wait until you’re adults and then take lessons and pass your test and all that.

The King Cricket email is a handy way of finding out the site has been updated during those periods when it’s all been a bit quiet because the writer has been otherwise engaged eating too much stilton.

We don’t believe you can draw meaningful conclusions from players’ debuts – but we report on them anyway.

We have a track record of getting overexcited about 18-year-old leg-spinning all-rounders. It worked out last time though, so the way we see it, it makes perfect sense to get completely overexcited again.

If he’s at all averse to being smothered by unrealistic expectations, Rehan Ahmed somewhat inadvisedly faced that overexcitement and justified it. This week he became England’s youngest debutant, England’s youngest wicket-taker and the youngest men’s Test debutant to take a five-wicket haul for any nation.

The thing with being a young leg-spinning all-rounder is that you have multiple possible routes to success. It’s nice to imagine Rehan Ahmed becoming a wrist spin Ben Stokes, smashing hundreds and ripping out sides in the second innings, but it probably won’t pan out that way. Adil Rashid turned out to be a limited overs bowlers who batted at 10. Steve Smith repeatedly metamorphosises into one of the finest batters of all time and now only very occasionally wheels out his double-elbowed chicken dance filth when Australia are in the field.

Rashid and Smith show it’s possible to arrive at very different outcomes from ostensibly similar starting points. And they’re the success stories. There are a lot of ways this could go.

Because 18 is pretty young for someone who bowls leg-spin. Crazily young. Obscenely young. Think of it this way, Shane Warne was pretty okay at bowling leg-spin and he didn’t make his Test debut until he was 23.

It was therefore no surprise at all to see Rehan Ahmed full tossing and long hopping in his first Test . That was so predictable it’s not even really worth remarking on. What was more interesting is that he didn’t mentally implode. Nor did he just rollock in gamely – he did so effectively too, revealing what on this early evidence appears to be a googly of at least semi-fiendishness.

Ben Stokes deserves some credit here. Ahmed had 0-28 after his first four overs. There are some England captains of the not too distant past who would have banished him from the attack at that point, quite possibly for the rest of his life. Stokes immediately gave him another over, which went for nine runs, and then brought him on again after not much more than another hour’s play. His next over went for three and the one after that brought a wicket.

Bowlers who plug away and keep things tight have their place, but Stokes knows that isn’t what a leg-spinner is for and so he didn’t measure Ahmed against that yardstick. England don’t want for bowlers who can plug away and keep things tight. What they have always struggled to find are bowlers who can come on and break a 100-run partnership.

That’s exactly what Rehan Ahmed did in his fourth over in Pakistan’s second innings. If that sounds a little like Stokes had left him hanging until a partnership had built – not a bit of it. He’d already bowled a couple of overs with the new ball. He knew his captain wanted him there and that he was far from afraid to use him.

If that Babar Azam dismissal was a bit filthy, the ball to dismiss Mohammad Rizwan two overs later was significantly cleaner. Then he got the other set batter, Saud Shakeel, in the over after that.

Rehan Ahmed was picked because England thought he might be the kind of bowler who could turn 164-3 into 177-6. Measured against that yardstick, he succeeded.

Verdict: A wrist-spin Ian Botham (only without all the other Beefy stuff).

You can watch Rehan Ahmed’s five-for on debut here.

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While England’s hell-for-leather batting approach of the first Test was again seen in the second, it was often tempered by either (a) conditions or (b) getting out. What we can conclude from this is that pitches matter. So what can we expect from the National Stadium in Karachi for the third and final Test on Saturday?

Last time around, we ceded the floor to soil enthusiast, film director and Limp Bizkit frontman, Fred Durst for our pitch preview. We don’t want to imply any kind of falling out with Fred – or “Dursto” as we tend to call him – resulting from his wide-of-the-mark predictions on that occasion. We just thought he’d benefit from a game off and focusing on his turf management studies with exams looming.

It’s also good to get different voices and different perspectives. With that in mind, we asked Ancient Greek scientist, Archimedes, to step in and preview the third Test pitch.

Archimedes says…

Hmm? What? Sorry, I was just watching TikTok. Have you seen these ‘trick shots’ that people do? Mad stuff. Just mad. Like doing a massive golf putt with a hot dog or booting a footie into a basketball hoop off a trampoline. Just crazy. I mean I guess they have, like, a thousand goes and only post the footage of the one time they actually managed it, but there’s still something about it that sucks you in. I can’t get enough of them.

Karachi then. Okay, well, um, I’ve not really seen the pitch because I’ve been dead for well over 2,000 years. But just sort of setting that aside and looking at recent results, I’m going to say it’s all about building partnerships.

Man, have you seen this one? It’s a fella with a bow and he’s firing, like, 20 arrows all at the same time and popping a balloon with every one of them. Okay, maybe not 20 – but it’s a lot. Oh it’s a snooker one now. Reminds me of Big Break. They used to do trick shots on that.

Anyway, er, yeah, partnerships. There’s actually been a few Tests here in Karachi these last couple of years and that’s the thing that stands out to me from them. Pakistan were shot-out for 191 by Sri Lanka in the first Test back here in 2019, but they then put on 555-3 in their second innings. Pitch flattened out, you think – except Pakistan bowled Sri Lanka out for 212 to win the Test.

Then in 2021 when South Africa played here, the first 15 wickets went down for 341 runs before Fawad Ahmed made a hundred. There weren’t many fifties in that Test, but Pakistan’s tail really wagged in that first innings, so it definitely looks like there’s periods that favour the batters.

Sorry, I’m still thinking about Big Break. Do you remember it? With John Virgo and that comedian. Forget his name. Londoner. Bit racist, I think. Basically Bullseye but for snooker. Virgo did the trick shots.

Sorry, sorry, yeah… The most recent Test in Karachi was in March when Australia toured. The Aussies made 556-9 and then bowled Pakistan out for 148. But just look at the individual scores in Pakistan’s second innings when they saved the game: 96, 1, 6, 196, 9, 104 not out, 0, 9 and 0 not out. I mean honestly. A crazy innings with Babar Azam to the fore.

[Long pause]

Oh, hey, er, sorry, I was just googling John Virgo. I just couldn’t quite believe it was his real name. Looks like it is – at least as far as I can tell. But guess what I’ve just found out? He guested on another of these shows: Full Swing. I mean you can guess what Full Swing is, can’t you? It was the whole Bullseye, Big Break thing, but for golf. Jimmy Tarbuck presented it. Only ran for one series.

Why don’t they do a cricket one of these shows? Get Tuffers on, or Swanny, or Jason Gallian. Do a few trick shots. Swing it round a wheelie bin and into a pint pot; lofted drive that lands down someone’s chimney – that kind of thing.

We hear there’s been a huge surge in home deliveries these last few years. We can send you something, if you want? We can send you an email. Here’s how you can get King Cricket by email.

The second Test was “a differently played game” according to Ben Stokes. It still resulted in England winning in Pakistan though, which is not a thing that had happened too often until this month.

The match has left us with quite a few half-baked thoughts rolling around our largely empty head. Rather than waiting for them to coalesce into something coherent, let’s opt for premature spewing instead.

It is good to play in Pakistan. It is good to play in different places

There was a great feel to England’s T20 tour of Pakistan a few months ago. (Here’s our recap.) It was not just that it was hotly-contested. It was hotly-contested at least to some degree because it felt like such a rare and exciting thing for everyone involved.

While that was England’s first visit to Pakistan in pure time, the Test tour has retained that same feel as crowds have been great and because these remain unfamiliar conditions now that we’re onto the five-day stuff. This brings a freshness to proceedings – you just don’t know how each match will go.

It’s not just that this England team are going about things in an interesting way. Being somewhere less familiar actually magnifies that. The moral of this is not just that it’s good to come and play in Pakistan; it’s that it’s good to go and play in all sorts of different places, against all sorts of different teams.

Different durations, different bowlers, different batters, different pitches, different places. Variety has always been, and should always remain, cricket’s greatest strength.

Pakistan are very much doing their bit

We don’t think it’s too one-eyed to suggest that Pakistan are the junior partner in the making-the-series-worth-watching stakes. Junior maybe, but still vital.

Without Pakistan’s titanic first innings batting, England’s helter-skelter last minute victory in the first Test would have been a far less dramatic and unnecessarily-paced win. In this Test Pakistan brought Abrar Ahmed into our world and then got within 26 runs of chasing 355 in the fourth innings.

It always takes two teams to make a fun Test series.

England are bowling sides out

It’s masked a little by the carpet bombing batting approach, but England’s bowlers are really performing of late. It’s now 17 Test innings in a row that they’ve bowled out the opposition. That’s no mean feat.

A key part of this is of course the batting however. England haven’t really struggled for bowlers these last few years – even when they’ve been shit – it’s just that they’ve generally had nothing to bowl at. Making actual runs is therefore proving very helpful. Doing so quickly also tends to mean that it’s either 10 wickets or defeat – time hasn’t often come into the equation.

The attack is being used in a clear-minded way too.

Ben Stokes is very much not Joe Root as a captain

Yesterday we tweeted and tooted how the Root to Stokes captaincy switch has provided a strong argument both against and in favour of making your best player captain. Stokes has been incredible and deserves plenty of plaudits, but we can’t help but think that everyone is being awfully nice in not highlighting the incredible contrast with Root’s stint in charge.

Root famously started out as “Craptain” and somehow descended from there. Wispy and ethereal was our verdict on his leadership when he finally stood down. And it was pretty clearly deeply unfun playing under him towards the end too. It feels a bit mean to dredge this up because Root’s fallen into line under Stokes without a hint of ego and is visibly enjoying himself, engaging in airborne arse-bumps with Mark Wood to celebrate wickets and the like. He’s such an admirable cricketer and person in so many ways.

But we can’t help it. We just keep getting all these reminders that trigger visions of a parallel timeline where Root’s still in charge.

In Pakistan’s first innings, James Anderson bowled two overs with the new ball, took a wicket in the second of them, and then didn’t reappear until the 29th over of the innings. Second time around, his first over was the 16th of the innings and his sixth was the 60th.

If that first innings usage seems a bit clever-clever and overly committed to a reverse swing strategy (he could surely have bowled a third over with the new ball with a full night’s sleep not long away) then just imagine how Root would have used Anderson in this match. Regardless of whether he was still in his right-arm fast-medium phase or not, Jimmy would have been used anything but sparingly.

What we’re saying is that this is what England fans could have – this or something very like it – but instead they’ve got Ben Stokes. Enjoy it.

Harry Brook is doing the early Joe Root thing with knobs on

Another Root comparison to finish. England have had a fair few Massive Young Talents come into the team over the years and every player acclimatises to international cricket differently. Ollie Pope’s made an erratic start. Jonny Bairstow was all over the place before mastering one-day cricket and then becoming unstoppable in Tests this summer. You may or may not be old enough (or perhaps you’re too old) to recall that Root’s arrival was characterised by him looking weirdly untroubled.

After 73 and 20 not out on Test debut against India in 2012, he went into his first spell of one-day internationals early the following year and made successive scores of 36, 39, 57 not out, 31, 56, 79 not out and 28 not out. Even if he wasn’t dominating, he looked like a man who had gone up a level of cricket and it was just absolutely no big thing.

There is a whiff of this in how Harry Brook has arrived at the bar and put in an absolutely gigantic order. Three Tests in, he has made 153 off 116 balls, 87 off 65 balls and then 108 off 145 balls. He’s hit six fours in six balls and somehow that wasn’t even his most productive over.

Brook had (quite understandably given how it’s been working for him) been overly aggressive in the first innings of this match, but second dig he recalibrated to the extent that he only scored four runs off his first 26 balls and 13 off his first 41. Then he started hitting fours and sixes again, like it was some weirdly easy thing.

Yes, it’s early days, but by the yorker of Waqar he’s packed a lot into them.

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We don’t believe you can draw meaningful conclusions from players’ debuts – but we report on them anyway.

How very Pakistan to fight fire with magic. How very Pakistan to have a random pile of spare magic just lying around waiting to be used in a Test match – this time in the form of leg-spinner Abrar Ahmed.

There was a certain contrast in how the two captains used their wicket-takers on day one of the second Test in Multan. James Anderson took England’s first wicket with his eighth delivery, only for Ben Stokes to haul him from the attack at the end of the over, the opening bowler’s work apparently done for the day. Abrar Ahmed got Pakistan’s first wicket at the end of his first over, after which Babar Azam asked him to bowl another 21.

You’d have to say that 7-114 was a pretty useful return from those 22 overs, particularly given what had happened in the previous match.

Maybe it was the pitch, maybe it was spinning it both ways. Maybe it was batters unfamiliar with his method or an approach that just lends itself to combating the style of batting England are favouring at the minute. Maybe it was a little of all of these things and also the simple fact that if you bowl enough absolute beauties, sooner or later you’re going to get some wickets. Not everything’s about some grandiose philosophy and whether it’s The Future or foolhardiness.

We like quick run-scoring and we agree with Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes that lack of conviction, fear of failure and second-guessing oneself are generally the biggest impediments to success for a batter. However, we also like the old fashioned idea that there are some deliveries you just can’t whack and Abrar Ahmed seemed to serve up a fair few of these on his Test debut.

All in all, we really enjoyed Abrar’s bowling. We also greatly enjoyed hearing Mike Atherton seemingly exclaim “a bra!” on commentary because within this juvenile exterior of ours is merely a puerile interior.

Can we email the articles to you? Can we email the articles to you? Is that what you’re asking? Can we email the articles to you? Mate, mate… we can email the articles to you.

England’s win over Pakistan in Rawalpindi has given rise to several highly annoying articles asking whether Ben Stokes’ team are changing Test cricket forever. Maybe a bit, maybe not so much. Does it matter? Can’t it just be a great Test victory on a fairly awful pitch?

Because that really was the defining element of the first Test. The win wasn’t remarkable because England triumphed over Pakistan. The real feat was triumphing over the benign surface.

In that context, scoring 500 runs in a day isn’t so much a sign of things to come; it’s more a symptom of a team who haven’t yet been dissuaded from playing in a particular way employing that approach to the full in conditions that really maximised the return.

As such, it seems pertinent to ask not whether such a relentless batting onslaught will become commonplace but whether it will ever happen again.

Multan

This leads us on to the pitch where the second Test will take place. We don’t know much about the surface at the Multan Cricket Stadium, so we sought a bit of insight from someone who has rather more expertise in this area – Limp Bizkit frontman, Fred Durst.

Fred Durst says…

It’s never really come to wider public knowledge, but fans of my highly awful band, Limp Bizkit, will tell you that I’ve always had a keen interest in horticulture.

This goes all the way back to the time of our first US number one album, Significant Other, when I got away from the pressures of success by setting up a number of beds containing different growing media back at my homestead in California. It was a somewhat rudimentary attempt to gain a better understanding of soil classifications, but I found the experience fascinating and my enthusiasm (and plants) only grew from there.

By 2006, when the band was on hiatus, I had found myself increasingly drawn to the preparation of sports pitches and cricket pitches in particular. I have since undertaken a number of courses with the UK’s Grounds Management Association and I’m now studying for my Level 6 GMA Professional Certificate in Turf Surface Consulting.

It’s been a long road, but by this point I like to think I know a thing or two.

Now, I’ve only managed to grab a fleeting glimpse of the surface in Multan and we’re still a day or so out from the game, so the following really does need to be seen in that light. However, based on what I’ve seen, it does look like we could be in for something not wildly dissimilar to the last match.

While it hasn’t hosted a Test since 2006, the history of Multan Cricket Stadium does partially support this view. Pakistan made 546-3 in the first Test played here against Bangladesh in 2001 with no fewer than five centurions. (This wasn’t actually every Pakistan batter who came to the crease as Inzamam-ul-Haq retired hurt for 105. Poor Faisal Iqbal was the one to miss out, bowled for 9 after a 168-run opening partnership.)

It was also in Multan where Virender Sehwag made 309 off 385 balls in 2004, walking off at the end of the first day unbeaten on 228.

While that suggests heavy run-scoring could again be on the cards, it’s worth emphasising that both of those matches ended in innings victories. There has in fact only been one draw in the five Tests Pakistan have played here – the most recent one against the West Indies in 2006. On that occasion the home team inched to 357 all out at less than three runs an over before the Windies went past their total thanks to 216 off 262 balls from Brian Lara.

Usual Lara rules apply there, I’d say: Don’t draw too many conclusions. Lara was a bit different.

So I would expect a good few runs this week, but spin should also play a part. Yasir Shah took 10 wickets in the last first-class match there, back in October.

Fog, smog and daylight hours could be issues though, so both teams will again be fighting time as much as each other.

Before I go, can I just quickly draw your attention to my latest film – yes, I also make films now – The Fanatic, starring John Travolta. Critics are calling it “cliche-filled”, “improbable”, “pretentious”, “miserable” and “completely shallow”. Give it a try! See if you agree!

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It was a win that England were racing to catch from the outset. The Test began with Zak Crawley hitting three fours off Naseem Shah’s opening over and it ended with the light meters out. Ben Stokes’ men never really slowed in between.

Even if England hadn’t won, you’d have to respect the effort. It’s hard to improve on 657 in 101 overs in your first innings and you could certainly forgive a side for failing to take 20 wickets on the same pitch.

England could barely have done more. That it was only just enough puts all that batting impatience into perspective.

The haste

To quickly recap, England reached 500 quicker than any team ever has before. It was really bloody weird. It was like they’d deployed not just one, but a whole herd of Virender Sehwags – their four centurions all scored at somewhere around a run a ball, or, in Harry Brook’s case, significantly quicker.

With the ball, they needled and wheedled and just about managed to avoid giving up. Credit to Pakistan for almost persuading them to do so. Replying to a first innings like England’s can’t be an easy job.

Then it was England’s second innings. In for a penny, in for a thousand pounds: 264-7 in 36 overs – an effort that did as much to keep Pakistan’s hopes alive as it did their own. Perhaps in making the running, they kidded themselves they were the only team that could win and so enabled that decisive effort with the ball in the dying light on the fifth day.

But what if it had all gone wrong?

How much of a risk?

“There may be a time where you risk losing to win and if Pakistan are good enough to beat us, that’s cool too,” said England’s coach Brendon McCullum before this series began.

That’s easy enough to say at the outset and it sounds even better when your approach has been vindicated with a win. But what’s everyone’s take if England had fallen flat on their arses in that first innings? Or if Pakistan had hared along to their fourth innings target and all of those earlier efforts had been in vain? How cool would that have been?

We wouldn’t say we’d have been 100% fine with it. But we’d have been cool enough.

Risking defeat in pursuit of victory is always admirable and often productive and that’s why it’s one of Stokes and McCullum’s central tenets. However, in the modern era, the upsides also outweigh the downsides to an even greater degree.

There will always be a point at which proactivity becomes irresponsibility but we’d argue that point is further along than it used to be.

Think of the matches you remember. Then do the impossible and think of all the matches you don’t remember. The relentless tsunami of international fixtures means there are probably quite a lot of the latter these days. A lot of cricket simply gets washed away.

That’s the basis of the equation here: victory and defeat aren’t really of equal weight. We remember both the good wins and the great wins, but only really the absolutely godawful losses – and even those we don’t tend to dwell on. And at least they’re colourful.

So why not risk losing? In the grander scheme of things, what would actually be lost?

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We don’t believe you can draw meaningful conclusions from players’ debuts – but we report on them anyway.

England have a long and rich history of travelling to the subcontinent and handing out caps to spin bowling all-rounders who they wouldn’t ordinarily pick for either their batting or their bowling.

These opportunities don’t ordinarily translate into long-term success for the beneficaries. Ian Blackwell didn’t get a second Test after appearing against India in Nagpur. Samit Patel got another five games after his debut against Sri Lanka in Galle, but they only brought seven wickets and no fifties. Liam Dawson looks to be stuck on three Tests, while Zafar Ansari’s three caps were enough to persuade him to give up cricket entirely.

Will Jacks’ first-class batting and bowling averages of 35 and 53 may hint at a similar outcome (a smattering of matches, not necessarily retirement). But potential is often measured elsewhere these days. Jacks also has a T20 strike-rate of 150 and a hundred in The Hundred to his name.

The slightly bits and pieces spin bowling England all-rounder is typically picked to ‘do a job’. So what job did Will Jacks do?

His first contribution was 30 off 29 balls. This was followed by 6-161 when he bowled, which is getting on for Jason Krejza territory.

Most of those six wickets were as a result of big shots. That’s normally a bit of a sneering thing to say – but just think of all the other bowlers who didn’t manage to profit from ambitious strokeplay. We don’t know how closely you were paying attention, but the batting in this match wasn’t defined by an overabundance of caution.

Jacks certainly wasn’t cautious when he batted second time around. His 24 off 13 balls crescendoed with consecutive deliveries that went six, six, six, out.

Not a normal debut. Not a normal Test match.

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Well it definitely, definitely wasn’t the wild shits. The first day of England’s first Test in Pakistan since 2005 saw them reach 500 quicker than any Test team ever before. Peak dominance of bat over ball came when Harry Brook hit six fours in one Saud Shakeel over.

We put it to you that six fours in an over is better than six sixes in an over.

Six sixes is showy. Six sixes is making a point.

Six fours is pure cold-blooded murder.

Think of it this way, if you’ve hit five sixes off the first five balls of an over – which is already quite a risky thing to do – you’re pretty much obliged to try and whack the sixth one into the stands. Even if you’re in rare good form, definitely trying to hit a six before you’ve even seen what ball’s being bowled is quite a good way of getting out.

After five fours, you’ve still just about got a choice. And even if you do opt for trying to larrup yet another boundary, it’s not that big a risk. You can still try and keep it on the deck.

Six fours is just pure unapologetic dominance. At the start of Shakeel’s over, Harry Brook was careering along merrily on 60 off 58 balls. By the end of the over, he was on 84 off 64 balls and still hadn’t given Pakistan a sniff of dismissing him.

As a bowling side, that’s a horrifying thing to have to come to terms with. The batter’s just shunted his rate of scoring up considerably and yet somehow that hasn’t shifted the ‘likelihood of being dismissed’ dial over more than the merest fraction.

Six sixes in an over is a horrific bludgeoning blow to the body. Six fours is an agonising stiletto stab that also brings with it the promise of a great many more stabs to come.

“If only, if only,” Pakistan will be thinking. “If only it had been the wild shits.”

We’ve a great offer for you. If you sign up for our email you’ll be able to read these footers beneath the articles thinking, “But I’ve already signed up for it”. Who wouldn’t want that?

You can take your own chef with you (Omar Meziane, if you’re wondering), but if you’re in a part of the world you don’t visit too often, there’s a decent chance you’ll come into contact with viruses that your immune system doesn’t know all that well. What we’re saying here is that the wild shits has no respect for those who name their first choice XI a couple of days before the start of a Test match. We’re looking at you, Ben Stokes.

Actually, we’re not going to go so far as to proclaim this the wild shits. We are in fact going to go the opposite way and confidently state that it isn’t.

Cricinfo’s Vithushan Ehantharajah reports that 13 to 14 members of England’s touring party, including half the 16-man playing squad, have been struck down, so it seems safe to assume they all have the same thing. If that’s the case, Joe Root’s return to training after “symptoms” on Tuesday rules the wild shits out as a possibility. No-one’s bouncing back from the more severe form of the illness that quickly. That is, by definition, impossible. Brevity negates wildness.

Even so, most match previews now seem hopelessly detached from reality. Tactics, strategy and idealistic team selection seem mere trivialities when half your men are busy frothing on the khazi.

They’re talking about pushing the start of the match back a day, which hugely regrettably diminishes the prospect of Marcus Trescothick and Rob Key opening the batting.

Root was joking when he suggested that, but the only good thing about an unavoidable wave of the shits sweeping through a touring squad is that such a move isn’t actually beyond the realms of possibility. By the great flowing beard of Moeen, we’d be setting our alarm for 4.45am if a Tres-Key partnership were on the cards. (Bit dubious about Root’s suggestion that Brendon McCullum could bat at three though. We can see a small eligibility flaw in that plan.)

The most likely outcome here is that whether the game is postponed or not, England just try and muddle through with the 11 players who are achieving the longest intervals between toilet trips.

As a final note on this subject, this seems a good time to revisit the story where Matt Renshaw had to retire hurt with the wild shits and Steve Smith revealed himself to be a World Class Prick.

In 2019, Australia were playing India and Renshaw became aware that he was suddenly and unexpectedly careering towards a case of the wild shits while he was batting in the middle. This is quite literally a nightmare scenario. Yet when he tried to run off to preserve his whites, Smith made him come back and speak to the umpires. That will have felt a very, very, very long conversation for Renshaw.

We’re not entirely sure what the opposite of elite mateship is (in large part because we have no clue what elite mateship is) but we’re pretty sure this is it.

We started a Mastodon account because of the whole Twitter… [gestures vaguely in the direction of Twitter]. We’re pretty sure this is the link to it if you fancy climbing aboard that particular bandwagon.